Well, except that I don't have any of that stuff and I eat cereal every day. After breakfast, I had a date with Avis to pick up our rental car for the week. We got dropped off by Alex's dad before they left for the weekend house for the day.
Originally my thought had been that we would need four seats in the rental car and space for our stuff. If Roland came from Slovakia, he would have his own car, which would make things easy. Taking my mantra of "Trip Cruise Director" seriously, I started checking out the cars available at AutoEurope, I settled on a nice little Golf wagon, which would be sufficient (I thought) for our needs. Then the night before I left (when Roland was making his travel plans
;o), I was worried that the wagon wouldn't be big enough for everyone, plus Alex and some other people would probably want rides as well. After much internal debate between practicality, reality, and frugality (is that a word?), I decided that we should upgrade our car and ride in all of the style and comfort that a VW Passat wagon with a stick-shift would afford us. In a rare moment of excess, I even splurged for the full insurance package that almost
doubled the price of the rental, but ensured that we could do donuts in any empty parking lots we came across with little-or-no repurcussions. NOW we were all set to go!
So Alex called Avis to find out where to pick up our lavish ride. They said it didn't matter which terminal we went to, so we went to Fraport's Terminal 2. Once we got there, they said we were at the wrong terminal and Alex did what he does best: gave them hell (mild overstatement. It was more like "they said we could come to any terminal.") The Avis dude checked to see if they had anything available there for us. Sure enough, they did, and we were on our merry way to find our way down to the rental car parking lot. While we were fruitlessly
meandering around looking for the elevator, I looked at the keys and it said "MB C200 Kompr. Wagon" and my eyes lit up. They had totally hooked us up with a supercharged Benz! Unfortunately it had an automatic transmission, but I wasn't about to complain. I actually think that Mercedes and Volkswagens are in the same class as each other in Germany, but it was still pretty awesome.
While we were driving home, Alex was messing with the stereo and seeing what kind of features we had. There was a button called "Nav" on the console and our ride became even sweeter when we found out we had a full Navigation System to guide us around Germany! It took me a bit to figure it out (it was all in German), but this thing was a life saver. Apparently "Navi" (as they call it there) is quite common in Euroland. Most cars have like a $1000 option for it and a lot of people have them. Maybe I'm out of the car loop here in the States, but it doesn't seem to be that common. Then again, our highway system here actually follows some logic and isn't as difficult as Europe.
Once we got home, we picked up Stefan and headed off to the grocery store toshop for goods to eat while we were staying at base camp - Alex's parent's lovely weekend house on a lake outside of Kahl. The shopping experience reminded me of the time when I lived in Germany and had to shop for myself. Typical mainstays like pasta and fruits & vegetables are always available, but many of the typical food that I would make myself are not. But we did stock up
on meats (for barbeques), pasta, and juices - not to mention a case of beer (Krombacher, of course!) and a case of Apfelwein (apple wine, a regional specialty. 100 Euros (note to self: credit cards are next to worthless at grocery stores) and one trophy-wife sighting later, we were out the door and heading home to unload the goods.
We had a few hours to kill and were looking to take full advantage of the amazing weather we were having. Every trip I've taken to Germany, the weather has always been terrible. If it's not overcast, raining, and cold, it's stifling hot with humidity in the 80's (and nobody seems to have AC there) and threatening thunderstorms about to break out at any moment. Apparently the
weather prior to the World Cup was just terrible with temperatures in the 40s and 50s and rain all day. Then, the day before the first kickoff, the blue skies came out and since then it was just incredible. Nice and hot, no clouds, no humidity, perfect outdoor weather. With that in mind, we picked up Sven and went to a large outdoor sports complex/park to kick a soccer ball around. I had my fresh pair of Pumas indoor soccer shoes on (even they can't overcome my lack
of coordination) and was devastated to find out that we weren't allowed to play on any of the grass fields and we had to play in the huge clay-dirt lot. I wouldn't have cared except that my Pumas were BRAND NEW and I had been intent on keeping them squeeky clean. Suffice to say that after the game they were no long white with a blue stripe but rather orange with a blue stripe :-/
We worked up a healthy sweat and thirst playing in the blazing sun so we went to the snack shack and got some food and hydration while we cooled off. As is typical, the Americans ordered the hefty German sausages while the German ordered a hefty Hamburger. With time ticking, we headed back to the car so we could get home and watch the next set of epic quarter-final games, one with England (my team) and the later game with Brazil (which was being played just a few miles away at the Frankfurt Commerzbank Arena). We still hadn't heard from Daniel and Kelly at this point. He was originally scheduled to arrive at 10:00 in the morning and was going to call us when he got to Milan and let us know what time he would finally arrive. It was now 4:00pm and we still hadn't heard from him....
When we got home, we kicked off our shoes and setup a TV outside to watch the England v.
