Willkommen in Deutschland - Futsal

    Am Montag of this week, I got invited to play football thanks to my professor of Finance. I told him I was looking for a club or place to train while in Freiburg to have fun and not loose my touch. He connected me to one of his previous fellow colleagues and he invited me to play. The invitation was from 8 to 10pm so I arrived into a shared map location a little bit early and all I could see was a dark basketball court with some football goals in there. To my surprise, this wasn't the field we were going to play at. 

    When my acquaintance arrived he showed me the entrance of a high school building/athletic facility, "schule sporthalle". There were locker rooms, showers, and right next to it was the field we were going to play at. It was a high school multi-purpose field were kids do sports and play futsal or Hallenfußball. We were a group of 10 people and we played 5 vs 5 in this small field. Most of the guys that played were in their 30s so I thought it was going to be chill... Coincidentally, there was a Chilean among the players and he explained the rules to me and told me not be tricked by their age since they ran a lot. 

    The rules and the place quickly reminded me of my time in high school when I played in our breaks from classes in Chile. You could play using the walls, which is awesome!, the ball only went out if it touched the vertical wall or if the ball touched the roof, there was no keeper, and lastly you could only score inside an area a little bit pass the mid line of the field. My professor told me to be prepared to play with these guys, that they weren't bad. I told him I was going to teach them. To my astonishment, my team was defeated 3 times and we only won the last game by one goal. The match was intense, a lot of running and strategical positioning to not encounter a fast counter attack which would end up 9/10 times in goal. Besides the Chilean guy who had lived in Germany for years, players were all German. It was my first time playing with German people football so it was pretty exciting. I was glad I knew the numbers so I could keep count of the goals/score and also ask for the ball when I was "Frei" oder just a simple "Hier". 

    After the game, we went to the showers and was fascinated by how some of them were drinking beers in the shower after playing. This was funny and also it felt like back home in Chile were we call it "tercer tiempo"(third half time), which means social drinking after the game since the game has two equal half times. Now, I am invited to play every Monday with these group of people and when the weather gets better we might play more outside. When I was leaving the building, I encountered a heavy rain which didn't help me since I wasn't prepared for it. One of the guys said "Willkommen in Deutschland", which I thought it was funny because of the circumstance since I had to run to get to the tram which I missed for a matter of seconds. Once there, I sat for the next 14 mins waiting for the next tram, super wet,  thinking about how great and memorable this experience was overall and how excited I was to keep doing this jeden Montagabend.

Photo of Futsal 

photo of the Schule sporthalle 

Me and Germans playing futsal every Monday