37

i’m back. actually, i was back wednesday. got some good sleep after being up for probably 36+ hours. only the occasional nodding off on the flight. thursday was lazy and then, of course, the world cup started having matches again today. i figure at some point, at least for myself, i should post some final thoughts, but i just don’t feel into it right now.

still many questions to sort out about the future. in some ways it’s good to be back, but a bit of a culture shock. more so than going was.

this little experiment is coming to an end on the 28th. i’ll be back in birmingham then. try to contain your joy.

helpful tip of the day: don’t buy or attempt to move transcontinental tickets late. it’s cheaper to buy a one-way than move the return portion. seems a bit insane. also, if you’re going to the world cup, don’t plan to do anything else in europe afterwards (except go to amsterdam if you’ve never been) because you will be a bit deflated after your team loses. well, unless you’re from brazil in which case you probably just shouldn’t come until the round of 16.

whether or not the blog will continue is up in the air since i’m extremely lazy. i suppose i’m going to have to at least bring it all together in one more post after i get back.

i had part of this written and then had to start over because some dumb-fuck at mozilla thinks it’s a good idea to have the backspace key mapped to the back button.  why would anyone ever do this?

i’m flying back to london on the 25th.  even booking the flight late it will probably cost me about the same as the train/ferry/train trip took me getting to frankfurt. i’m going to attempt to try and move my flight up to the 28th, 29th, 2nd or 3rd, non-match days, obviously. so, for good or bad, depending on who you are, i’ll be home about a week earlier than planned.

i had initially planned to go back through amsterdam for a couple of days or so, but i decided not to tease myself.  i’m still planning on going back for an extended stay. i wonder how long they’ll give me a visa for?

damn, 3 posts in one day.  it’s really far too time consuming.  more an issue with uploading the pictures though.

someone’s comparison of differences between germany and the u.s.

a national geographic survey of 18-24 year olds’s geographic literacy. i’m not convinced it’s truely relevant. does it really matter if i know that there was an earthquake in pakistan in 2005? where is sudan on the globe? just to be clear, no, it doesn’t. the percentages weren’t generally that bad. the worst for me was probably the number of people in the u.s. and this poor showing probably lead to the one about what the most spoken language is. i probably only got 15 out of 20 right and i would say i’m reasonably informed. more important statistics would be on how well people can learn on their own when information or skills are needed. most of this crap doesn’t affect someone’s daily life. i also don’t think that it’s really that important for someone to learn a second language just for kicks. it’s probably a bigger deal in europe since every country (pretty much) speaks a different language. if every state in the u.s. spoke a different language that would be comparable. if i moved to a different country, i would learn the native language. i suppose you could argue that spanish is becoming more important in the u.s., but it’s the job of the new “citizen” to learn the local language. so if you moved to miami, you would need to learn spanish. this is way too much rambling for a link.

some group, non al-qaida, busted supposedly plotting to blow up the sears tower (in chicago if you didn’t do so well on that last survey). maybe there’s more info now. an important thing to look for is how much all that crap in the patriot act was used to bust them. my guess is none. from this article, it sounds like it was neighbors reporting suspicous activity.

i also updated the other article related to kangaroo meet, etc. it doesn’t appear to be a legality issue. more of being common or socially accepted. although, apparently for any meat sold in the u.s., it must be farm raised and not wild. the price is apparently a factor for the u.s. as it’s comparable in price to beef where we went here in germany. maybe beef is more expensive here. i expect in the u.s. it may be more an issue of pricing it higher to make it even more exclusive and exotic or a demand issue. here’s an article about its use in trendy restaurants. the unfortunate thing is that kangaroo and emu are low in fat (emu was listed as no cholesterol on the menu where we ate) and maybe that would help all the american fat asses. btw, i’m not sure what the stats are, but the view of what is fat in europe seems to be different (to the heavier side) from that in america. although, i would discount that more americans aren’t truly fatter as a percentage. damn, too much rambling again.

i can’t say i’m surprised by the result. while i was hopeful we would win, my gut feeling was we weren’t going through. the big question was really whether or not the team that lost to the czechs or the team that tied italy was going to show up. we got the former.

the penalty kick was bullshit. however, both of ghana’s goals were a direct result of bad play on our part. why in the hell didn’t bocanegra head the ball safely out of bounds with a couple of minutes of less left in the half? why was reyna messing around in the back with no support? it’s difficult to question starting reyna, but after 2 great matches it’s hard to see how the old man could have any gas left. i think olsen did pretty well after coming in. beasley had his best match of the 3, but that’s not saying much. my choice still would have been convey. donovan was non-existant as in the first match. someone needs to figure out how to flip his switch to the “on” position for matches. if he was playing in a league where you had to perform at your best every week he would learn or be dropped. it doesn’t seem he cares enough to stick with it long enough to learn. however, after being here for a couple of weeks (and granted, limited exposure), i wouldn’t want to stay in germany either. if he’s going to ever progress he has to go to a major league. and no, just because m.l.s. has “major league” in it’s name, it doesn’t count. after his comment post italy about building confidence after taking people on, i don’t think he even tried once against ghana. oddly, i only remember dempsey taking someone on once and not getting down the right wing much. is bruce telling the right midfielder to not do this, as beasley wasn’t doing it either in the first match. i was glad to see dempsey get the goal, but he didn’t seem the same player from the italy match. unlike donovan, he has hope since he actually seems to have the desire to be the best. i hope some premier or championship scouts saw enough to give him a chance.

