England and Stuttgart on a Sunday

Well we arrived in Stuttgart this morning in record time as Mark thinks that the Autobahn still does not have any speed limits. Our mighty Opal was only passed by the Mercedes, BMWs and the Audis. Well a couple of VWs too. Lisa kept noting that there are speed cameras but Mark paid no attention (typical).

Unlike previous posts, we actually have quite a bit of time. The game does not start until 5pm and, because it is Sunday, everything is closed. Sorry, Julie, we had planned on buying your gift today. Maybe now you can get a nice birthday gift from the states as opposed to the kitschy beer stein we might have gotten you here.

Stuttgart is decked out in red and white. The English fans are literally pouring off of the trains. We have heard ticket prices anywhere up to 800 Euros a piece. We also are learning of all the scams going on. Fake tickets are everywhere, people are passing back tickets once inside of the gates (which have already been scanned and voided, unknown to the purchaser). But we think that the atmosphere will be great. They expect at least 70,000 English fans here, they were already starting downing the liter beers at 10am this morning. When we get home we'll post the pictures of Mark draped in the English flag-skirt. Depending on his intake of Radlers today, combined with the heat, maybe he will be in just the flag.

The atmosphere in Munich yesterday was unbeatable. There were no "suits" at the game, just normal crazy fans. At the first match, when we were sitting directly behind the goal, we questioned why the upper deck had metal rails everywhere. Yesterday we found out why- we were at the top and it was a bit scary. The field was literally straight down. We have never seen a stadium so steep. The stadium must have been a bit scary for the Swedes too, because they could not muster much of an attack. To be fair, the Germans are looking quite good. Lisa was wearing the Swedish flag in a sea of red, yellow and black. There were some more Swedes, but only across the Stadium on the other side. Mark's getting better at the German cheers, though. Even if he does not understand the words, he appears authentic.

Some final observations from yesterday: gas prices in Europe are high. To fill up 3/4 of a tank costs about $50. The Stadium bathroom lines clearly favour women...for any gal looking for a guy, the odds are good at the World Cup.

Tomorrow we are heading home (sigh)- but one can only eat so many Wursts and drink so many Spezis.

We have been spargeled.

If we had the ability to add pictures to this posting, you would see us decked out in our U.S. soccer gear toasting to 2010 in South Africa, because that is how long we are going to have to wait to see the U.S. in the World Cup. Nuremberg opened its arms to the Americans- they were everywhere in town draped in flags and face paint. The "Black Stars" of Ghana, as they are called, were there, but did not nearly have the numbers of the Americans. In fact, the majority of "Ghanians" did not appear to actually come from Ghana, unless they also had excellent German skills.

There was some ugly Americanism displayed, with a number of Americans shouting, "Nobody likes us and we don't care" and some rude chants using extensions of the word Ghana. But for the most part the atmosphere was as amazing as it has been in other cities. Mark enjoyed it, because as you know from previous posts, he has been longing to actually cheer in English.

All in all, the game was very frustrating to watch. The U.S. did not have the same ability to control the ball that they did in previous matches. Whether they were tired from Italy or if Ghana just pressured them that much, they did not play great. It was also extremely frustrating to watch Ghana's antics on the field, rolling over in pain even when the U.S. didn't touch them. So much for FIFA vowing to issue yellow cards for diving!

So much for soccer. We had a great lunch before the match. We met some fellow DC folks at a restaurant in the old town and enjoyed some käse späztle. Everyone should be on the lookout when Mark returns to make sure he is not an alcoholic, he downed two beers for lunch. Not much for some people, but for Mark that is. Dinner was not such a success. Mark decided to enjoy some German culture and eat Spargel. Every June, Germany has spargel (white asparagus) on every menu. Mark decided to have a spargel night and had spargel soup and spargel with sauce for the main course. He is spargeled out- he seemed to have offended the waitstaff by not eating all his spargel.

Yesterday was a castle-fest. We rented a car and drove to Rothenburg ob der Tauber and Heidelberg. On our way back we drove along a small road along the Neckar river, where we had dinner in a castle on a hill- they did not serve Spargel. Although Mark is not yet sure what he exactly ate, he liked it. Today we are off to Munich to watch Germany play Sweden (Lisa has her Swedish flag skirt ready), and tomorrow we are heading to Stuttgart to see how the 70,000 + English fans cheer on their team in the match against Ecuador. Mark bought an English flag yesterday, so people don't need to worry about the hooligans. We will be considered friends not foes.

We hope to have more pictures soon.

Ghana-USA- Si se puede (our Costa Rican chant applies here)

We arrived last night to a little village outside of Nuremberg. When we say litte, we mean it. It lead Mark to question whether Germany really is an industrialized country. The village did not have a grocery store, however, we did manage to meet some Americans from Washington, DC and New York. I guess they were as cheap as us and did not want to pay the high hotel bills in the city.

