18 JUN - The French kick ... (Day 11)

Here is the interesting thing about construction in Germany. The lanes are TINY!! For a two lane Interstate, there is a huge shoulder. They shutdown the innermost lane and they use the shoulder to replace the closed lane. Needless to say, the shoulder is not that wide. In addition, the right line is bigger than the left for trucks. That means that the left is just BARELY wide enough for our SUV therefore I don't drive over there. No matter how slow the trucks are going, I'm driving behind the trucks. Here is a photo that Rocco took. He awoke thinking that I had somehow managed to drive on the wrong side of the road. I was able to correct the situtation rather quickly.




After driving from Weimar to Kaiserslautern and then back, today's trip is easy. Leipzig is only about 1.5 hours north-east of Weimar so we were able to drive there and back in the same day. This is the last time we will be able to do this for about a week.

We had some fun as we were driving this morning. We noticed a nice, red BMW Z4 (very sporty) with a guy driving and a female passenger. What one really noticed though was the bright pink bag lashed to the trunk of the car. We were quite certain that such a display was NOT the idea of the driver. Have you heard of SMART cars? They are about the tiniest cars you've ever seen; built for two passengers, some luggage and an engine, nothing else. As we were driving through Leipzig, we saw a SMART car dealer but they had a SMART car vending machine. I'm not kidding! It was a small, glass enclosed structure about 4 stories high and on each story were 2 SMART cars. It seemed as if a customer just inserted their credit card and hit the "DISPENSE" button to get a car. What happens if you want the one on the third floor? Do you have to buy all of the cars below it?

In almost every town (I would guess), there is a FanFest where a large TV has been setup and the people can watch the football matches. In the cities where the World Cup is taking place, the FanFests are huge. Leipzig had 2. These places fill-up fast too. We tried to get into the one in Kaiserslautern the other day but it was already full at 4PM. You can see in this photo taken at about 2PM in Leipzig that it was already starting to fill-up.




We got to Leipzig way early so we had some time to kill. In the Leipzig FanFest, MasterCard had a huge tent with foosball tables. It was also a good place to get out of the sun. Here is a picture of Rocco taking down a kid in foosball.





We were in town to see France play South Korea. These guys were DEFINITELY here to see France play.



Leipzig also has one of the largest (if not THE largest) train station in Europe. The place is HUGE. There is a 2 story mall inside it is so big. The mall had a Pizza Hut so before we headed out to the game, Rocco and I had some pizza. The crust was the same but the toppings are a little different here in Germany. You can get tuna and corn on your pizza. How does that sound? I think Rocco wasn't up for eating typical German cuisine so we relaxed in Pizza Hut.






Here is a picture of my dogs in the Leipzig train station ready to go see some football!



I kind of felt sorry for this cab driver. He had like 6 France fans on his bike. The stadium was about 3km away so I hope he didn't have to pedal the whole way.



We have noticed several of these garden vacation places as we have been travelling. They are little, one room shacks among all of these gardens. This is a vacation for some people. Anyone who has seen my yard in the summer (maybe not this summer) would know that I really don't pay attention to the yard.



Getting to the Leipzig pitch was one of the most trying today. First off, there was no planned parking. We found out too late that people were expected to park in the city center and then take the tram to the stadium. Well, of course, we tried to drive to parking at the stadium. We ended up parking near a park about 2km from the stadium.





Once we got to the stadium though, we had to climb the Zugspitze (highest mountain in Germany) just to get into the place. We barely made it to our seats on time and we had AWESOME seats. We were about 30 rows up behind the goal. We were sitting right next to the France fan section which is always fun and it is apparent in the photos. The French fans are the ones in blue. The chanted "Alle le Bleux" a lot. It means (I think) "long live the blues" since they call their team "The Blues" due to their blue shorts.



You can see hear the South Korean section and boy can those guys cheer. It was a solid wall of sound and we were on the opposite side of the stadium. They sang all kinds of songs. I'm not sure there is anything more impressive than 5 - 6,000 people singing or yelling in unison.



I'll say this about the game to start; I didn't even notice when the match had ended. We were under the big TV so we couldn't see the time remaining in the game. All of the sudden all of the players stopped moving. I asked Rocco if I had missed something and he said the game was over. I was so engrossed that I had no concept of time.




I was also amazed at the passing and ball handling skills of the French. They used touch passes and let-throughs like it was nothing. Here is a picture of Rocco's favorite player, Thierry Henry, calling for the ball. Rocco was elated because he got to see a Thierry Henry goal right in front of us. In case you did watch the game, yes, France was hosed by the "saved" goal. The ball was definitely in the net.



The drive home wasn't terribly exciting. I did have some awesome music to help keep me awake though. Seriously, how can one NOT chair dance when you hear "The Never Ending Story" on the radio? You never hear that song at home on the radio. Another thing that kept me awake was thinking about some signs on the entrance to the highway. These signs say "Gute Fahrt" or phonetically "goo-tuh fart". That's just funny.

Well, I hope you enjoyed today's ramblings.

Knuckles