yesterdays st paddys saw a wild bunch of "mighty bremen ladies" invading the local pubs on recruitment tour. we started off in jonny b goodes where i did not receive the gift of seeing italy beat ireland, but instead been given a nice shamrock badge to wear on my new ladies team polo. and loads of cider of course. the pub was crowded with our girls team, some of the uni-rugby guys, some of our senior mens and most of the youth team, plus a lot of the usual expats. we picked up some english guys and headed off to the irish pub in schnoor after the great welsh performance. never go there! what a bunch of fucking losers!! we stayed for like 2 minutes and i almost started a fight there... off we went to hegartys, singing and celebrating the "mighty bremen ladies". we were greeted by the usual pub rocker and met some nice ladies there and hopefully mira will keep her promise and join us on tuesday!! then we went to a private party (we weren't invited) but got thrown out after the first beer, which was a good thing, because the party sucked. so we had to play table soccer in one of the worst pubs in bremen, but the beer was cheap and it wasn't as crowded as the heagrtys, where we ended half an hour later. we had planned to go to paddys pit, but at 4 in the morning everyone was happy with finding the way back home.

unfortunately we had taken one of the mens players with us and the drinking did not really help him today ;-) anyhow, i got up early (around 11) and just in time to open the door for nadine, who came to pick me up to see the men play today. rain and hailstorm could not keep us off the pitch and we saw a glorious win against rostock (36:0) that could have been even higher if only the ref would have put his glasses on. wait, he HAD his glasses on. well.... i don't usually blame the ref but he did not give two tries, which were absolutely good. well, it did not help him (he's the rostock coach) and so we were all confidently marching off to the club house to the usual bbq and beer. oh, and our youngster simon scored his first try and had to drink out of his shoe.

i forgot the gifts!!! today mr juchem came to watch the mens game and brought a big bag of gifts with him: a jersey of western province rugby club (south africa), loads of pins, a picture of the springbok women (requested by me) and one of the mens team, which i gave to ross, as hes from sa. and michael gave me an issue of england rugby magazine, thank you!!