Day 5 - Day of the "J. Riley Moment"

Despite yet another late night of poker action, we were raring to go on Tuesday morning. We had plans, we had missions to accomplish, we had people to meet, and we had shopping to do! You can't fit everything into a day when you don't get out the door until 2:00pm, especially on a nice, hot day like Tuesday. On Sunday, we had heard an unconfirmed rumor that we could actually watch Tuesday's Quarter Final game (Germany vs. Italy) on the video screens at the stadium in Frankfurt. The game was being played a few hours north in Dortmund and we had tossed around the idea of driving three hours up there and going to the FanFest to celebrate after the game. We had no idea where we'd stay, when we'd drive, where'd we go, anything like that, but we really wanted to experience the atmosphere of the game starring the home nation against a top contender. Gott Sei Dank that we didn't!! It would have turned out to be something more like Berlin....but more on that later.

So, it was off to the Stadium we go. One small problem - we actually didn't know where the stadium was. Keep in mind that we were still Navi novices and didn't really know what the system was capable of. I had been to the stadium once before a few years back on bikes and I knew we had left from Sven's house. And I knew that on Saturday we were at the train station which was by Sven's house. Putting these facts together (I'm smart like that), I decided that we should go to the train station using the Navigation system. And it worked brilliantly - it took us right to the train station. Hmm, well that doesn't really help since we still didn't know where to go from there. But we were close! I pulled over and asked some cab drivers if they knew the way for our stadium day (poor rhyme, I know). The spouted out the directions - turn left somewhere, go around a roundabout and go straight, you'll see a sign somewhere, make either a left or right turn, etc. I nodded my head and realized that we'd probably never find it since I only vaguely understood his German - my fault, not his :). But, fearless, we headed off into the sunset (well, not really) trying to find it. Eventually, we started heading into downtown Frankfurt and I knew it wasn't there, so we pulled an illegal U-Turn and headed back into a tangled mess of lanes and Y-intersections into a gas station, since we needed to fill up our thirsty Benz (ouch!). If the cabbies were hard to understand, the gas station attendants were even worse. They said it was a piece of cake from that point and pointed us down the road a bit further.

After some last-minute, illegal lane changes we were rolling down the road and - - the Frankfurt Waldstadion / Commerzbank Arena appeared in our crosshairs. Eureka! Now, where did we need to go to buy tickets. We pulled into the stadium and the volunteers baking in the sun said we had to go across a bridge behind us and there was a ticket booth over there where we could get tickets. Sure thing, we flipped a (legal!) U-turn and headed over the bridge and followed the road through empty parking lots, along the main road, and drove, and drove, and drove until we were heading back into downtown Frankfurt again. This was not working for us! So, we pulled another illegal U-turn and headed back to the stadium, and this time we noticed a ticket booth - but we had just passed it. We went to what looked like a parking lot up the street and pulled in. It looked like there was another ticket booth there, but the parking attendant said that we had to walk way back to the first one that we saw, and so we did. Kelly wasn't feeling well and stayed in the car to sleep a bit more while we mosied down to the first ticket booth and got our tickets and public transportation directions for the evening game. Finally!! It only took us like 3 hours to figure it all out. And yes, we could have bought them at the ticket booth next to the parking lot :-/ ...

Now we were ready to hit the town and go shopping. We made a quick phone call to downtown Frankfurt to get ahold of a cute girl (Martina) that we had met on Sunday who (foolishly) volunteered to be our tour guide for a few hours since I don't really know Frankfurt all that well. We decided that we'd do lunch once we got there, so we bought a group day-metro pass at the closest public transportation spot to the stadium and headed downtown to meet up with her at the Konstablerwache exit on the train.

Once we met up, we ended up going to a little Italian lunch place that makes freshly tossed pastas and pizzas in front of you. Kelly was still not feeling well and we decided to avoid the bratwursts for this meal (and this meal only, pretty much!). After lunch, we meandered down to one of the skyscrapers (Frankfurt being one of the only cities in mainland Europe to have such things) to get a complete 360 degree view of Hessen, the state to which Frankfurt belongs. It was a pretty impressive view, actually.

It was hot out again that day (like pretty much everyday that we were there. One of the things that I got annoyed at was not sweating like a pig, not that the waters were served at room temperature and had a funky taste sometimes, and not that I was bordering on sun strokes 90% of the time. No, I was annoyed because after spending all this time in the sun, my skin still glowed in the dark it was so white. I would occasionally put SPF 15 sunscreen on, but if I used nothing I would be just as white as when I left in the morning...err, afternoon. What's an albino gotta do to get some color?

