It’s three hours to the opening of the World Cup and I’ve got my flag hung.
While walking Charlie this afternoon, I only saw one other flag and it was for — hold on, I need to look up the flags of the teams in the WC — Angola. Wow.
Rainer’s on his way to Würzburg to watch the game with Tobias. He was in Regensburg this afternoon and wouldn’t be able to make it back to Potsdam for the game, so I have to watch by myself. Poor me. Who will I root for, Germany or Costa Rico? Hmmm….
Charlie has World Cup fever. He’s been running around with his football (soccer ball, that is) and being generally hyperactive. Is he picking up subconscious signals from me, or is it just a weird coincidence… OR does he KNOW that it’s the World Cup?
You’re supposed to hang your flag from your balcony or the bottom of your window, but I don’t have a balcony and it would be on the ground if I hung it out the bottom of the window (as you can clearly see), so I improvised. I hope the USA makes it out of group play.
I was just thinking while walking Charlie, that Regensburg is an hour from Munich, so I could have gone with Rainer to Regensburg, then we could have gone to Munich to watch the opening game at the Munich Fan Fest. Oh well, too late now.
Weird, some kids just ran passed the window hitting each other with weeds and yelling about how something tastes like dead grandma (“Es schmeckt wie tote Oma”).
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Well in a week or so, you’ll get a letter from me asking about the World Cup. (Actually in specific, I was talking about how over the weekend, concerns about racism was prevalent on ESPN and I was wondering if it was getting press over there as well).
Try to act surprised when the letter arrives….
There is a lot of worry about social problems cropping up during the World Cup. In regards to racism, the government gave out a list telling non-white people where not to go. Not that they think something would happen to you in these places, just that if it did, no one would help you.
Another big issue is dealing with hooligans. German police have asked the English fans to please not sing WWII songs and make Nazi salutes at the German fans. The British police took the passports away from a lot of the known hooligans so they couldn’t travel to Germany. There is also worry about the rising prevalence of eastern European hooligans, so the borders with Poland and the Czech Republic are being controlled more.
Heh. The reports here didn’t find it necessary to mention the usage of Nazi salutes towards Germans!
Though now that you mention it, I can certainly see that happening. A few years ago, I met a couple of Germans in a local bar. They said, even 50 years after the fact, they still got a lot of crap about WWII. They said they found the Australians to be the worst– the least forgiving of the bunch. A sample size of just two, but interesting none the less.
Our news reports focused on the monkey chants targetting the African players. They had some good interviews including Marc Zoro and Thierry Henry.