Travel Tips

We hit Nurnberg for the England-Trinidad game. This was my first soccer (football) game I had been to. Upon learning this fact, an incredulous group of Englanders pointed out what a great thing it was that my first soccer game was seeing England play in the World Cup. A woman painted an English flag on my face, they gave me and England hat and flag, and we immediately proceeded to get pissed...

Who would have thought that a) Budweiser would be the official beer of the World Cup, and b) that the Bud Girls would be cheering outside the stadium. Many Budweisers were drank.

With rubber chicken, England flag, England hat, and England face paint, we watched the game.

At the pre-game party in the Nurnberg city center, we met these two young gentlemen who are obviously die-hard Deutschland fans. Mom & Dad brought them out for beer, sausage, and football. Now why didn't my parents ever do that?!

After Nurnberg, we drove our rental van over to Frankfurt... If it seems that my vantage point is rather high, you are correct. I paid 200 euros to scalp a ticket and literally was in the highest, furthest back row possible sitting among 10,000 screaming Portugese. Like I said, a pretty good time.

That's me sporting my Germany shirt. My buddy John had obviously had a few by this point as well.

Much to my amazement, America actually has a professional soccer team that goes to the World Cup. After the Portugal game, we went to the Fan Zone down on the river in downtown Frankfurt...

We proceeded to see Italy thrash the USA like the little football upstarts that we are! I believe the only point USA scored in that game was when the Italians scored against themselves.

In case you have never seen the world's biggest TV in the middle of a river, here you go: the Germans put a giant TV (actually two TV's facing opposite banks of the Rhine) with fan seating and mini-Oktoberfest going on both sides.

It probably does not show well, but the image on the screen is Italy spanking USA like a red-headed stepchild.