37

for the second day matches, we went down to the fan fest in frankfurt to watch the matches. the fan fests are setup in at least every host city. i’m not sure if anything happened in other cities. generally, it’s very impressive. i have no idea how this compares to anything that occurred in 2002, but i would be surprised if it was to this level. it easily makes it worthwhile to come just to the fan fests without any match tickets as each has huge high definition, i assume, screens showing all the matches as well as other events and a lot of food and beer. think of it as a music festival with football instead of bands. i think there may be some bands or something later in the evening as i believe they supposedly keep going until 2 in the morning. maybe we’ll hang out longer tonight after the brazil match.

anyway, here’s some pictures from frankfurt.

general skyline. you can see the top of the screens in the middle of the river as well as the ferris wheel. i wonder how much the banners with ballack, kaka and messi cost?

sub-optimal viewing of england v paraguay was on the smaller screen since the 2 sides of the big screens in the river were full.

we did watch trinidad v sweden and argentina v ivory coast on the river screen. the side we were on had, i think, 4 sets of bleachers. you can also see the large number of people on the far bank watching the screen on the opposite side.

i’m not sure what the estimates are for the number of people at the fan fests, but it was a lot. cut off numbers for closing areas would also be good to know. the guy next to during argentina v ivory coast was from somewhere about 100km from frankfurt and had come specifically to the fan fest. i’m not sure i would say he was annoyed, but at least disappointed that someone coming from alabama was able to get tickets for 4 matches and he apparently was unable to get any. there seems to be general disappointment with germans who were not able to get tickets.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 13th, 2006 at 11:07 and is filed under eurotrip-2006, football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.