Germany Erupts

So Thomas and I had all intentions of hitting up the Fan Park at the Olympic Stadium in Munich where the first match of the World Cup, Germany versus Costa Rica, was being shown. But as I was waiting for Thomas at Odeonsplatz to get on the very well packed subway to make our way to the park, an announcement in German and English came over the PA system telling everyone that it was "futile" to try to get into the Fan Park - its doors had been closed on account of an over capacity crowd. I just loved that they used the word, "futile."

So Thomas and I had to scramble; the match was about to start. I remembered from earlier in the week that the Biergarten in the Englischer Garten was showing the matches so we headed over...all decent vantage points were already taken and people were actually climbing trees to get a better look. So we continued further into the Englischer Garten where I remembered there was another Biergarten on a pond. This time we had better luck. The pic below doesn't do our "seats" much justice, but we were actually able to see very well:

Germany ended up winning 4-2, blah blah blah, Frings scored probably what will be the goal of the tournament, blah blah blah, and the media had volumes to write about...Klinsi is da shiz, there's still a hole in the defense, and good old Oli Kahn wouldn't have let the 2 go in. The Biergarten crowd quickly thinned out after the match and we easily made our way up front for the Poland/Ecuador match:

Ecuador spanked Poland - the Poles will definitely finish last in their group.

On our way back to the apartment, Munich had really taken on New Year's Eve type atmosphere, still celebrating the dominant German play from earlier in the day. Here's me and Thomas at a cafe thinking about (maybe wishing - we're not the biggest fans of the German squad) how different the atmosphere would have been had the German squad lost:

...blogger is having some problems with image uploads so I'll have to give this another go sometime later.

Also, made it up to Duesseldorf today, no problems. More to come. Go Yanks!!!!!