Just found out I got a ticket for Czech vs. Italy. I’m excited, it’ll be a great game, but a little sad not to see the US game live. Watch for me, I’ll be in the US jersey with the US towel. btw, I may not be saying much about beer, I’m way behind on writing so it’s just World Cup adventures so far. oboy, what an awesome game this will be!

The fellow from Ghana summed it up painfully sweet: “I can’t root for the US, you don’t have any songs!” So our merry band of wanderers did what we could with what we had. Three letters and a movie. For the most part we spent the day shouting U-S-A U-S-A over the roar of ee-tahl-ya ee-tahl-ya until our throats were hoarse, moistened only by sweet German lager. Then we realized that We have a fight song.

Today you should look forward to some of the best and most importand matches of first-round group play. The games are the third round of Group E, which some have dubbed this year’s group of death. Others have debated it, but now I think the debaters have shut up because it is pretty clear. Czech beat US. US tied Italy. Italy beat Ghana. Ghana beat Czech. For standings, Italy has four, Czech and Ghana have three, and the US has one.

13 June 06. Impatiently she shakes her head. Why haven’t they helped her yet, she has children! Not with her…but she does. Continuously shaking or grunting, she stalks the window. To my left security guards chuckle. She stands up, steps, glares, and sits again to shake her head more. Still shaking, the window clears, she is there before the numbers change. Friendly as can be, smiling, talking about her four kids under two.

I slept the entire drive from Hamburg to Hannover and woke still tired. I’d just arrived in Germany that morning due to the passport mayhem I’ll fill you in on later. Jetlag was definitely impacting me but I’m a trooper! We parked maybe a kilometer from the stadium and wald to the Fan Fest, these town square setups in each city with a huge screen, beer (cheaper than water or soda), and food.

At this time I will attempt to put fotos on the interweb. Update: looks like I need to do a bit of cropping…you can see the whole picture by viewing it in a new window in the meantime. Of course, I’m on a German Mac right now, so who knows what y’all back home are seeing. (more) sorry, I’m going to need help to figure out the annoying kodak foto editor in German, so y’all will have to deal with odd views of the pics unless you view the whole thing (I’m seeing just the far left edge of the pics here).

well holy crap I’m on day four of my beer drinking world cup tour, and having an awesome time! I’ve seen Mexico tie Angola (wished for a goal to hear the stadium explode there were so many Mexican fans) live, stood 20 americans yelling over 10,000 italians in Cologne watching the USA outplay Italy with a man down at the Fan Fest drinking copious beer making day-long friends for life I’ll never see again, hung out with some true old friends, driven the autobahn, and travelled to three great cities…Hannover, Cologne, and Hamburg.

I am super-excited, leaving for Germany tomorrow morning. I probably won’t post many pics while I’m there because I won’t have the camera dongle, but maybe my german buddy will throw me a bone on that. I’m seeing two games, Mexico vs. Angola and Ukraine vs. Saudi Arabia. Oh boy, I’m really gonna miss my lady and pup and folks back home, but I don’t think I’ll have too much time to pine away on it.

well holy crap I’ve been lazy about posting latetly. Plenty of beer drining has been going on, I just finished up one of my big projects for the year: the Moist Tournament. Anyway, it was an awesome friggin time, and don’t get me wrong, I don’t run the tourney. We just put three teams into it and a lot of blood, beer-laden sweat, and tears. That was over memorial day. There should be some excellent pictures coming out of it.