But I digress. We were hot, so naturally we headed back to the main pedestrian street to get some ice cream from the omnipresent Haagen Daz (however the Dutch spell it) ice cream store. Kelly was getting on Daniel's nerves about having something to drink (just because she's sick and it's 100 degrees outside doesn't mean that you have to complain so much, does it? ;o) We got our ice cream and proceeded to further support the local economy by hitting up some stores to buy some clothing items and trinkets. Adidas did a fine job of supplying us with discounted gear from eliminated teams and Karstadt had some very nice vintage polo soccer shirts that I had to get my hands on. Kelly said that she thought they were something a gay guy would wear and I took that as a compliment on my trend-setting style. Thanks Carson Calandrino ;o) ! I did, however miss out on buying a fine Adidas "deutschland" jacket that Kelly and Daniel both bought. I waited a hair too long and before I knew it (well, really the next day), it was snapped up (Note: I purchased it two weeks later at the Adidas store in NYC). The Puma store, however, left much to be desired and we were thoroughly disappointed with their lack of discounts and their expensive space-age shoes.

But, it was time to go anyway. We'd wasted enough time shopping (for that day) and we had to head off to the Commerzbank Arena for the day's main event: Germany vs. Italy semi-final. We said our good-byes (or, in my case, "see you in New York!") to Martina and trying to be adventurous, I foolishly led us to a different train than we had taken from the stadium. This train dropped us off on the complete opposite side of the stadium as our car was on, so we had to suffer not just a 20 minute walk around the stadium, but also hearing the crowd inside roaring without us, even though the game hadn't started yet. I couldnt' hardly wait to get inside and see what the ruckus was all about and to join in the cheering myself, even if I had no clue what they were saying. Since the game was starting in less than an hour, I was a bit worried about how crowded it would be inside and what kind of seats would be available. It was general seating, so first come first served.

Eventually we made it to the car and dropped off all of our newly acquired football gear and what night and headed back to the stadium. The first order of business was hydration with some beer and provisions of giant German pretzels that were not as fresh as they appeared. I think Stefan had the right idea with cheese lathered thick on a slice of bread, I could practically see the oil from the cheese dripping off of it and nestling itself at home - in arteries. Ahhh...gluttony at its finest.

It was a beautiful sight, walking into the Commerzbank Arena with the crowd roaring and seeing the tens of thousands of fans inside ready for the game. We tried our luck at finding some seats, and there were plenty available still. We found a spot up towards the top of the stadium underneath the giant retractable roof amongst the thousands of throngs of Germans. There was a small patch of Italian fans who were at the game, but they were on the other side of the stadium. We briefly contemplated going to that side, but we decided to do it after halftime instead.

And then there was my moment. One of the more common decorations for fans was taking crayon-like face paint with your country's national colors and painting your face, arms, whatever with it. The girls in front of us took a brief break from blowing cigarette smoke up and into our face to paint each other with the little crayon. They put their tribal marks on their faces, their arms, and then one drew something that went straight up, then across at an angle, and then straight up again on the other girl's back. I thought it was interesting and could have used some more creativity because alone it wasn't enough and besides, I like things to be symmetrical. Tap-tap-tap on her back and I told her that she should draw the other side as well to make the lines symmetrical and kind of like an "X". I was thinking of "Triple X" with Vin Diesel and that cool logo that they had. The girl doing the painting looked at me and said no and then Stefan and Daniel were all over me. I was confused. I had no idea what they were so excited about and laughing at me. Swastika. They thought I was trying to tell the other girl to draw the second half of a swastika! Obviously, that proves to me that people still associate Germans with Nazis, when I clearly don't. As you can see from the picture, drawing the second half of the X would look nothing like a swastika, but I can appreciate their concern for my health and well-being considering there were thousands of Germans around who might have tried to kick my arse if they knew. I guess that when Daniel saw the girl draw the first part on her back, he gasped and was thinking that she was going to draw a swastika and he couldn't believe that I would say something like that. Ooops. Yea, maybe not the best place for me to interject my opinion on body art. Plus, that blew Daniel's chance to try to bum a cigarette from them ;o)

It was a pretty good game and at half-time we switched places so that Stefan, who had stood with his Italia hat off during the Italian national anthem with his mouth shut since he didn't know the words, could be among his nation. We sat next to some cute girls that didn't want to have anything to do with me (the story of my life) and watched as the game went into overtime. Then, two minutes before the end of the game, the Italians drove a stake through the heart of the German nation when they scored. And then scored again. Germany was devastated and the Italians were ecstatic. That was it, and the last team that I had been rooting for was out. I was now a spectator to the World Cup, not a true fan of any team left, which was disappointing but Stefan was insane with joy and showed it by blowing his whistle as loud as he could, possibly piercing my eardrum several times. The Italians celebrated in the stands and came up to Stefan to say things, but he had no idea what they were saying either because his Italian is so rudimentry or because the Italian fans were actually German-Italians. Mostly the former rather than the latter (I can get away with saying this since I know he doesn't read my blog :oP ).

