Rugby Misadventures Steeped in Bulgarian Schnapps

As I sit here typing the noise of the keys echo faintly in my head. My eyes seem to flick a little slower over the screen, and a pleasant pit of warmth sits in my belly. It's 11:43pm.

We left at 6:30, already half an hour late for the practice, before even having stepped outside the door. Hopping on the tram, 3 stops, connection, 7 stops (and half an hour later) and we're in Illkirch. I don't know where the fuck I am. Pierre asks a lady at the station in is his polite French accent where we could find the Albert Schweitzer Illkirch Graffentstaden. She points us in the wrong direction (but we didn't know that).

Twenty minutes later we're peering through a fence at an empty rugby pitch that's sitting in a military compound. Fifteen minutes later we're walking through the Illkirch campus, where none of the students seem to know where anything is. I feel like crying. I hadn't realized how important this had become for me. Luckily we found two teachers smoking by their car, and found out the pitch we were looking for was down the highway aways.

Ten minutes later we're on the side of some highway, shuffling through dead grass and dirt clumps and side stepping dog shit. It's starting to get dark out, and I wonder how we'll ever manage to get back home. We hop over a hill. Once again Pierre asks for directions. This time its a man smoking by his car (favorite French pastime?). The man points at the fields (not like, yay running through wildflowers fields, like, clumpy, furrowed, horror story farmer fields) and at the specs of light we can just make out through the trees... "un petit kilometre" he says.

Pierre and I set off through the field. Its harder to walk in than you'd think. Especially when it's dark out. Then its hop, up a hill in the underbrush, and we found ourselves in darkness by a stand of trees that ran the length of a small canal.

Following the canal (by this time it was 7:30pm), we made our way (in near darkness) towards a bridge. This bridge, however, had no pathway for people, so we walked along a granite pillar around two and a half feet wide to the other side, over the canal. Finally we saw the field and the lights.... but only soccer players. I wanted to kick something this time.

The ruggers came into view though the closer we got to the field, and after a confusing twenty minute walk around what turned out to be an enormous compound of different fields, we found the entrance to the pitch. Now it was 8pm, practice had been in full swing for two hours already.

Hopefully I scanned the fourty odd rugby players killing each other on the field (they were going at it HARD). Not one set of tits. Inwardly I was screaming. But at the same time I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. I was HERE.

Walking up to the sidelines where a few players sat, Pierre struck up conversation with one of the guys. He asked about practice times, how they had found the pitch (they definately ALL hadn't gone tramping through fields) and finally whether the team was "mixed", and for one of the first times in my life I wondered what would happen if they said "non". Bahahaha the guy actually had the nerve to ask me if I'd ever played before. I would obviously be some kind of maniac to willingly participate as the only female to this melee without any kind of previous experience (they really were having at one another out there, I could hear them crunching each other...made me want to poop my pants a bit).

THE ONLY GIRL OF FOURTY GUYS I MUST BE FUCKING CRAZY. I WILL NEVER SURVIVE, I CAN'T POSSIBLY KEEP UP... I'll be killed. Or worse! they'll all go easy on me. I'd rather have to nurse a few bruises than to pick up the pieces of my shattered pride and dignity every Monday. God, I'll have so much to prove. It's almost better there isn't another girl, because then I'd have to compete with her too (you never want to be the shittier player of the only two girls, that's like being picked last in gym class).

Anyway by this time was almost 9pm, and we decided to head home. We'd had been trapising across the country side for almost and hour and a half to find this bloody field.

Finally we got home - don't worry, I'm getting to the Schnapps part, it's getting worse, I think its starting to really hit me...but at least I can still type okay. Then after a twenty minute committee with Pierre, Ben and Yugo, we decided to make pasta for dinner, seeing as the residential restaurant had just finished closing.

Long story short we brought Ruti (a Slovakian girl on Ben's floor) her pot back that we had borrowed to make the pasta, and she thought she smelled vodka, so Yugo went upstairs and brought down Bulgarian moonshine "mirabelle" Schnapps, and we all had a few goes at it. I would have built this part up more except its getting late and the Schnapps is starting to take hold - and I plan on being firmly asleep by the time it hits me fully.
Goodnight.


Sidenote:
Getting ready for rugby today, I hadn't realized how difficult it is to go to that first practice, especially when I expected most of them to be guys. The biggest thing is the pretty debate. You have to be pretty (because though it is sad, pretty people make friends easier), but not too pretty (because you don't want them thinking you're a girly girl), so somehow you have to vascillate between being pretty enough that they're willing to accept you, but not so pretty that they think you're trying to pick up on the side. Anyway I decided to wear the mascara, and hesitated, but decided it was best to shave the legs - both in terms of courtesy, but also to give myself courage (confidence = not constantly worrying that you're a hairy bitch).
Anyway, 'nuff said.