Well the place is covered with Americans and American flags. The game between the U.S. and Ghana begins in about 3 hours. As it gets closer to game time it is going to be harder and harder to pull him away from the ticket scalpers. In a rather ironic twist, Mark wants to shell out the money to see the game live, Lisa is happy to hold on to the Euros and watch it at the Fan Fest. We are not talking a trivial amount of money for the tickets, after all.

We found out who we are going to see play in the Round of 16. We picked up our tickets and we have the Germany versus Sweden match in Munich. We were both hoping to see England play, Lisa for the atmosphere, Mark so that he could finally understand what he was cheering. Mark is going to cheer for Germany, Lisa is switching to cheer for Sweden- going so far as to buy a Swedish T-shirt. (Lisa: I cannot stand to fall asleep to another night of cheering from the Germans "Berlin, Berlin, wir fahren nach Berlin". Hopefully the Swedes can knock them out!)

Our town was so small that we doubt we will find an internet cafe. Hopefully we can find something on the road tomorrow in Rothenburg ob der Tauber to write some more.

Go USA!

36 hours in Hanover

Our short stay in Hanover calls for an abbreviated blog. Or maybe it is just late and we want to get back to watch the Sweden-England match and get to bed early for our 7am departure to Nurnberg tomorrow. So, here is a top 10 list from Hanover:

10. Making a pasta dinner in our hotel room after our "incident" in Amsterdam (see footnote).

9. Hanover has Internet cafes.

8. A lesson in Geography: The Polish fans had fewer miles to travel than the Costa Ricans. They probably outnumbered us 300 to 1.

7. A great stadium atmosphere: Whereas the opening match had a lot of "suits", this game saw 44,000 ordinary cheering fans!

6. Every Polish fan simultaneously breaking out into a cheer- how do they all do that at once?

5. Polish and Costa Rican fans exchanging jerseys after the match.

4. A Costa Rican fan with a huge nine foot Ronaldinho bobble head.

3. Riot police taking pictures with the fans because they had nothing else to do.

2. Mark competing with the local kids to collect cups in order to return them and collect the 1 euro pfand (deposit). Mark found three, which was less than most nine-year olds, but enough to pay for our pretzel.

1. Clean socks (we finally found a laundromat)

Footnote 1: We went to the grocery store in Amsterdam to buy white milk and chocolate milk. When we got home, we realized after our first gulps respectively that we purchased chocolate pudding mix and a liquidy sour cream. Mark's Dutch apparently was a bit off. However, to be fair, you would think that the lady who checked us out would have thought it was strange for two tourists to purchase these items and might have asked us if we were looking for milk!

Footnote 2: Andrew, Lisa would have danced the Wanchope, but alas he did not score. Maybe in the 2010 world cup.

Still alive- us and the U.S. soccer team!

Amsterdam may have a red light district, but we could not seem to find an internet cafe that was open! Hopefully we have not lost readership; if we had any. Since our last post, we spent several days in Amsterdam and are now back in Germany, Hanover to be exact.
Today, we will be attending the Poland-Costa Rica match and we promise to be more deligent in our postings in the future.

Travel
At long last, I returned to my homeland. I think Lisa got a real hoot out of mentioning my last name and watching me stammer out that I only knew how to say 'thank you.' When we rented bicycles, the woman behind the counter recognized my dutch name and made a futile attempt to teach me dutch - I now know how to say 'middle ferry' in dutch. That word came in useful on our trek to Marken, a sea town about 10 miles from Amsterdam. While the land is flat, the winds were strong during our ride. We traveled on Sunday, so we were lucky to find a cute harbor in Marken with a restaurant offering pancakes, schipperbitter (a beer), and schipperschnitzel. I tried the pancakes, but, much to Lisa's disagreement, I skipped the beer and schnitzel because it cost over 10 euros, and I am a cheap dutchman!

We made a few friends in Amsterdam. One of Lisa's coworkers had arranged for us to meet up with his friend (Gerhard) who lives in Amsterdam. Gerhad gave us some good traveling advice (aka the trip to Marken) and gave us a canal tour on his boat. We felt like locals, though we did not look like it when Lisa took the boat's rudder. I almost fainted when she careened through a very tight canal, with a huge tourist boat bearing down on us.

