Day 9 - Wir Fahren Nach Berlin!

As our week progressed, our time was becoming more and more occupied with traveling. Thursday we drove to Bamberg (2.5 hours), Friday we drove to Munich and back (5 hours), and now Saturday was upon us. We had tossed around the idea of going to Stuttgart (about 3 hours) to watch the Third/Fourth Place game between Portugal and host Germany, but clearly a better option was to go to Berlin (four hours away) for the final, which took place Sunday. Alex and Stefan took the initiative to find a place for us to sleep on Saturday night while the rest of us were driving to Munich, booking a couple of rooms at a legitimate youth hostel just outside of Berlin in Potsdam for $25 a night. I thought for sure we’d have a harder time finding a place to stay than we did, but I’m not complaining!

So, we were grudgingly up and at it at 9:30am on Saturday morning with a busy day in mind. All of the traveling (especially since I was always driving) was starting to really take it’s toll on me, so I was pissed that I had to take the shower first that morning. But I did get the extra five minutes of sleep the day before, so I really had no case to make with Stefan that morning ;o). We threw our clothes together in our suitcases and rushed down to get our free breakfast and I admired and watched the cute hotel worker clean the dining room while we were waiting for Alex and Verena to come by again so that we could go explore some more of Bamberg.

We all piled into the Benz after they arrived and headed to the outskirts of town to check out a mansion of palatial size that we had seen in some postcards the day before. It had the rows of trees leading up to it, the Married-With-Children style fountain in the bike, and a beautiful hilltop view over the surrounding lakes and fields. How nice of the Catholic Church to build an estate like this for the local Bishop!

It was several hundred years old and was now an artifact of the old era, so I decided to take a tour of the inside, which required a tour guide. After I purchased my ticket, everyone else said they didn’t want to see the inside, so they all stayed outside while Kelly (the Brazilian who speaks no German and little English) and I took the tour, which was in German that I hardly understood. Kelly evidently got bored quick and started wandering around the inside by herself and started taking pictures of the intricately designed ceilings in one of the rooms. After the group went into the room she was in, we found out that we head to wear some felt-bottom shoes to protect the floors and no flash photography was allowed, so Kelly was pretty embarrassed about that.

After the tour, we met back up with the others and got a nice, cold drink down at the café before heading back downtown for lunch before our departure. There was a street festival of some sort taking place, so we figured we’d get a nice outdoor table and enjoy the weather, but it was packed at the time and when we ran into Soenke, there was nowhere close to eat. We ended up at another place and got the next best thing to outdoor seating – a classy table in the non-smoking area of a sweltering, humid greenhouse, right next to some chain-smoking high schoolers. Yuck! The Olive Garden-esque plastic menus threw up a red-flag for me, but I figured it wouldn’t be too bad since there were no Olive Gardens in Germany. I couldn’t complain too much about the jaeger-schnitzel that I ordered, but the food was just kind of bland and boring, which reaffirmed the fact that my menu-presentation foodar was still working :o) .

The fact that we had to suffer from second-hand smoke turned out to be a blessing because halfway through our meal, the heavens opened up and it started down pouring outside. What happened to the great weather that we’d had the whole week? Damn you Germany! Just when I thought that for once the weather would be kind to me, we get stuck downtown and have to walk home in the rain again! Well, it didn’t turn out to be too bad, really. The sun came out pretty soon after we left and started baking us again on our walk back to the hotel, which was fine by me.

The time had come for us to say goodbye to our wonderful escorts Alex and Verena and hit the road for our four-hour trip to Berlin. After three or four reorganizations of the trunk of our wagon, we finally fit our entire luggage and piled all five of us into the car. Despite the mental drain that I was suffering from the week, I was pumped to go and took the keys to get my driver’s seat. Besides the excitement of going to the final, it was also crucial not to get stuck in the back seat since space was tight with three 6’ tall people among the crowd.

As was the custom by this point, we decided to try to find the World Cup stadium in the former East Germany city of Leipzig, which we had to drive through about two hours into the trip. This time both the signs and the Navi let us down and we never did find it (it was a small one, from what I hear). But, despite insisting previously that he was disgusted by their food (except their breakfast), Roland quickly got a radar lock on McDonald’s and nominated their parking lot as a place to stop :o). It seems like every trip I take outside of the country ends up in a McDonald’s parking lot at one time or another, which is pretty sad. Trying to avoid any mutinous uprisings from the back seat, I conceded defeat and I pulled up so that everyone could stretch, use the bathrooms, eat their hamburgers, and drink their milkshakes. There were several people wearing German jerseys inside and I thought about asking them where the stadium was, but I decided on the lady with the euro-spiky silver hair behind the counter instead and she didn’t know where it was, so I gave up. We had to get to Berlin soon, anyway, since the Germany/Portugal game would be starting in a few hours and we wanted to watch it in Berlin.

I was exhausted at this point from driving and handed the keys over to the deputy driver Daniel and I squeezed into the back next to Stefan to get some shut-eye. I felt like I was on a plane, it was such a tight fit. With the Navi set, the iPod on, and my neck pillow inflated, I dozed off quickly while the others watched a movie on Stefan’s laptop. I woke up a few hours later as we were circling the block looking for our Youth Hostel. We found it quick enough and it even had a parking lot for us to park in! We checked in, unpacked, and then headed down the street to try to find somewhere to watch the Germany/Portugal game since it had started shortly after we arrived. Potsdam was a pretty sleep city at this time and the bar around the corner was full of people, so we headed across to the local Döner restaurant, which actually had a big screen TV setup and cold beers that they brought to our table. The game was pretty exciting for a normally lull toilet round and I was happy that Germany won so that they could leave the World Cup on a positive note and hold their heads up.

After walking down to the street in a vain attempt to find an interesting lounge or something, we headed back to the hostel to get our last poker game in – with real money. We were all dead tired and I got taken to town on a big hand that cleaned me out, making me the big loser on the night. Rather than cashing it in and heading up the ladder into my bunk, I stayed up for a while with the boyz and was designated dealer for a while until Roland got knocked out and got to take over designated dealer activities. I decided to hit the hay at the point because I knew that Sunday would be epic and Stefan and I had a loooong day/night watching the game and then making the six+-hour drive back to Frankfurt afterwards to catch our flights home.

They played poker into the wee hours of the night, but no liquid fuel was necessary.

Justinho, "Wir Fahren Nach Berlin" means "We're driving all the way to Berlin", which was a common chant for the German fans since that's where the final was going to take place. Until they lost.