World Cup Impressions vol. 1
So I'm sitting in a hotel room in Hannover, Germany at the moment. It's 1am but I can't sleep even though I haven't had a good night sleep in about 4 days. I've been running around Germany for the past 2 weeks doing some work for FIFA for the World Cup. It's cool and it probably sounds a lot more exciting than it really is. But it's also exhausting.
Here's the breakdown. I'm going to do this in installments for dramatic effect as well as because it's just so long. And I don't like using real people's names so I'll be using names from the Jackson family.
The insanity really got going last week on Thursday when I left Utrecht for Gelsenkirchen. It was my second trip to Germany for the WC2006. But my first one to Cologne was extremely uneventful as I was still feeling things out at the time. But this time was different. I was ready to party this time and had brought along some rather nutty companions. Janet rode with me in the car on the way down. The plan was for me and Janet to meet up with Michael and Tito in Gelsenkirchen the night of the Holland game(friday) drink some beer and talk trash in German. I'm not a particular huge fan of Germany and my German is far from fluent. But I can get by and even have enough skills to talk trash to German girls in their own language. Or I just respond in Dutch after listening to them. They usually just continue talking German to me and I can usually figure out what's going on enough to maintain a semi-broken conversation. To complicate matters I had to work at the Serbia-Montenegro vs. Argentina game. This was in Gelsenkirchen and the same night as the Holland game. It was also the reason why we were in Gelsenkirchen. Because Smutticus had a free hotel room in a country where everything is booked out through July. So Gelsenkirchen it was.
Janet and I arrived in the former coal miners paradise of Gelsenkirchen on Thursday afternoon. I guess some local politicians of this smokestack filled uber-village had changed their dead town from coal mining to football and had done quite well for themselves. Because for a European town, especially one hosting a World Cup game, this town was dead. We managed to find 1 bar downtown that was showing football on TV. 1 freaking pub!!! So Janet and I went into the tourist info center and politely asked "Hey people hosting the largest sporting event in the World. Where can I watch the fucking football?" We were told to go to the fan-fest which was a large open air party located near the stadium with beer and sausages for all. And hey, it's free admission.
The Fan-Fest:
The Gelsenkirchen fan-fest felt like a mixture of a tractor pull and the United Nations. I never knew so many different countries sported the mullet? In addition to the standard Argentinian and Serbian fans there were people from all 32 countries all waving around nationalistic banners. Flags, emblems, mascots and other assorted paraphernalia. This was the place to be in Gelsenkirchen. They had a giant TV where one could watch the games as well as a large stage where they had annoyingly shitty bands play. The worst was a rockabilly 50's surf-coverband with Gorilla masks and elvis suits. Germans are weird about 50's American culture!! Like they either want to relive us whooping their ass or their still waiting for that last check from the Marshall plan. At it's peak I'd say there were maybe 5,000 - 10,000 people at the Gelsenkirchen fan-fest. Not counting the fine folks from the Salvation Army passing out propaganda about God and prostitution. I saved some of it for the comedic value.
So Janet and I settled in and proceeded to get drunk and eat sausages. And there are few things that go better together than German beer and German sausages. Being a non-pork devourer I had to be careful. Because the Germans love the pig. But if people tell me there's no pork I usually just believe them. We had left Utrecht in time to catch the game at 1500 but when we found out the 2 teams playing were Costa Rica and Ecuador, neither or which we really cared about. So we focused more on beer during that match. Then at 1800 England played Trinidad and Tobago and that was a less than memorable match. Or at least I don't remember much of it. Then it was back into town for the last match of the day at 2100, Sweden vs Paraguay. We headed back to the one bar where we had seen the football on earlier and it was empty. What was wrong with this town? There must be at least 300,000 people living in Gelsenkirchen but the one pub showing the World Cup was empty. Weird?! We watched Sweden vs. Paraguay there and then drank some more after that. It was actually rather uneventful except for us getting lost on the way back to the hotel around 2am.
