09 June - The First Match
After getting to our apartment (GPS is the sh**!) at 9PM the previous night, we got ourselves settled and went to bed. We awoke at 6 AM the next morning rearin' to go. OK, not so much rearin' but at least leaning towards the door. We stopped at the McDonald's on the way out of town. Destination Munich!
When we were about 30KM outside of Munich, we picked a random exit to see if we could find a small hotel. There was no reason to fight the traffic, the cost and the people to find a hotel in Munich. We got SO lucky. We found a great B&B right away. I think Rocco has already posted some pictures about it. The only bad thing is that we were on the third floor. Not bad for us but bad for the other guests. I hope we didn't wake too many guests as we tromped up the steps at midnight. It probably sounded like a herd of elephants was staying there.
Munich, which is in Bavaria, is about 400km south of Weimar and it took us about 4 hours to drive there. Since we got there about noon and the match didn't start until 6 PM, we had some time to kill. How much trouble can two Yanks find in 6 hours? OK, none THIS TIME! We did a little reconnaisance of the stadium area instead. The traffic and people were already crazy. Here are a couple of pictures. You could just see the people pouring off of the train station.
We started towards downtown to see what there was to see. This is a beautiful tree lined street that (a major thoroughfare in Munich).
We found a department store where we were able to pick-up some supplies. I'd forgotten about pay toilets. I'm glad that Rocco talked me into using the toilette in the store. I was also glad that I had stolen a kids lunch money the day before otherwise I would have been sitting cross-legged through the entire match. It was going to be a long day and even longer if I had to use the toilette at the stadium.
Once we had found some lunch, we went back to the stadium. We were meeting some good friends who Rocco has explained earlier. In the meantime, we had plenty of freetime to people watch.
This gentleman is dressed in traditional Bavarian garb called lederhosen which means leather pants. I figured he was going to be part of the opening ceremony. Those cool shoes would NOT be comfortable to stand in for long.
Here is a picture of me in front of the stadium. It is quite impressive and it was built about 1 year ago in preparation for World Cup. When one of the local teams, Bayern-Munchen, plays there, the stadium is lighted blue. When the other local team plays, it is lighted red. I like to make sure that I am in landscape shots as much as possible. That way you know we didn't just steal our pictures from other saps web-site. I didn't notice until just now that I am wearing the traditional Bavarion colors of white and blue. Well, the white legs are kind of permanent but the shirt is less so.
The pitch was covered in some green plastic. There were bags or something hanging from wires stretched across the opening of the stadium. I figured they were confetti and the green plastic was to catch the pieces for easy clean-up. Boy was I wrong.
Right behind our seats in the stadium was the VIP of VIP's box. During the opening ceremony, many of the men from previous German World Cup teams came out onto the field. During the entire match, the people around us were keeping an eye on the box and taking pictures of German football heroes.
Here is a shot of the stadium from the inside. Most impressive.
We were sitting in a section of Germany fans which was really cool. It just added that much more excitement to the match.
The opening ceremony started at 4PM. It was quite impressive. It focused on Bavarian culture like lederhosen, that cool slap dancing that Chevy Chase made so famous (thanks Chevy!).
The set became more and more elaborate as the ceremony progressed. The hay bales had people in them so the scene switched from a classic Bavarian farm scene ...
to a German rap scene. The dancers in the blue jump suits were AWESOME! They spun around while doing a handstand. It's hard to explain but awesome to watch.
Then the mystery of the bags hanging from the ceiling was resolved. OK, that isn't quite right. The women who were HANGING from the HARNESSES were not bags. That would just be rude. I was most impressed with how long they endured just hanging from the rafters as the remainder of the ceremony progressed.
As you can see (or maybe not) at the end of the ceremony, they had each competing nation's flag on the pitch. It was awesome.
Before hand, they had also put large, plastic flags on everyon's seat. It is so unbelievable awesome to see 65,000 people waving flags which make a picture of a red ribbon on a blue field surrounding the stadium.
Here is another impressive thing. This is the Costa Rica fan section. ALL of them wore red. You couldn't miss them.
Here are the players as they played the national anthem of Germany and Costa Rica. Sitting in a Germany section is awesome when the national anthem is being played. I wish people sang with so much enthusiasm at home when our anthem is played.
The match was very exciting. So much so, that we forgot to take a couple of "action" shots. Germany won 2-1 against Costa Rica.
After the match, we met with our friends again. We drove them to the suburb where they were staying that night and they treated us to dinner. It was a delicious meal. We all had Schweinebacken. It has the texture of prime rib but it is pork. Along one edge of the meat is the skin baked to a crisp. VERY delicious. We also had a potato ball. It was like taking potatoes, cooking them, adding something to make them kind of make little, little balls and then sticking all of the little balls back together into one baseball sized ball. I had such an urge to throw it but I've heard that is bad manners. I just ate it.
One more little anecdote. Make sure you determine how the headlights work on your car before driving in the dark. As we were driving back to the B&B, I was complaining to Rocco that I couldn't drive too fast otherwise I was going to overdrive the headlights. The next I determined that I had only been driving with the running or fog lights. What I thought were the brights were the normal headlights, just those halogen ones that look a lot brighter than they really are. Lesson duly noted.
This was one AWESOME day never to be copied.
When we were about 30KM outside of Munich, we picked a random exit to see if we could find a small hotel. There was no reason to fight the traffic, the cost and the people to find a hotel in Munich. We got SO lucky. We found a great B&B right away. I think Rocco has already posted some pictures about it. The only bad thing is that we were on the third floor. Not bad for us but bad for the other guests. I hope we didn't wake too many guests as we tromped up the steps at midnight. It probably sounded like a herd of elephants was staying there.
