Jul 2006

No travel. No games. Nothing that has to be done. We enjoy Konstanz and our familiar stomping grounds.
With just 4 matches left, the cup draws to an end. Just 4 teams left: Germany, Italy, France and Portugal.
But today is a relaxation day. We just sleep in, do some laundry and stroll around Konstanz. It’s another lovely day here. We managed to get out in afternoon and see more of the town. With some arm twisting (yeah, right , we manage to get Phil and Kate to stop at our local microbrew, the Joh. Albrecht. It is actually one of the few (non-American) “chains” here in Germany, but serves a very nice beer called the Kupfer.
I have tons of pictures of our local Munster, but none so interesting as Kate posing for Phil’s artistic shots. I’ve only been inside the large church a few times before, but there were several old sections that were never opened before, so that was nice to see. We hit the Indian imbiss for lunch for a nice meal. We had walked to Switzerland, because we can, and to try to get their passports stamped, but that didn’t work out (they said they weren’t doing that today – or anymore?).
Some more arm twisting and we stopped at the “Red Rooster” for a quick beer. It is one of the few places that serves a variety of different beer brands inside of just types. A funny thing happened while we were there, it turns out the couple sitting behind Phil and Kate just moved here (like a day or two ago) from Australia. We exchanged info and hope to meet them again. We had a nice dinner at our favorite Turkish restaurant.

Gwen and I travel to Konstanz while Ivan and Dean stay in Cologne for the next two rest days. Phil and Kate travel from Berlin to see our fair town. It’s a long day of travel for both of us, but it will be very nice for them to see our lovely town. It will also be the catch up day for this blog. Internet access has been more painful that anticipated – sorry for the trailing entries…
Phil and Kate had a long day of travel to get here, but that didn’t stop Phil from a quick trip into the Rhein river (a block from our place). We headed to the beer garden down by the lake (boat docks) and chilled there for a bit. The lake and the river looked very nice, it was lovely with tons of people sun bathing everywhere.
On the walk back, we went to our favorite Greek restaurant. We sat upstairs, outdoors since the restaurant sits right on the river. We had the festival meal for 3, which was plenty for the four of us. It was a nice, relaxed setting and a really nice evening.

Ivan, Dean, Gwen and I travel to Gelsenkirchen for the next day of quarter finals. It was only an hour away by train, but really crowded - not sure that this was what Ivan had pictured as 1st class travel However, Gelsenkirchen was trying to vie with Kaiserslautern as the worst venue. That is, it took us over an hour to get to the stadium once we reached the city. We were packed in herds waiting for trains, but no order to their stop on the platform or such. But since we had allowed for getting there over 2 hours before the game, we were still okay, just no time for food.
The England fans were as obnoxious as ever for the pre-game. However, during the match they raised their offensiveness to a new level – no wonder everybody hates the Brits (sorry to my friends back home). The “funniest” of their screaming was that Portugal was a bunch of cheating “diving” bastards (that deserved to die). But as soon as England got in the box, the calls were for their players to take a dive! The game was pretty evenly matched – neither team playing very well, but both have a few odd chances.
After losing Rooney to a questionable red card, the England squad seemed unaffected, to their credit. Without 3 of their starters, Portugal could do little to mount a real attack, even in the extra time. You might think that Portugal would lose on PKs when you know that they missed 2 of them, but the Portugal keeper guessed the right way on every kick and stopped 3 of England’s poor shots.
The group had enough of the armpit to armpit travel, so we passed on the wonderful 302 and walked the 3-4 miles to the fan fest. We made it in time for the start of the Brasil/France game. The fan fest was mostly empty – presumably the bulk of the English fans when home pouting. Brasil was on their heals the hold time, while France outplayed them the whole game. France had looked quite bad in the first round, but has really come on in the playoffs. Brasil played a new, weird line up (similar to the weirdness that Argentina had done). The Argentina coach had already resigned for his poor decisions; we expect Brasil’s tomorrow. Ivan joked that instead of buying referees like some (nameless Italians), the other Europeans bought the opposing coaches But Brasil just got it handed to them, no question – France continued to have their number.
So, like the announcer rubbed it in, the World cup is over, on with the rest of the European cup.