One chant that the Italians started singing was pretty funny. The Germans had been singing about the Italians being pizza delivery boys and after the game the Italians took that and started singing that they would be delivering pizzas to Berlin, since they were going to the finals. Pretty funny stuff.

Once we finally got out of the stadium and found our way to our Benz, we headed downtown to Frankfurt to enjoy the celebrations. There were hundreds of cars in Frankfurt flying around honking their horns with people hanging out of the windows waving their Italy flags. Stefan joined a huge throng of Italians in the middle of the street singing and dancing and shooting fireworks while Daniel, Kelly, and I headed over to a snack shack where I formally introduced them to currywurst, a German delicacy. Well, not so much as a delicacy as a cheap item that is commonly sold at snack shacks on the side of the road as fast food. Essentially, it's a sausage that's covered with ketchup and curry powder. I love that stuff!

After we finally met up with Stefan again, we walked around and eventually found a part of the walking quarters where someone had pulled his lifted Jeep off to park. It was advertised with an Italian restaurant's name and had a huge sound system, smoke machines, and disco lights. They were pumping out Euro dance music with the occassional folksy dego music and the Italians were just dancing and singing. Cars were still driving around honking and at one point a huge group of Italians stopped traffic and we think there was a car stuck in the middle of the group. The police finally intervened and said that the people had to stop jumping on the car and get out of the road. This was seriously the only time on the trip that we had seen the police involved at all, which was pretty nice. They let the fans party as they wanted.

That night we got home excrutiatingly late with Stefan pretty quiet because his voice was torn up - which was pretty nice ;o). Nonetheless, we had poker to play. That night, we played poker until the week hours of the night with a bottle of Rum and Cokes and ended up seeing the sun rising.

Justinho, having connection problems, you'll have to wait for pictures!

Videos:
Cheering at the game I
Cheering at the game II
Cheering at the game III
Cheering at the game IV
Italians cheering at the game
The Italian Jeep Celebration I
The Italian Jeep Celebration II

Day 4 - Drag Racing on the Autobahn

After our poker and Krombacher binge the previous night, we decided that we didn't need any alarm clocks and we could sleep as late as we wanted on Monday morning. On our schedule was a quick day trip down to the beautiful small town of Heidelberg. I had been to this town a few years back with Alex and knew it was a quaint little town full of students with a nice castle up on the hill overlooking the city. But let's not shy away from the truth - this is such a nice little city that it is jam-packed full of Americans (students and otherwise) as well. This little town is so Americanized that they have fireworks on the river for the 4th of July! But we didn't have much else to do that day and my memories were pretty fond of the place.

Before that, we had some errands to run in town, buying some cleaning supplies, milk, and a couple other small items at the local Aldi. We had lots of good stuff to eat, but were missing some of the important things needed to eat breakfast with - we had nutella, but not bread. We had cereal, but no milk. We had a voracious appetite and we had Daniel who kept saying to me "Kelly makes the best toast in the world. I sure would really really like to eat some of that toast right now" . But we had Kelly who kept saying "We don't have the right bread". Daniel kept pleading but in the end he was out of luck. Maybe next time, Daniel ;o).

Speaking of nutella, Stefan and I quickly learned that Kelly has a serious nutella addiction. There wasn't a day that went by without her taking a nice, sizeable spoon and taking out a nice chunk of nutella to eat. She was like a kid with a lolly-pop with her nutella :o). Daniel doesn't even like the stuff, but he says that they go through about one jar of the stuff a week! Other than nutella, her favorite thing to eat was the double-box of discounted no-name Honey Smacks-type cereal. I swear we didn't leave the house without that thing packed somewhere in the car. In fact I think we had to give away a bottle of rum to Alex because we didn't have room for both the cereal and the bottle :o/ . She would eat each puffed rice one by one and at one point asked Daniel if they could buy a few boxes to bring home with them....