Soccer
I thought about saying that the reason we have not posted for so long was because I was in the hospital because of fainting after the U.S.-Italy match. From a soccer perspective, it was probably not "the beautiful game" as both teams were near exhaustion, but from a spectator viewpoint it was a pretty intense game to watch. I know we were looking at the clock at least once a minute in the second half. The guy next to us received a phone call - we could not believe he actually answered- but he did. He told the person to call back in 10 minutes as he was too stressed to talk! But what a game. It was quite a gutsy performance by the U.S. and one that put us back in it! You can bet we will be front and center at an Irish Pub in Nurnberg to watch the U.S. take on Ghana. Mom, forget what I said earlier, you may still have to tape a game for us. By the way, if anyone has the Washington Post Sports Section from last Sunday please keep it- we would love to read the commentary on that match.

Besides that, the soccer atmosphere in Amsterdam was pretty good. It did not rival Munich, but is probably better than Hanover, Germany. The Dutch went crazy with the Netherlands win. Mark and I thought that they were a bit lucky, Ivory Coast really looked strong at the end. We did not dare cheer for the Ivory Coast, though, as we watched the game with a group of Dutch fans. What was neat, was when we went out of the center of town, the streets were lined with orange flags- similar to what you might find at a car dealership- in support of the team.

Would you like bread with the game?

Daily observation:
We feel sorry for the folks visiting Prague who had no idea that they would be spending it with thousands of World Cup fans. Tonight, for example, we splurged on a fancy dinner in the Old Town Square, which gave us nice seats for watching Poland lose to Germany. Throughout the game, Poland's fans would pelt unknowing tourists with bread in an effort to improve their view of the big screen tv. We estimated the bill for the bread thrown to be around $7 US, which is a lot of bread! Next time around, these tourists will surely review the schedule of any major sporting events before planning their romantic getaway.

Sites, sounds, and smells of Prague

Travel:
We followed the advice of our travel guide today: we wandered Prague. We visited so many sights that it would be hard to list them all. Our highlights include the Charles Bridge and the Prague Castle -- typical tourist sites. But, we've added to the list: manhole covers. In addition to our typical castle pictures, we had the bright idea for a coffetable book of manhole covers. So, starting in Cesky Krumlov, we have begun photographing manhole covers -- now it gets kinda ripe and we do get a few strange looks, but that just means we'd be the first to publish one! We broke down and took a half-day tour. It was well-done, though we had a better time just getting lost. We're down to 999. You see, Lisa's mom gave us a book called "1000 Places to See Before You Die." Well, I guess we are one site closer because we visted U Fleku, a Czech beer garden that brews a sweet, dark beer only served here. The oompah band needed a few more players, but it was a good beer.

Soccer:
Well, I slept on the loss yesterday, and only feel worse about it. Watching the replays of the Czech goals; it was embarassing. And now that Togo scored a goal against S. Korea today, we are, I guess, (hopefully temporarily) at the bottom. It's hard to believe how many Mexicans are here in Prague cheering on their team. Probably thousands. We watched the Brazil match in the Old Town Square. I was surprised to see what I believed to be Brazilians sitting quietly watching the game- no samba dancing? Then there was three loud drum beats and a chant of "Mexico, Mexico, Mexico" right on cue. Amazing. Since I was told to write about the small details, one note on advertising. People should have invested in soccer stickers. They are put on any product and suddenly the product is associated with the World Cup. Random pieces of chocolate, rubber duckies, a spaghetti strainer, anything. I'm not sure the link between the strainer and soccer, well maybe the big pasta meal the night before a game.

U.S.-Czech Republic: Czech-Mate

I am doing a quick solo blog here, because Mark fell asleep and I thought I'd wrap up for today. Besides, we decided to start splitting our duties- I would focus on soccer, Mark on the travel part. We arrived in Prague this afternoon in time to watch the U.S.-Czech Republic game. The only positive that I can say is that we watched it in the middle of Old Town Square in Prague- one of the most beautiful squares in the world. I'd post a picture, but I was so disgusted with the game that I never took one. We'll post some tomorrow.

Mark and I were ready, dressed in our U.S. soccer shirts with scarves/flags/etc. There were probably around 30 U.S. fans in the town square, and others who seemed to be American's cheering for the Czech Republic. There were a number of Brazilians, Mexicans and Australians in the crowd, but I think they were cheering for the Czech Republic too. Although probably a couple of hundred screaming fans showed up in the square, the atmosphere was nothing like Germany. We didn't see anyone wearing a national team jersey until later in the afternoon today. In Germany, I think people wear the German national team garb as pajamas.

I was always cautiously optimistic that the U.S. could get out of Group E, but my hopes relied on the U.S. pulling out a tie with the Czech Republic. A 3-0 loss, combined with Italy's 2-0 victory over Ghana will make it very tough to advance. I haven't seen the game statistics, but the U.S. had to have control over 60% of the time, yet I only remember my heart skipping a beat on 2 or 3 shots on goal. You have to hand it to the Czechs, they made their shots count and the goals were convincing. It would have been so much more exciting had the U.S. scored some goals and we could have received a solid "booing" from the Czechs. It's not quite as fun, when your team isn't doing well and you can't nicely taunt the home team.