i would like to see the match again on t.v. to see for sure, but generally, the ref seemed to be crap. i’m not sure the u.s. will ever get any calls going our way as long as the crowd boos every decision the ref makes against us. not that it doesn’t mostly seem warranted. i expect they don’t like it when players complain, imagine 20,000+ booing and chanting bullshit? regardless of what the ref apologist on the local train from the stadium says (he had a georgia soccer referee camp (or something) t-shirt on. not a good sign for objectivity of ref criticism), that was not a penalty and the ref was crap for both teams. according to the apologist, merk (the german ref) is supposedly rated the number one ref in the world. he didn’t say by who. if it’s fifa, it’s probably just as irrelevant as the fifa national team rankings. bad refing can definitely affect a team mentally and especially after coming of the italy match. the u.s. will have to play perfect matches if they ever hope to win the world cup.

i have a few problems with some of the u.s. supporters’ chants. i only heard some of them at the yanks abroad meeting in nuremberg. there’s the normal “team america” cheer of “america….fuck yeah!”. however, there was now the appended, “ghana….fuck you!”. is that really necessary? i did overhear someone saying that it wasn’t really much fun to harass the ghana fans since they were so nice. they did seem to be good fans. i’m not a big fan of their team’s diving and rolling around though. i would also prefer to not have the singing of “god bless america” for the obvious (at least for me) reason. in case it’s not obvious, it’s the presence of the word “god”, “bless” and all the other religious bits. we’re not going to get into it here. i think there were some more, but they escape me now. i would also like to do a political survey on the u.s. supporters. there’s a lot of nationalistic chanting and abundance of flag waving and what not, but what are the real views? while sitting at the yanks abroad thing, i kept wondering whether or not it was just me who felt there were inconsistencies in the words in the chants/songs and my view of the current situation in the u.s.? i’ll have to remember to create a survey for the next national team match.

anyways, nobody wants to read that crap. you would probably prefer pictures.

first off, is there some reason the world cup tickets have to be so fucking big? not only are they huge and won’t fit in a reasonably sized pocket, but they have an rfid chip in the ticket so it says not to bend it. of course, they could at least tell you where the chip is or give a bend point. utterly ridiculous. they must have a friend who makes the ticket holder necklaces (it’s odd that i didn’t know how to spell this word off the top of my head. clearly, neckless was incorrect.).

maybe i should be a hand model?

this is from the yanks abroad party at o’shea’s pub in nuremberg. i’m not really sure that a speedo and flag cape is a good look for anyone.

i didn’t really think about it until i was about to post this, but i don’t think i’ve seen any of the little boy peeing statues since leaving england. maybe i just missed them. at any rate, this would seem better.

i’m sure everyone back in the day thought they were real clever with the boy peeing. that or they were all pedophiles. should george bush getting on that? surely if the naked breasts in the halls of justice are going to be cloaked we can’t have naked boys peeing all over the place. speaking of, isn’t it a little inconsistent to want to hide breasts and be against gay marriage. wouldn’t they want to encourage hetersexuality? anyway.

even with captain america watching over us, we couldn’t pull out a win.

these were our worst seats of the tournament.

before any of this fifa rules for having covered stands crap, they need to have a no fucking track around the pitch rule.

there weren’t any pictures after the match as we busted ass out of there a few minutes early to catch the earliest train back to frankfurt to be able to watch the brazil v japan match.

these last 2 pictures aren’t related to the match itself. this limo was parked outside our hotel when we were leaving. it was behind an open gate (normally closed). the odd thing was, the limo’s there, i’m have a camera pointed at it and this dumbass asks “can i help you?” in that sort of “what the fuck are you doing here?” sort of way. is that necessary? why doesn’t he use half a brain cell and figure it out. painted, unusual limo, camera, uuhhhh? anyways.

this is the hotel “beer garden”. it’s actually decent for watching matches. ignoring that the video quality wasn’t that great, analog. what can you do? it seemed fairly temporary anyway.

oh well, we lost and we’re out. 4 years to go. i’ve seen at least one article that mentioned rumors of 2010 moving to england instead of south africa over worries that the infrastructure there just won’t be up to snuff. germany has set the bar incredibly high. maybe england really only thinks they really have a shot of winning when it’s in their country. my expectations that south africa will go as smoothly is rather low. however, i don’t really know that much about south africa. i’m not sure the u.s. would even work as well due to public transport. however, they fact that it’s cheap relative to europe and huge stadiums is a plus. the europeans would just have to get over having night games so it’s not too hot.
i won’t be sad about leaving here, nor will i probably ever come back. even with great public transport, it just doesn’t do it for me for some reason. maybe it’s just frankfurt. hearing german all the time is really getting on my nerves too. whatever it is that makes it good for listening to rammstein, makes it bad for hearing daily in conversation. dutch didn’t seem to bother me. there was a conversation when i was in amsterdam in which i said i probably couldn’t tell the difference between german and dutch if i wasn’t hearing them at the same time. i definitely could now.