This was the first time we got to really utilize the Navigation system and see what it could do. We plugged in Heidelberg, told it to go to the town center, and pressed go. It worked amazingly, with a lovely voice telling me "Rechts, zweihundred meters....jetzt, rechts" whenever it was appropriate. We made pretty good time getting down there around 3:00, just in time for lunch. We still hadn't had a real typical German meal altogether yet, so we set out down the main street in old town and checked out places until we found one with a typical German menu, typical German "bier banken" (benches) outside, and typical German customer service. We sat outside for a good five minutes, all of us starving and parched, before I finally went in to find the waitress sitting at the bar smoking a cigarette and talking to the bar-keeper. Ahh....the life in a non-service oriented country :o) . We finally got our sausage and spaetzle ordered up, along with some beer and a side of potato salad that I had to ask twice for, of course. The food was actually really good, although the beer could have been something a bit more authentic than Lowenbrau. When Daniel ordered his second glass of beer and said "regular" (you know you have to differentiate between the ten different kinds of Lowenbrau they have), the waitress apparently misunderstood him. She brought him his beer and he had a sour look on his face and said it didn't taste right. He had in fact got to experience the popular German drink called "radler", which is actually a mix of beer and Sprite. It's actually a pretty refreshing drink, but not what he was looking for...

The rest of the afternoon was spent waltzing down the street looking for World Cup paraphanelia and trying to keep hydrated in the ninety degree weather. Unfortunately for the rest of us, Stefan found an Italian flag that goes on the window and hangs up above the car. They didn't have Czech flags :o/ . He and Daniel bought some more goodies that afternoon and I'm pretty sure that Stefan alone made a material difference in the German GDP this year with all his shopping for trinkets and souveniers ;o). At the other end of town we climbed up a massive hill to get to the castle that overlooked the city. It's an impressive view of the city from up there, even if we had to burn off sausages and gravy from lunch just to get there!

We took lots of pictures from the castle since it was the best view we'd had yet. At one point, there was a very nice image that I wanted to capture, so I asked a couple from Peru if they would take a group picture. They took a nice picture, but it didn't have the background that I wanted. That's okay, I'd have Kelly take one with me and Daniel. Left....no move a little to the right. No, more to the left. OK, take it. Again, it didn't have the angle that I wanted. Kelly tried about three shots and none of them had the angle. I was cracking up by now because it was a pretty simple picture to take. OK, I let Daniel take it since he knew what I wanted. Or did he? No, he took our picture with a boring wall in the background. I was busting up at how pathetic we were! Finally I got Kelly and Daniel in the pic and took it myself. Here it is, on the right!

We walked around the grounds a bit before heading back into town and back towards the car. At some point, like many other times on the trip, two of us got seperated from the other two. Despite my hard-nosed, annoying insistance that the soccer shop Daniel had gone to was up ahead of us when it was really ten minutes behind us, we eventually found him and Kelly after about a half hour of walking up and down the street. And buying more soccer trinkets!

Once we met up again, we decided to go the other direction in downtown and found ourselves outside a McDonalds, who had decently sanitary facilities for us to use. Being the anti-fast-food goon that I am, I represented it by waiting for the others outside and glaring at people as they walked in and out of the evil empire's flagship Heidelberg franchise. We spotted a very relaxing-looking gravel patio area with lots of people chatting and having cocktails underneath some large, impressive trees and decided that we should check it out and have a bevvy and snack before our excursion ended. Plus, the waitresses were all young and cute and dressed up in white with black bow-ties on, so it was clearly a swanky place. I was personally pretty drained from being in the sun all day and sweating like a pig (speaking of that, do pigs actually sweat?). As the designated pilot for the trip, I needed a pick-me-up before we headed back so I wouldn't fall asleep behind the wheel while on the autobahn.

So we ordered some desserts like Apple Struedel and I got me a nice iced capuccino to wake me up a bit. Daniel told us a story about an email he had written to Alex at some point during the planning stages of the trip (they hadn't met each other yet). He made some comment about how they would eat lots of apple struedel when they got to Germany and Alex made a typical one-line comment about how that was Austrian, not German. It wasn't a snide response, but his writing style could definitely be misconstued as such. No wonder he was worried about how rude the Germans would be on the trip ;o).

Intent on researching how to buy tickets for Tuesday's game that was being showed inside the Frankfurt stadium, we made a pit stop at an internet cafe on the way back to the car and, of course, found absolutely no information on it at all. We'd play it by ear, though, and see what we could find the next day at the stadium.

So it was back to the car in the parking garage. We walk over to the entrance and the driveway exit gate was closed and a sign said something about the hours and how it closed at 6:30. Uhhh...hmm. The garage is closed. The car is in the garage. My mind started racing and I started internally calculating the cost of splitting a hotel room and what the heck I would wear the next day and how much breakfast would be and....oh wait. The entry door was still open. Right. The gate shuts, but opens up when you put your paid parking stub in the machine. I knew that, of course :o| .