Portugal quarter-final game. Sven came over and we popped open some fresh beers to get the festivities started. Verena (Alex's girlfriend) also made her appearance as she returned to Germany following a year of studying abroad in Spain. England ended up blowing it and my second team (out four) was now out of the tournament. To make matters worse, they lost on penalty kicks after overtime to Portugal (again!) and two of the three players that were blocked were Liverpool players. Sigh......At around half-time, Daniel called us and gave us the bad news: they wouldn't arrive until 9:30 that night. The Brazil v. France quarter-final game started at 9:00pm and we were planning on being downtown for that. It was a bad situation for everyone because this was Daniel and Kelly's home team and they were going to miss it even though it was right in Frankfurt! We worked out a complex logistical plan that involved driving to a train station, taking a train into Frankfurt, watching half the game, then I would take a train back, drive and pick them up at the airport, drive back to the train station, and take the train with them back into the city center to meet up with the others and party downtown for the rest of the night.
As always, easier said than done. We didn't get to the train station until 8:45 at night (after England was devastated by Portugal and knocked out of the tournament) and by the time
we would get to town I would have to turn around and start back, so I decided to just head straight to the airport and watch some of the game there. As expected, I got lost on the way to the airport, which was when I quickly learned how to operate the Navi system in the car. And it worked brilliantly! It led me back to the Autobahn and I got to let the Benz loose on the empty (since everyone was watching the game) road for a few kilometers, hitting something like 210 KM/hour (131 mph) on the long straight stretch. Woh, what a rush!U
nfortunately, the Navi system couldn't tell me things like which terminal Al Italia flew into, which parking lot to park in, and which gate they would arrive at - maybe I should send them a recommendation to include that in the next version. It would have saved me about an hour of driving around, getting lost, parking, discovering I'm in the wrong terminal, driving out of theparking lot, getting lost, and parking a mile away from where they were actually coming out. So, not only did the Brazilians miss all but ten minutes of the game (by the time they actually landed and went through customs), but I did too! We rushed to the nearest airport bar and followed the last few minutes there. And the world was shocked: Brazil, the clear tournament favorite was defeated by an ageing and lackluster French team. This meant that we would miss something that I had long looked forward to: samba bands everywhere with beautiful, scantily clad ladies dancing, caiparihnas being served, and colorful Brazilian costumes everywhere. Great, that makes three out of my four teams that were out of the tournament then.
Deflated by the defeat, we nonetheless headed downtown to meet up with the others
. By the time we got down there it was already 1:00 in the morning and the downtown area was settling and people were heading off to bed. Alex and the gang arrived with beers in their hand, having clearly celebrated quit a bit while we were gone.We headed over to the famous heart of Frankfurt, the Roemer - which is a nice square
surrounded by beautiful buildings. There was still some celebrating going on there as a samba band banged out hot rhythms and we all saw what the World Cup was all about: a few hundred people around the band dancing and celebrating with France flags and jerseys, England flags, Portuguese flags, German flags, etc.Here was a small nucleus of a post-game party with the world celebrating, regardless of who won the game.
This was a theme that we saw throughout the World Cup and is what makes the event special. Fans from various countries coming together and celebrating with fans from other countries, regardless of whether their team won or lost.We hung out in the Roemer for probably an hour and a half, scarfing down sausages (we hadn't eaten for a while) and chasing it down with lukewarm beer from the only street vendor foolish enough to remain open :o). Tired of the bad beer, a handful of us wen
t deeper into the square to find a restaurant serving something more palletable and appealing and we found a nice, quiet place to sit down and drink a frosty half-liter. I guess we took a bit longer than we thought and by the time we got back to where Alex and the others were, it had probably been a half hour and he was pissed because we had disappeared for so long - and we didn't even bring him a new beer when we came back! Ahhh....Alex's temperment after a long night of drinking, gotta love it!In any case, it was getting really late and people were tired so we headed back into downtown to catch the S-Bahn train back to our rental car. Trains weren't exactly running frequently at this point, so we waited around for our's to arrive. The interesting thing about riding the trains in Frankfurt is that there are no turnstiles or any place to validate that you've bought a ticket, but there are ticket-checkers that will jump on random trains and give you a ticket of a different (and more expensive ;o) kind if you don't have one! As always, we didn't have tickets getting on the train at night. When we stepped in, I noticed that there was a group of guards with the red berets at the front of the train and I told everyone to get off the train. Alex, in his not-sober state, kept walking towards them and ended up staying on the train while we had gotten out. Turns out they were just security guards and weren't checking tickets at all.
No problem, Verena was with us and we'd get on the next train and meet him at the next station. So the next train came and we climbed aboard. Well, apparently this one was mis-labeled and was going a different route and we ended up somewhere off the main route. We got off as soon as we realized it and had to wait for another train to go back to the main route, and then change trains again going to the station we wanted. And this is at like 3:00am when a train comes like every half hour. So Stefan and I stood on the platform while the other three went to use the restrooms. We waited, and waited, and waited and about 20 minutes later we asked some of the security guards about when the next train was coming. They told us we were on the wrong track! We had no idea where the others were (or why it was taking so long), but we ran up to the next track just as a train was pulling in and there are the other three. They hadn't realized that we were on a different platform because they actually went to the correct platform when they came back from the bathroom! Man, that would have been chaos if they'd taken off without us. In any case, I was the one with the car keys :-D!
We got home. Late!
Justinho
P.S. As I stated last night, pictures have been posted!
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