I am going to start cheering for Trinidad and Tobago. I was so excited to see them make the World Cup...and then to tie Sweden! (I hope I didn't give my Swedish friend the link to this blog).

More tomorrow when I have a night to regroup.

Cesky Krumlov

We don't know how Prague can top this place. After dragging Lisa through yet another castle, we are ready for a trip down the Mighty Volta. Okay, perhaps we will just watch others as they kayak down a frigid river. Thank goodness they have catchers to grab people before they continue downstream, as the dam looks frightful to us. All kidding aside, this place is beautiful. We arrived yesterday on, perhaps, the slowest train in CZ, but it did afford us some incredible views of the very green countryside.

Mark made a solo attempt at dinner last night. Let's just say the waiter knew Mark by sight this morning on the street. One could say that Mark doesn't have a way with languages but he did manage to order a bowl of rice (and sneaking it to our room) for Lisa who was feeling under the weather. She's better know, but in need of some soccer games.

Speaking of soccer, you'd never know the world cup is going on. We don't even know if England won yesterday or not. Well, we'll wear our U.S. soccer shirts on the train up to Prague tomorrow and see how that goes.

Right Track, Wrong Train

The title tells it all. In typical fashion, we followed the crazed crowd, but ended up at the Olympic Park rather than the football stadium. To our credit, there were more fans headed to the park to watch the game on a big screen than the stadium to watch in person.

What a game it was! But, we need to talk about the pre-game a bit. The German sitting next to us said it all when she remarked "This is typical Germany, no typical Bavaria, not Germany!" How could one tell with the hundred or so lederhosen-wearing men and enormous (and we DO mean ENORMOUS) cow bells, hanging from their waist to their knees - they must have cows the size of dinosaurs! The sole American in the opening ceremonies was a scantily clad Toni Braxton, but she had an amazing voice, though it was hard to tell with the chants of Deutschland and Tico echoing off the donut-shaped stadium. The stadium was packed, with CR well-represented by its fans, even though they lost 2-4 to the Germans.

As we were leaving the stadium, the loud speaker in the subway screamed that the fan park was "hopelessly" filled to capacity so "please do not go there!" That was a silly thing to say, because the crowd promptly filled the train to the park to join in the celebration of Germany´s win and Costa Rica´s excellent showing.

We had dinner at the Hofbrauhaus where we saw, according to a friendly Costa Rican, the President of Costa Rica. We doubt he was being truthful, but it could have been.

The latest tally: 3 radlers and 2 brats for Mark and 2 spezi for Lisa. Sorry for our lack of excitement, but we have an early train - 8 hours - to the Czech Republic in a couple of hours...we need sleep!

Day 1- Wir haben gelandet (We landed)

Mark and Lisa again made a mad dash through the Paris airport, a dash worthy of a spot on the Amazing Race! Those who thought an hour was sufficient for a transfer in Charles De Gaulle should be fired. Good thing we only had carry-on or else we would still be there.

The flight to Munich was filled with Brazilians. Mark would not take Lisa´s dare to run up and down the aisle in his Australian jersey - Brazil plays Australia in round one. But we have arrived, had our first Spezi (lisa) and Radler and Brat (Mark). For those who do not know, a Radler is not a real German beer, but a mixture of Beer and Sprite (Yum). And another piece of advice- it is not smart to wear a Costa Rican hat when you want to order dinner in the Marienplatz as every German will get served before you are noticed. Funny how that works.

The night was interesting. At 1am we awoke to the sound of Ole, Ole, Ole, Ticos, Ticos, Ticos outside our hotel window (Ticos are the name of the Costa Rican national soccer team). Of course Lisa had to investigate. Mark was not interested in getting out of his comfortable bed. Surprisingly the loud noise was from only about 40 Costa Ricans. Everything is still all in good fun between the German fans and the Costa Ricans, but the game has not started yet.

This is Mark`s first World Cup. To say the least, it is intimidating but the intensity of the fans is something that is incredible to witness. We are glad that CR drew Germany in the first game. We purchased an American flag, but still have not seen too many Americans - they must be hiding up in Gelsenkirchen with the MNT (Men`s National Team).

Today´s the big day. It seems like we have brought good weather with us- mid 70´s and sunny. We still have not decided who to cheer for. Lisa is wearing the Ticos colors, while Mark is decked out in German garb. We have received a few double takes walking down the street. That´s all for now. Expect more news later after the game. Hopefully we can figure out how to put a picture on the web, there´s a great one of Mark with an "interesting" statue.