The ride home wasn't very interesting, just more of the same, stressful driving on the German autonahn. I swear, people are so stressed out, they'll ride your bumber and wave their hands, yell at you, honk, flash their lights and blinkers, etc. to get you to move over a lane (it's illegal to pass on the right). Apparently they don't see the twenty cars that are in front of me. Take a chill pill man and relax before you have cardiac arrest on the highway. Good lord! In any case, we were driving along and I realized that we had a looooong straightaway that went on for quite a bit and there were very few cars around. The pedal went to the metal, we were gonna see what the Benz could do here. I pushed it and pushed it and it finally got up to about 235 km/h (146mph) before I had to slow down because of traffic. Wow, what a rush! You don't really realize how quick you are going until you see cars that are a tiny dot ahead of you suddenly growing in size a few seconds later. Crazy! So that set a new speed record for us and one that we wouldn't bypass at any point on the trip. We got home at around 11:00pm and had some snacks.

We played poker into the wee hours of the night with Rum and Cokes by our sides the whole time.

Justinho

My pictures are posted and so are Stefan's.

Day 3 - Kahl-Bound

Sunday was going to be what all Sundays should be - a day of rest. In fact, it turns out that this was going to be pretty much our only day of rest on the whole trip! The only thing that we had scheduled for Sunday, in fact, was to move our stuff to our base camp outside of Kahl and then drink fresh Krombachers that we had purchased the day before. Joining us in Kahl would be Alex and some of his friends and his sister Rebecca and some of her friends.

So we got up at around ten o'clock and Alex and Verena had our Euro breakfast ready and waiting for us shortly thereafter. We kind of lounged around for a bit, waiting for some of Alex's friends to come by before we departed from the house. We quickly found out that the decision to upgrade the car to something a bit bigger than a Golf wagon was absolutely critical because we just barely had enough room to fit everyone's luggage in the back of the Benz. It was so tight that we couldn't even fit the sheets, the food, or the beverages that we were bringing in the back of the car.

So the caravan departed for Kahl and Alex, after reviewing what the Navigation system said about the route we should take, said he knew a better way to go that would allow us to stretch the legs on the Benz and see what we could do. I was still getting used to driving (since I don't drive on a regulat basis) and getting used to all the foreign signs, so we didn't do anything too crazy (yet).

The rest of the afternoon was spent lazing around and relaxing. There were quite a few people that showed up, including a large group of flight attendants who were friends of Rebecca's. Daniel and Kelly finally got the chance to sit around and talk to some real Germans and Daniel told me later that day that he was very happy that he got to talk to these people. He had met some Germans that were exchange students in high school and was less than impressed, to say the least. He found them to be very stereotypical, kept to themselves, always serious, never smiling, cold, not polite, not friendly, etc. He even admitted to me that he was worried about the trip because he figured the people would be like that. But now he'd had a chance to spend the day with 15 Germans and he couldn't believe how polite, how friendly, and how open the people were. I think this is a common misconception about the Germans. Like many other cultures, if you visit the country on the personal level, you get a completely different experience than you would if you just came as a tourist. Maybe that is one reason why I like Germany so much, all of my trips have been on a personal level, visiting people that I knew there. I was glad to see that Daniel appreciated this as well and realized that the Germans are very welcoming people who are interested in who you are and what your culture is like!

There was quite an interesting group of people who attended. There was Alex and Verena, more or less our hosts. There was their mega-tatoo'd friends (Steffi and Sven, who had tatoos of cartoon characters all over) and their stoner friend who liked to go out on the lake in the rowboat and smoke joints (he ended up being pretty good at ping pong and beat me easily ;o). Then there was Rebecca and her boyfriend. Then there was their friends, the flight crew composed of girls from Germany (hot!) and Argentina (hot!) and boys from Venezuela and Germany. Daniel had trouble with everyone's name until he met Veronica, which is his sister's name. He said "Finally I met someone who's name I can remember!". Turns out she was from Argentina, so that figures :o).