The next few days were anything but uneventful... Tune in tomorrow for the exciting continuation of "Fear and Drinking in Gelsenkirchen..."
Here's the breakdown. I'm going to do this in installments for dramatic effect as well as because it's just so long. And I don't like using real people's names so I'll be using names from the Jackson family.
The insanity really got going last week on Thursday when I left Utrecht for Gelsenkirchen. It was my second trip to Germany for the WC2006. But my first one to Cologne was extremely uneventful as I was still feeling things out at the time. But this time was different. I was ready to party this time and had brought along some rather nutty companions. Janet rode with me in the car on the way down. The plan was for me and Janet to meet up with Michael and Tito in Gelsenkirchen the night of the Holland game(friday) drink some beer and talk trash in German. I'm not a particular huge fan of Germany and my German is far from fluent. But I can get by and even have enough skills to talk trash to German girls in their own language. Or I just respond in Dutch after listening to them. They usually just continue talking German to me and I can usually figure out what's going on enough to maintain a semi-broken conversation. To complicate matters I had to work at the Serbia-Montenegro vs. Argentina game. This was in Gelsenkirchen and the same night as the Holland game. It was also the reason why we were in Gelsenkirchen. Because Smutticus had a free hotel room in a country where everything is booked out through July. So Gelsenkirchen it was.
Janet and I arrived in the former coal miners paradise of Gelsenkirchen on Thursday afternoon. I guess some local politicians of this smokestack filled uber-village had changed their dead town from coal mining to football and had done quite well for themselves. Because for a European town, especially one hosting a World Cup game, this town was dead. We managed to find 1 bar downtown that was showing football on TV. 1 freaking pub!!! So Janet and I went into the tourist info center and politely asked "Hey people hosting the largest sporting event in the World. Where can I watch the fucking football?" We were told to go to the fan-fest which was a large open air party located near the stadium with beer and sausages for all. And hey, it's free admission.
The Fan-Fest:
The Gelsenkirchen fan-fest felt like a mixture of a tractor pull and the United Nations. I never knew so many different countries sported the mullet? In addition to the standard Argentinian and Serbian fans there were people from all 32 countries all waving around nationalistic banners. Flags, emblems, mascots and other assorted paraphernalia. This was the place to be in Gelsenkirchen. They had a giant TV where one could watch the games as well as a large stage where they had annoyingly shitty bands play. The worst was a rockabilly 50's surf-coverband with Gorilla masks and elvis suits. Germans are weird about 50's American culture!! Like they either want to relive us whooping their ass or their still waiting for that last check from the Marshall plan. At it's peak I'd say there were maybe 5,000 - 10,000 people at the Gelsenkirchen fan-fest. Not counting the fine folks from the Salvation Army passing out propaganda about God and prostitution. I saved some of it for the comedic value.
So Janet and I settled in and proceeded to get drunk and eat sausages. And there are few things that go better together than German beer and German sausages. Being a non-pork devourer I had to be careful. Because the Germans love the pig. But if people tell me there's no pork I usually just believe them. We had left Utrecht in time to catch the game at 1500 but when we found out the 2 teams playing were Costa Rica and Ecuador, neither or which we really cared about. So we focused more on beer during that match. Then at 1800 England played Trinidad and Tobago and that was a less than memorable match. Or at least I don't remember much of it. Then it was back into town for the last match of the day at 2100, Sweden vs Paraguay. We headed back to the one bar where we had seen the football on earlier and it was empty. What was wrong with this town? There must be at least 300,000 people living in Gelsenkirchen but the one pub showing the World Cup was empty. Weird?! We watched Sweden vs. Paraguay there and then drank some more after that. It was actually rather uneventful except for us getting lost on the way back to the hotel around 2am.
The next few days were anything but uneventful... Tune in tomorrow for the exciting continuation of "Fear and Drinking in Gelsenkirchen..."