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.