Part of the afternoon was spent bbqing some of our plethora of meat. Being a complete novice myself, I figured Jan (Becca's manly boyfriend) would be well experienced in the art of the bbq. He let me down. So I turned to our Brazilian churascarria representative Daniel, at who's house I've had several massive bbq meals. Yea, he didn't do so well either. So us three men stood around trying to get this fire going and were totally incompetent. Leave it to Becca to come over and get the fire stoking within a few minutes. Yea, our pride was mildly dented ;o)

In addition to ping-pong, there were many games being played over the course of the day, including water polo / alee-oop on the dock and in the lake, wind-surfing on the lake, and Tip-Kick, a German soccer board game that I was completely unsuccessful at. The Germans had experience in that game and beat everyone else. There was also a few rounds of football juggling with your feet. I represented America well by keeping the ball up like a total of three times and my final kick of the afternoon hit the end of my big toe and snapped a nice chunk of my toenail back, leaving it dangling, bleeding, and hurting like a beyatch! That's what I call coordination! It didn't really bother me for the rest of the trip after I cleaned it out by swimming in the cess-pool-like lake. Speaking of the lake, there were several eye-witnesses that saw "Jaws" struggling to survive in the lake - a ginormous fish that was flopping around the surface not far from our little dock. Yes, this was the water that I chose to clean my wound with. And, yes, the thing freaked me out when I could see it splashing from the porch. I was hoping it wouldn't pick up the scent of my bloody toe when I was swimming around...

Eventually, all of the guests had to depart for home. Apparently there's something called "w-o-r-k" and "s-c-h-o-o-l" that people had to attend the next day while we planned the next week out. Sven told us about a public viewing of the semi-final game on the giant monitors at the Frankfurt Commerzbank Arena stadium that we could check out on Tuesday and that plan was immediately ratified and added to our itinerary along with a day trip to Heidelberg the following day. We decided we would shop and go to the Frankfurt Fan Zone (the public area to watch the game) on Wednesday for the second semi-final before heading to Bamberg to meet up with Alex and Verena again on Thursday. And the idea of a massive road trip to Berlin for the Final, which I had discarded as an unrealistic goal prior to the trip, was slowly culminating into a feasible idea in our heads....

Sometime later in the day, the rack of Krombachers was delved into and out came a few beers for Daniel, Stefan, and I. And a few more. And a few more. Over the course of the evening, the whole case of 24 0.5 liter bottles were consumed, though I suspect our guests had probably had a few as well. We used this liquid fuel to ignite a night of cooking (pasta with garlic, onion, and tomato sauce), a night of discussions, and a night of poker.



We played poker into the wee hours of the night with Krombachers by our sides the whole time.

Justinho

Day 2 - A Day of Rental Cars and Infamy

We got a solid nine hours of pilsener-induced sleep on Friday night, the perfect amount for ensuring that we wouldn't suffer any jet-lag for the rest of the trip. As always, we were beckoned downstairs by Alex's parents for a typical morning breakfast - fresh breads, various sharp and mild cheeses, kochkaese, quark, butter, jelly, melon, schinken (prosciutto), coffee, juices, etc. You know, a typical breakfast similar to what I wake up to and eat here in NYC.
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!

Unfortunately, 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 the
parking 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 went 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!

Day 1 - Wilkommen Zum Fussball!

From Pele's lips to the world's ears! After getting a comfortable 3 hours of so of sleep on the flight, I arrived in Zurich at around 7:00am local time. I had a nice little five hour layover in the country of watches and chocolate and did plenty of meandering through the duty-free designer and watch stores, only to remind myself that I couldn't, or wouldn't, afford any of the items. Unless there was something I really wanted....but there wasn't. I was tired and annoyed that I could be in Germany but instead was stuck in Zurich. I gorged on some pastries and a sandwhich that was painful to eat because my teeth were still sore and, for the first time in a while, drank a cappucino. Not surprisingly, I was awake after that and unable to sleep despite listening to my sleepy-time mix on the hurting iPod. I think I brushed my teeth about three times, washed my face twice, and bought some rum at the duty-free. Other than that, I was just wasting my time away.

Enough about that. I arrived in Germany and, with the coffee worn off, was feeling a bit sluggish. But as soon as I walked through the exit gates and saw Stefan and Alex waiting for me, as was intricately planned, I got a burst of energy that carried me through the night. This was the moment who's brainchild was launched almost four years ago and was what I'd planned for for over a year, and it was finally here!

We rushed out to our waiting ride with Alex's dad and headed off to Dreiech to Alex's parent's house. Minutes into the car ride, our orders were taken on how hungry we were and how many weisswursts we would eat. Weisswurst is the breakfast sausage of choice for Bavarians, which they wash down with a nice half-liter of hefe-weizen beer. Alex's mom had some damn-tasty weisswursts ready for us when we walked through the door. And the mustard? Ahh, it felt good to be home :o) ! Following regional traditions, we obliged ourselves to drink a hefe-weizen as well.

