Today, Wednesday (Mittwoch in German), I played my quarterfinal match against Sabine Robertz, a German player who lives about an hour from the tournament site. She is a quick, steady player, but I played well and beat her 60 61. We played on Center Court again and once again the stands were empty! I play next the winner of Sabine Schmitz, the #2 seed (and tournament director) or Annelies Simons from the Netherlands. They started late, after 6pm, since Annelies drives after work from the Netherlands to play). Update: Now the top half of the draw (with a local club team member) is scheduled for 10:30 am and the bottom half at 6pm with the final at 10:30 am! Originally both were scheduled for 1:30.

Center Court, ETUF, Essen

The top seed in my division, Australian Lyn Mortimer, took on Jutta Boekmann, who took out Jenny Cerff yesterday. Lyn prevailed in three sets, winning the third set decisively 61 after splitting two tight sets earlier. And speaking of Jenny, she won her consolation match today handily to put her in the consolation final tomorrow. Fortunately Jenny checked the draw one last time before going to sleep. She was surprised to find out she played at 9am! Not as surprised though as her opponent who didn’t have internet access and showed up at 11.

The match of the day was that between Nora Blom and Heidi Eisterlehner. Heidi won the first set; Nora attacked the net in the second successfully and continued her success in the third, going up 5-2 before Heidi changed tactics and drove the ball more, keeping Nora back. Nora had one match point at 65 before Heidi won the match 76 (5) in the third (62 36 76). It was a nice match between two outstanding players.

After I finished my noon match, Jenny and I did the rounds…of grocery stores. We stopped first at Edeka to get ice (the Edeka was the only store which carried ice of the three we visited today) and chocolates (Ritter Sport, 59 cents this week!); Aldi (apples), and Netto (owned by Edeka) (feldsalat, what we call Mache, a type of lettuce). We also learned many new words, to go with our new favorite saying Gute Fahrt (Bon Voyage or Good Trip).

This is a photo of the bottle recycling machine. Leergut hier means “empties here”, and of Jenny with our ice, a rare commodity here. 

At the Aldi, we saw this sign that said Kundenparkplatz and parkdauer: customer parking and parking time (1 stn = 1 hour) respectively. (Since there was a photo of a car being towed, we wanted to know what the sign said.) In the stores, the chocolate and sweets aisles are long and fully stocked…similar to the chips aisles in an American store.

The last word of the day is ankunftszeit which means arrival time; it was on this placard which was in the rental car. We figured out that it was something to put o the dashboard showing what time we arrived in the parking lot.

Draws are here (go to order of play, then click on draws).