Thanks, It's absolutely true.
Warning: This is very long...
We played against some scrub teams but also played several professional teams and played the Czech National team twice. The best team we played was a pro club in Stuttgart, Germany. Each of the pro teams in Europe are allowed to have two foreign players on their team...which basically meant two Americans. That team had a dude that had played for the University of Minnesota (can't remember his name) and Steve Bucknall who played at UNC and had just played a couple years for the Lakers prior to playing in Germany. He lit us up. (Read as: he lit me up.) They were the 1st pro team we played over there and they torched us by 18.
We were a decent team who was only together for a week of training camp before going to Europe for 3 weeks. And we're playing against teams who have been together for several years. And that Stuttgart team was a team of grown men playing against a bunch of skinny college kids. Overall...we killed the scrub teams, beat a few pro teams and we split with the Czech National team.
It was a great experience all the way around. I had never been out of the country before that trip (except for Canada), it made me a better basketball player and a better person and it strengthened my faith tenfold. Ten guys, 13 if you count the trainer (a hilarious little dude from Old Dominion) & coaches, from across the country all from different backgrounds and different denominations working together on and off the court and sharing their faith with each other and with others. And believe it or not...we didn't hit one single person on the head with a Bible. Did see several people accept Jesus into their lives though. Good stuff. Good times.
Some other tidbits:
While we were in Auggen, Germany (little town in southern Germany with beautiful wine vineyards) we stayed in other people's homes. Me and a guy from UCLA stayed with this little old widow who didn't speak a lick of English. That was challenging to say the least. But we made a friend for life when we helped her fix her storage shed. Also, we almost got beaten up in a packed pub in Auggen when we stopped in there late one night, ordered some food and then didn't want to eat it because it was horrible. Unbeknownst to us (because we didn't speak German), the pub owner was mad and felt disrespected because the kitchen was usually closed that late and he did us a favor by fixing some food. The regulars were gathering around him...and us. We were severely outnumbered. Luckily there was a couple from America in the pub (not with us) that spoke German. They cleared up why he was so mad and we paid him and got out of there fast.
We were in Czechoslovakia in August '91 when the coup broke out in Russia. Ran into some students from Russia while we were at a university in Prague and they were freaking out. Also, two years later Czechoslovakia split into The Czech Republic and Slovakia. Some pretty historical stuff.
But the most eye opening experience was visiting the Dachau concentration camp. You read about that stuff but it doesn't really hit you hard until you walk through that entrance and see it in person. Unbelievable. Tore me up. Still does.