After lunch, we quickly unpacked and donned our soccer gear in preparation for the Argentina vs. Germany game. I was wearing my newly acquired Germany soccer jersey and Stefan was in his "tricolor" Azzurri Italy jersey for the Italy vs. Ukraine game that followed the initial game. But everyone knew that would be a blowout and wasn't too interested in it. The viewing destination for the Germany game was to be at the local Dreieich Rathouse (city hall) with Alex's friends and a few hundred other locals. We were rushed down there by car and secured some seats with some of my old Germany buddies like Sven, Steffi, Daniel, Alex (she was looking good!), Katherine, and we ran into some other familiar faces like Jonas (my parent's exchange student) and his sisters Sarah and Janina.

I was totally pumped for the game and was high on football euphoria and soaked up the environment. Quality beers were purchased and drinken by everyone there and we watched as Argentina took the lead in the tense game. In the 80th, the crowd was jumping and screaming as Germany's lead striker tied the game up and sent the game into overtime. Thirty minutes later, they won the game when their goalkeeper blocked a penalty kick and the crowd went ballistic. THIS is what I came here for!!

After the game, we loitered around the Burgerhaus, played some kicker with some of the kids who were mimicking their favorite stars with the ball on a grassy patch before we headed back home. Famished and delirious from the excitement of the game, we put in our orders for a doener with Alex, who rode his bike down and picked up some of the Turkish specialty dish (aka shawarma or gyro) from the local Imbiss. We scarfed those down like we hadn't eaten for a week and, like always, it hit the spot. The Italy game started and we watched it with mild interest as Italy decimated Ukraine, as expected.

We went back to the Burgerhaus to watch some more of the Italy game with the few Italian fans in the area before we departed for a house-party at Irene's house. Irene was a friend of Alex's girlfriends who I'd met a few years previous in Portugal when she met up with us with her boyfriend. The weather was fantastic and the outdoor party was pretty mellow with some beers and some new people to meet. At some point, probably around midnight, we decided that the day had been long enough and we wandered back to Alex's house and crashed hard and heavy.

Justinho, I've found the best way to beat eastward jet-lag is to stay up as late as possible the first night. It worked!

[Edit] Pictures are now available to the general public at http://justin.sixpak.org/pictures/06-World%20Cup/index.html

Day 0.5 - Liftoff

Sometimes I wonder. At some point during the week, I decided, for the hell of it, to actually open my paper ticket and take a look at it. I already knew I was departing at 10:30pm on Thursday night but I was so amped up, I wanted to see what it felt like to hold that ticket and hand it to the flight-check-in clerk. Sure enough, my timing was wrong - as usual. 5:30 departure time. Scheisse. That means that I have to leave work early. And this happened to be the day that my boss said I have to actually start earning my money and work a "professional workday", i.e. 10 hours. [Side note: 10 hours is professional? Grrr....the Euros have got the right idea, how about quality of life? I could digress, but I won't].

To make matters worse, this screwed up my whole plan as far as sleep is concerned. I prefer 10:00pm flight because I buy a mini bottle of wine preceding the flight and sip-sip-sip-sleep. But 5:30? Hells no would I be able to sleep at that time. And I needed ENERGY because kickoff for the Argentina-Germany Quarter-Final was just three hours after we arrived! We're talking about one of THE games of the tournament - a heavy favorite to win the World Cup vs. the Host Country! In lieu of this situation, I had to improvise. It just so happens that I'd been building up the trip by listening to a daily soccer radio show based in LA from a couple of Brits and they started the show every day with a Come On England song (to the tune of Come on Eileen, that great 80's song). I HAD to have that song. For some reason, it didn't occur to me that I should download it illegally like I do with everything else. I actually went to iTunes and purchased it! I was so pumped up listening to this song that I knew I'd have plenty of energy when I touched down in deutschland with the song blasting through my tired iPod.

I also improved the sleeping odds by procrastinating all week on cleaning my apartment and packing until about 9:00pm on Wednesday night. Packing took about 10 minutes to accomplish [Soccer shirts: check. Camera: check. Shorts: check. Glossy white Pumas: check. Extra memory card for said camera: oops.] . Cleaning my apartment took a few hours (I even cleaned my sink in the bathroom) and I got to bed at 1:00am, giving me little time to sleep that night, but ensuring moodiness at work and unconsciousness on the plane...

Justinho, I was incredibly unproductive during my half-day of work prior to my flight. As an aside, the Czechs were already eliminated by this time and their jersey stayed home with all my cotton t-shirts :-/ .

Vacation Blog Time!

I'm back from Germany and the World Cup! You know what that means....you better set aside a few hours each day to read my infamous vacation stories. I am still recovering, so have patience...

Justinho, I'm tired just thinking about how much I have to write...

The Fifth Sense

I'll be brief - I taste dead people.

