"Mannschaft stoßt - ab!"

Today was our first rowing class and I am already a huge fan of this sport. The people in my class are great too, a couple of them are also foreigners like myself, although they are doing their entire Studium here at the university instead of just one year like me. Everyone is friendly and it was a crack up watching us all try to learn to row.

Rowing is far, far harder than it looks. There are a million things you have to concentrate on: keep the oars near the surface as you pull, arms forward, legs bend, pull out the oar, rotate and pull it back into position, legs straight, arms bend in to follow...pull! All to the rhythm of our instructor's patient counting: Drei, zwei, eins....drei, zwei, eins....

The boat glides effortlessly across the water when everyone is in sync, but this happened only for a few moments with our beginner's boat. Rowing, I'm beginning to see, is both an intensely individual and team sport at the same time. You have to develop your own skills as an individual rower, but the team has to learn to row in unison -- you have to learn everyone's patterns and row as one. The mistakes of one can throw off the entire boat, as I found out when my instructor shouted, "Matthew, die Blätter FLACH durchs Wasser ziehen!" (Pull the oars flat through the water!) I had been pulling too deep and causing the boat to lean to the right.

I am definitely going to enjoy spending my Monday afternoons rowing on the Neckar.