Finally, the restart of the games! And what better way to start than Germany/Argentina. It is quite possible that the winner of this game will be the winner of the cup. We figured that the Fan Fest would be packed support Germany, so we planned to get there early. We had thought of going to another Museum today, but overslept.
Our group here was divided as far as which team to support. Of course, I had grown to like the German team, but Argentina was my pick for winning long ago.
The fan fest was packed – three hours early – and it was hot. Germans were all terribly sad on the first goal by Argentina, but the Argentineans made the mistake of trying to sit back (and poor substitutes) and the mighty German team came back to tie. The goals by both teams were very good and the teams were pretty evenly matched. After the overtime, Germany was much better from the spot. And the German keeper guessed the right direction each time – stopping 2 and winning the game. The place went crazy! And the Germans were mostly nice, but very excited (some of the German youths weren’t so nice went we were leaving the fan fest, but 12 and beer probably isn’t Germany’s best idea).
Italy played a good match and with all the luck going their way, won easily. This time they needed no help from the refs, just a couple of crossbars and the post. Italy verses Germany should be a good game, we look forward to going to the game.

Okay, day two without any soccer, I guess the weaning process has to start because the whole thing will be over in a couple of weeks. We slept in and missed breakfast this morning, so we grabbed something to eat and headed to the Chocolate Museum. It was just a short walk along the river to reach. It was a very interesting presentation regarding the history of the Cocoa bean and development of modern day Chocolate. They also had a live production line and a chocolate foundation – with free samples of course. Of course, the gift shop there was the best I’ve ever visited
When strolling the city, we came upon a guy that was using chalk to draw a picture of a face on the main square in front of the Dom. When we came back by later, he had completed his portrait of Mozart. Cologne is full of street “performers”, but this was something to see. It was really well done.
These houses sit near the river and were very near our hotel. We heard that the blue house on the left was the only one that survived the bombings from the war. The entire river is lined with restaurants with outdoor tables and outside TV screens.
Later on, we enjoyed some very good Chinese food and just relaxed more that afternoon. We got together for a late night Italian dinner (disappointing) and called it an early evening – Dean has to travel to Berlin tomorrow to meet up with Phil and Kate for the first Quarter Finals game.

Wow. Three weeks in, and a real day off. That is, the first day without any soccer games at all. What would we do? All the catch-up activities – rest, sleep, laundry, etc. We strolled around Cologne a bit sight-seeing – the Dom, the shopping district. But this day was really about relaxing.
We strolled aimlessly through the town and stumbled into a perfume shop. Never really though of “cologne” being from Cologne, but I guess I can be a bit slow sometimes. We didn’t really care much for the scent, but could resist a picture with their cute little car outside.
We went inside the Dom because Gwen hadn’t seen it yet. The back part behind the altar was open (wasn’t before) and it was quite interesting. There were these fabulous mosaics on the floor. They covered the wide halls with a great deal of fine detail. It was difficult to capture with my camera, and all of the visitors. Here’s the pictures, but I doubt it does it justice.
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We met for a very nice dinner at an Argentinean Steakhouse. It was a very nice dinner and we enjoyed it quite a bit. It was nice to just visit and enjoy a good meal. Afterwards, we visited a few local pubs and hangouts to finish out the evening/morning.

Phil and Kate are off to Berlin and the rest of us to Cologne for the final day of the second round. We stayed right near the fan fest again in Cologne. We weren’t sure how popular the Fan Fests would be in a town where all their games were over. But about an hour before the start of games, there were long lines to get in. By the time the Brazil/Ghana game had started, the place was packed. Of course, most were pulling for Brazil but Ghana had some supporters as well. Ghana showed up for the game and played well, they were unlucky not to get a goal while they were outplaying Brazil.
Between the games, we met some German guys from the local area and had a few beers with them. They also explained why their local beer was served in small glasses – it has to be consumed within 10-15 minutes or it loses it’s favor. They were very warm and friendly guys; it was a pleasure to hang out with them.
The second game was Spain/France. The game was fairly flat. As Ivan kept on saying, the Spain team was very young and might have trouble with an experienced team. At the very end, France’s experience came through and they showed up at the end of the game – really for the first time in any of their games.