Munich, which is in Bavaria, is about 400km south of Weimar and it took us about 4 hours to drive there. Since we got there about noon and the match didn't start until 6 PM, we had some time to kill. How much trouble can two Yanks find in 6 hours? OK, none THIS TIME! We did a little reconnaisance of the stadium area instead. The traffic and people were already crazy. Here are a couple of pictures. You could just see the people pouring off of the train station.
We started towards downtown to see what there was to see. This is a beautiful tree lined street that (a major thoroughfare in Munich).
We found a department store where we were able to pick-up some supplies. I'd forgotten about pay toilets. I'm glad that Rocco talked me into using the toilette in the store. I was also glad that I had stolen a kids lunch money the day before otherwise I would have been sitting cross-legged through the entire match. It was going to be a long day and even longer if I had to use the toilette at the stadium.
Once we had found some lunch, we went back to the stadium. We were meeting some good friends who Rocco has explained earlier. In the meantime, we had plenty of freetime to people watch.
This gentleman is dressed in traditional Bavarian garb called lederhosen which means leather pants. I figured he was going to be part of the opening ceremony. Those cool shoes would NOT be comfortable to stand in for long.
Here is a picture of me in front of the stadium. It is quite impressive and it was built about 1 year ago in preparation for World Cup. When one of the local teams, Bayern-Munchen, plays there, the stadium is lighted blue. When the other local team plays, it is lighted red. I like to make sure that I am in landscape shots as much as possible. That way you know we didn't just steal our pictures from other saps web-site. I didn't notice until just now that I am wearing the traditional Bavarion colors of white and blue. Well, the white legs are kind of permanent but the shirt is less so.
The pitch was covered in some green plastic. There were bags or something hanging from wires stretched across the opening of the stadium. I figured they were confetti and the green plastic was to catch the pieces for easy clean-up. Boy was I wrong.
Right behind our seats in the stadium was the VIP of VIP's box. During the opening ceremony, many of the men from previous German World Cup teams came out onto the field. During the entire match, the people around us were keeping an eye on the box and taking pictures of German football heroes.
Here is a shot of the stadium from the inside. Most impressive.
We were sitting in a section of Germany fans which was really cool. It just added that much more excitement to the match.
The opening ceremony started at 4PM. It was quite impressive. It focused on Bavarian culture like lederhosen, that cool slap dancing that Chevy Chase made so famous (thanks Chevy!).
The set became more and more elaborate as the ceremony progressed. The hay bales had people in them so the scene switched from a classic Bavarian farm scene ...
to a German rap scene. The dancers in the blue jump suits were AWESOME! They spun around while doing a handstand. It's hard to explain but awesome to watch.
Then the mystery of the bags hanging from the ceiling was resolved. OK, that isn't quite right. The women who were HANGING from the HARNESSES were not bags. That would just be rude. I was most impressed with how long they endured just hanging from the rafters as the remainder of the ceremony progressed.
As you can see (or maybe not) at the end of the ceremony, they had each competing nation's flag on the pitch. It was awesome.
Before hand, they had also put large, plastic flags on everyon's seat. It is so unbelievable awesome to see 65,000 people waving flags which make a picture of a red ribbon on a blue field surrounding the stadium.
Here is another impressive thing. This is the Costa Rica fan section. ALL of them wore red. You couldn't miss them.
Here are the players as they played the national anthem of Germany and Costa Rica. Sitting in a Germany section is awesome when the national anthem is being played. I wish people sang with so much enthusiasm at home when our anthem is played.
The match was very exciting. So much so, that we forgot to take a couple of "action" shots. Germany won 2-1 against Costa Rica.
After the match, we met with our friends again. We drove them to the suburb where they were staying that night and they treated us to dinner. It was a delicious meal. We all had Schweinebacken. It has the texture of prime rib but it is pork. Along one edge of the meat is the skin baked to a crisp. VERY delicious. We also had a potato ball. It was like taking potatoes, cooking them, adding something to make them kind of make little, little balls and then sticking all of the little balls back together into one baseball sized ball. I had such an urge to throw it but I've heard that is bad manners. I just ate it.
One more little anecdote. Make sure you determine how the headlights work on your car before driving in the dark. As we were driving back to the B&B, I was complaining to Rocco that I couldn't drive too fast otherwise I was going to overdrive the headlights. The next I determined that I had only been driving with the running or fog lights. What I thought were the brights were the normal headlights, just those halogen ones that look a lot brighter than they really are. Lesson duly noted.
This was one AWESOME day never to be copied.
posted by jprg4evr at 5:14 PM
7 Comments:
I think your pix are a little underexposed.
I was going to say overexposed, because they tended to blend directly into the light colored background.
Today's word-verification brought to you by some new internet porn site: ebuts.
On a completely other note: There is no such word as "towards"
Towards is a word...it means thataway!
This is zacchaeus! I hear you boys are telling stories about me over there and you better just wait until I get ahold of you!!You two crazies are living the true American dream in soccer haven. have fun but be careful!We'll see just how much trouble 4 people can get into in a couple of weeks. :)
Dr. DR ain't no grammar MD.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/towards
The word verifcation word now is much like the sound of Dannette hitting me the next time she sees me: sramakk!
(please don't take it out on my sister!)
The pictures were a little overexposed because Blogger just sat there like a stubborn child and wouldn't take the pictures. I'll have to try again when I get back to the apartment tonight.
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