touring Europe

Just back from Norway & Poland with some kids for European U/14 tournaments...had some interesting challenges with travel, acommodation & money, but overall everything went pretty well. We ended up staying with the tournament director's ex-wife in Sczcecin, who insisted on refilling my wine glass after every 2nd sip...I felt it would be rude to refuse her kind hospitality, so just politely kept sipping. They had a cherry tree in the garden, with the sweetest cherries I've ever tasted, and a really cute German Shephard dog who kept eating them, including the stone!




The journey to Sczcecin in Poland took nearly 15 hours - we flew to Berlin and then took 6 trains (3 wrong ones) to get to the club. The kids got out their rackets and had some rallies on the platform to pass the time... loads of parks & open spaces in Sczcecin which was nice to see - plenty of places to run (especially to recover after watching 2 hours of U/14 girls doubles, not amusing). Had fun playing 'scatch' and going on the see-saws :) Emma got to the 1/4-finals in singles at both tournaments, and the semi-finals of doubles in Poland with Morven.

Back to the normal coaching programme for a week now and then off to Denmark for another ETA event, with Emma & Morven again, plus Joanna Henderson. Then I've booked flights to Seattle to meet up with Tien, Derek, Jason, Sarah & Ian in July - really looking forward to it, I'm in need of a holiday!!!!!!!!