World Cup Road Trip World Cup 2006 – The Road Trip – Barcelona to Berlin

Just seen the Japanese keeper push the ball round the post from the Croat Penalty on the big screen here in the Easy Internet Cafe. Top Save !

Am back in Munich, couldn’t resist the lure of the Brasil v Australia game. Came down on the German ICE train from Stuttgart today, a model of efficiency. The centre is rammed full of yellow, blue green and gold, i thought it would be half aussie, half brasil, but it’s probably two or three to one in favour of the samba crowd. It´s a buzzing atmosphere, just like last week, but still quite diatinct from the one for the German. A samba train danced past me in the main square a couple of times earlier, green and gold moving through the street like a yellow wave.

Will be rootin’ for the Aussies today, don’t hold too much hope of them pulling off the big shock, but it would be amazing if they could. Am off in a moment to the Olympic Park, back on the grassy hill again. Later on wíll catch the last train back to Stuttgart, Spain play there tomorrow.

Yesterday was a football free day ! I headed down from Frankfurt to the Rhine valley, the last 50 kilometres driving through classic vineyard country. This is Riesling country, the classic German Wine Road and the summer festivals were on. Met up with Benny and Vanessa a couple of friends from Barcelona, and a group of German and Aussies for a little bit of hiking before headin down to the winefest. Except it turned out to be quite a long hike, think we clocked around 10km all. Starting out amongst the vineyards, we then climbed slowly up into the hills, cool wooded slopes, with sunlight rippling in and out of the branches. Reaching a high point of around 600 metres we had lunchbreak #1, for me a ‘WurstSalat’ and a Pils, at the restaraunt there. Then back down and up, views of the valley below punctuating the trip. Lunchbreak #2, Bratwurst and Sauerkraut. Finally we rolled down to ‘Hambacher Schloss’, a small castle overlooking the village of Hambach. Big views of the wide Rhein Valley greeted us, green fields and vineyards sprinkled with typical German villages with church spires reaching for the sky.

Then it was down into the village of Hambach for the winefest. The small plaza was decorated with flags and footballs. Green trees and bright flowers adorned the square and a young brass band played a real medley of songs, from traditional German to Abba and Robbie Williams. We were drinking large glasses of Riesling with the other couple of dozen tables around.

The only problem was that the TV was too small so we couldn’t see the Italy v USA game very well. Grabbed a taxi, and headed to the next village round, we’d heard they had a big screen there. And indeed they did, we saw the three red cards really clearly ! By the time we finally headed out around midnight, everyone was a little merry, some seriously more merry than others (eh Benny!).

OK, that’ll have to do now, time to head up to the Olympic Park for the game! Will try and write more tomorrow.