I am now in Bad Neuenahr Germany, which is near Cologne. Yesterday was interesting, I took a train and a bus and a shuttle to get my rental car and drove from Munich to Bad Neuenahr. Los Angeles and Houston have nothing on Germany as far as traffic jams are concerned…I ended up in a three hour crawl…no accidents, just road construction I think and Sunday evening traffic going back home. Interestingly I only saw a few cars with fewer than 2 people in them, most had 2 and many had families or groups of 4 or more. A four hour drive ended up taking 8 and I arrived very late here, but in one piece. There are lots of rest stops along the freeway with gas stations and restaurants and other stops that just have places to park and stretch. The adventure today will be to find the club in Bad Breisig, but since I passed the turnoff last night and the club is across from the rail station (as is my hotel here…could have just taken the train…next time). I don’t play till Thursday and since the tournament uses ITF rankings to seed, will likely be the top seed. I’m going to try and practice today with a Dutch player.
There is one other American in the men’s draw, but pretty much everyone here is German with a few Dutch, Austrian and Belgian players sprinkled in.
Here’s a link to the draws, though they haven’t been posted yet for the younger divisions. I don’t know why. Then you click on "Ergebnisliste" on the lower right side of the page to see the draws.