Finding Dirk Nowitzki

While in Germany, John Chou asked me if I could buy him a Dirk jersey from when he played for the Wurzburg team in Germany. I figured that the best place to find this jersey would be to actually go to the city, so off I went one weekend in January 2004. It was about a 2 hour train ride from Erlangen. I think it was NW of the town. The first thing that I saw when I pulled into the station was the gigantic ad for the new WalMart that had just opened there. Grrreeeaaatttt......sigh...

There were a few things in Wurzburg that I saw that was interesting. It was a town divided by a river with a pedestrian bridge, a castle on one side, and the town on the other. (This would be a recurring city lay out in Europe as I would see later on) This area of Germany was famous for it's wine. When I was there however, there were no grapes growing on the vines running up and down the hills. It was all brown and barren. But it was cool to see how they planted their vines running directly down the mountain.Bare vines running down the mountain side near the Wurzburg castle

I also went ot the "Residence". I'm not sure who's residence it was, but it was open to the public, and there was a great big traditional European garden. I sat on one of the benches and froze my fingers off while journaling. It was peaceful, and I enjoyed the fact that I was there in the winter when there weren't so many tourists around. However this was about the time where I was a little depressed at the fact that I was in Germany by myself making trips to various places on my own. I was getting homesick, but I managed to survive through March.Frozen fountain in the Residence

Now...that Dirk jersey....
I ended up going to 3 different stores that offered sports equipment and clothes. How I communicated to people that I wanted a basketball jersey is beyond me. I think most of them spoke perfect English. Anyway, each store I went to carried a lot of Dirk Mavs jerseys. I told them that I wanted the Wurzburg jersey, or at least the German national team Nowitzki jersey. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy. "But Dirk plays for Dallas...", "Yes, but do you have his National team jersey?" "No....", ok then..

So John Chou never got his Dirk jersey from me. But I got to see Wurzburg.