This is a huge week for Justinho the J. Riley:

1.) Earlier this week I finally got to talk to HR at my client about becoming a full-time corporate, job-hating, cubicle-residing employee of a monolithic, greedy, global company. Exciting, I know!!! Of utmost importance was the fact that they are offering me twice as much vacation as my current employer. I got no problems selling my soul for that. Time to start scheduling 2007's worlwide trips...

2.) Tomorrow I am departing on 2006's climactic worldwide trip to Germany for the World Cup. I am so psyched!
a.) I downloaded England's World Cup anthem "Come on England" (to the tune of that eighties tune "Come on Irene" or whatever it is) and was bouncing off of the wall and memorizing the words tonight so I can sing it in our Passat on the autobahn to the disgust of everyone else in the car.
b.) Vas, in his tireless endeavor to wreak havoc on our travel plans, finally found a cheap way to get to Germany a weak late that requires me to leave two parties and drive three hours to Munich to pick his ass up. I was annoyed that better options weren't available, especially since no one could seem to tell us where he was going to be dropped off by the bus. Once we figured that out, I was okay and am looking forward to repaying my bottomless debt of being picked up and driven around Eastern Europe last summer. Not to mention other Eastern European eye-candy that Vas payed for last year ;o)
c.) Brazil will be playing their quarter-final match on Saturday, a day after I get to Germany, in Frankfurt, which is where we are staying for the first weekend. This means mad parties in town with my Brazilian friends, who arrive earlier in the day. And they are playing France, so it will be a rematch of the 98 World Cup final!
d.) The epic game of the tournament so far will happen five hours after I touch down in Germany with tournament-favourites Argentina playing the host Germany. Yowser, that's going to be a hot one!
e.) etc.

3.) Oh yea, about that fifth sense: I got my arch expander off today! My mouth is a little sore right now, but I amazed at how cavernous my mouth is and how non-intrusive these braces really are. My ultra-sensitive palette tickles every time I touch it with my tongue, but it was loving life when I got home and treated it to a pack of Newman's Own Peanut Butter Cups (like Reeses) and a big, 0.5 liter Bitburger Pils, followed by an over-spiced pasta dinner. Oh man, I can't wait to eat in Europa!

J. Riley, it's 9:00pm, I better clean up my apartment, start packing, do my dishes, and fold my laundry

Jersey (Thump Thump) Respect

Last night, for the first time in my life, I found some serious respect for Jersey. No, it's not the tax-free shopping, no it's not the plethora of Olive Gardens available to choose from, and no it's not the Costco sangria mix. Melissa had phase one of her birthday celebrations over in Hoboken, the notorious area with a plethora of fresh out of college "kids" (said in a very snooty tone of voice ;o). The last thing I want to do on a Wednesday night is go to Hoboken for an event that doesn't even start until 9:00pm. But this event sounded somewhat interesting: a public, open-air showing of the movie "Crash", which I really liked. The New York area has all sorts of fun summer activities like this but I rarely have anyone to attend them with so I haven't gone to any yet in the last three years.

I was amazed when I arrived at the movie showing location. I had no idea that the PATH train drops you off so close to the water. And I had no idea that there were parks all along the Hudson river, directly across from Manhattan. On a warm summer night, you can imagine watching the light fade and an unobstructed view of the city in all of it's glory lighting up at dusk and continuing into the night. It was crystal clear out and was an amazing backdrop to a gigantic movie screen and several thousand people watching the show. Next time I'm bringing my camera. I gotta hand it to them - that idea was right on the money! Respect...

In exactly seven days, I will be boarding a jet plane to Euroland once again. The World Cup beckons! I've recently been promoted at work from windowless consultant room to "give him a cube because he's gonna get hired eventually" and along with such stature comes a laptop. I will definitely be lugging that thing with me on this vacation to commensurate J. Riley's infamous "vacation blogging". Clear off your calendars on July 11th ;o)

Justinho, my high-tech torture device known as a pallete or arch expander is coming out in T-minus-six-days

Football - What Else?

As the first round (group stages) of the World Cup comes to a close, I am almost
worn out from watching hours upon hours of football. There have been three games
a day for the past week and a half and the middle game conveniently starts at
noon EST, just in time for lunch! The industrial area where I work conveniently
has an Irish pub down the street that normally serves the construction workers
their two-to-three-Budweisers-per-lunch meals but has been transformed into a
local soccer-fan mecca during the 'Copa do Mundial'. Suffice to say that I am
tired of eating pub grub and have been surprisingly motivated to cook vast
quantities of food at night so that I can have leftovers the following day for
lunch.

Justinho, my apartment's cleanliness is suffering as a result of the 'Mondial'