This is just a quick post to let you know I haven't forgotten about the blog. This past Monday our friends from Arkansas, Kimber & Josh, got into town and it's been non-stop, every day touring. We've been through Stuttgart, Berlin, Tübingen, and Lichtenstein. Today we're heading down to Zürich, Switzerland, and tomorrow we head to Berchtesgaden and Salzburg.
I'll have a detailed report once they head back home!
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Women's World Cup
The day after we got back from London we had tickets to go see the Women's World Cup game, New Zealand Vs. Mexico, with our friend Christian. We've met up with Christian and his girlfriend, Sabrina, a few times. Shanna works with Christian, and they are both really nice people. They are German, and Sabrina isn't entirely comfortable speaking English, so it's nice to practice with her. She practices her English and we practice our German. Neither Shanna nor I are into soccer, but we both wanted to see a game live since we live here now and soccer is so huge in Europe.
That day, while Shanna was at work, I ran around getting things ready. I went to the Commissary to get sandwiches for the three of us, as well as ice & drinks for the cooler. You can't have a proper Soccer experience with out doing some tailgating first. :) That afternoon I picked both of them up from work and we hit the road. Sinsheim is only about an hour away, but we were worried about what traffic might be like. Thankfully there was none, so we got there around 4:45, and the game started at 6:15, so we had time to eat our dinner and tailgate a little.
When it got closer to kickoff time, we started to walk to the Arena. We weren't sure what to expect in terms of fan turn out since neither team playing is European, but there were a TON of Mexico fans there.
Rhein-Neckar Arena is relatively new, having been built in 2009. Since it was so new, we were surprised about how small it was. We're used to American Football stadiums, where they typically hold between 70,000 - 90,000 people. This stadium held a max of 25,000 people. The nice part of that was there weren't really any bad seats. We got the cheap 30 Euro seats and had a great view. When we got up to the stadium, Christian had to pick up his tickets from the Will Call booth, so I took the time to snap a few pictures of the Arena.
I was a little disappointed with our seats. From the diagram where I picked our seats, it made it look like we were picking the two seats closest to the aisle. In reality, the section we were in merged with the section next to us, so instead of being on the end, we were in the middle, seatwise. It ended up not being too big a deal, though, since there was plenty of leg room. Before the game started Christian, who was sitting behind us, took a picture.
The game was a lot of fun. I've tried watching it on TV, but unless I have a vested interest in a team (like we did with the US during the World Cup last year and the Women's World Cup this year), I just can't get into it. While I don't have any vested interested in Mexico or New Zealand, that rule doesn't really apply when you go to a live game. I can get into any sport when you're in a crowd that's going nuts. Based on people dressed up, it looked like there were more people supporting Mexico. Mexico was the favored team and scored the first goal fast, less then 2 minutes into the game. They scored again right before half time and it looked like it was going to be a 2-0 blowout.
The second half was a completely different game. New Zealand's defense showed up, but their offense was still sputtering. With 10 minutes left in regulation, it was still 2-0 and people started leaving the stadium. This game is the reason you NEVER leave before the game ends when a comeback is realistic. With less then a minute left in regulation, New Zealand scored. For those not familiar with Soccer rules, when regulation ends, they add "extra" time. The clock never stops, so when there are penalties or other reasons that would stop a clock in other games, they take note of the length of time, and add it to the end. So now New Zealand is down 2-1, and they add 2 minutes of extra time on. With less then 10 seconds left in extra time, New Zealand scores and ties it up. That's how the game ended, in a tie. Normally a tie wouldn't be that interesting, but the fact that they scored all their points to tie it with less then 3 minutes left in the game made it interesting. We found out later that Mexico had to win to advance to the quarter finals round...if they lost or tied, they were out, so with this being a tie, they were going home.
With how excited the New Zealand team & fans were, you'd think they'd won the World Cup. They were only playing for pride at this point, having lost all their previous games. After the game was over, as we were filing out, the New Zealand team ran around the stadium waving to everyone, and the New Zealand fans in the crowd went nuts, waving their flag & cheering.
Overall it was a lot fun. I wish we could have gotten tickets to Germany or the US, but it was still a lot of fun.
We didn't take enough pictures to warrant a full picture page, so click any pictures above to see a higher resolution version. The next post probably won't be until early August. There's not much planned until the last week in July when two of our friends, Kimber & Josh, are coming to visit and staying until early August.
That day, while Shanna was at work, I ran around getting things ready. I went to the Commissary to get sandwiches for the three of us, as well as ice & drinks for the cooler. You can't have a proper Soccer experience with out doing some tailgating first. :) That afternoon I picked both of them up from work and we hit the road. Sinsheim is only about an hour away, but we were worried about what traffic might be like. Thankfully there was none, so we got there around 4:45, and the game started at 6:15, so we had time to eat our dinner and tailgate a little.
When it got closer to kickoff time, we started to walk to the Arena. We weren't sure what to expect in terms of fan turn out since neither team playing is European, but there were a TON of Mexico fans there.
Rhein-Neckar Arena is relatively new, having been built in 2009. Since it was so new, we were surprised about how small it was. We're used to American Football stadiums, where they typically hold between 70,000 - 90,000 people. This stadium held a max of 25,000 people. The nice part of that was there weren't really any bad seats. We got the cheap 30 Euro seats and had a great view. When we got up to the stadium, Christian had to pick up his tickets from the Will Call booth, so I took the time to snap a few pictures of the Arena.
I was a little disappointed with our seats. From the diagram where I picked our seats, it made it look like we were picking the two seats closest to the aisle. In reality, the section we were in merged with the section next to us, so instead of being on the end, we were in the middle, seatwise. It ended up not being too big a deal, though, since there was plenty of leg room. Before the game started Christian, who was sitting behind us, took a picture.
The game was a lot of fun. I've tried watching it on TV, but unless I have a vested interest in a team (like we did with the US during the World Cup last year and the Women's World Cup this year), I just can't get into it. While I don't have any vested interested in Mexico or New Zealand, that rule doesn't really apply when you go to a live game. I can get into any sport when you're in a crowd that's going nuts. Based on people dressed up, it looked like there were more people supporting Mexico. Mexico was the favored team and scored the first goal fast, less then 2 minutes into the game. They scored again right before half time and it looked like it was going to be a 2-0 blowout.
The second half was a completely different game. New Zealand's defense showed up, but their offense was still sputtering. With 10 minutes left in regulation, it was still 2-0 and people started leaving the stadium. This game is the reason you NEVER leave before the game ends when a comeback is realistic. With less then a minute left in regulation, New Zealand scored. For those not familiar with Soccer rules, when regulation ends, they add "extra" time. The clock never stops, so when there are penalties or other reasons that would stop a clock in other games, they take note of the length of time, and add it to the end. So now New Zealand is down 2-1, and they add 2 minutes of extra time on. With less then 10 seconds left in extra time, New Zealand scores and ties it up. That's how the game ended, in a tie. Normally a tie wouldn't be that interesting, but the fact that they scored all their points to tie it with less then 3 minutes left in the game made it interesting. We found out later that Mexico had to win to advance to the quarter finals round...if they lost or tied, they were out, so with this being a tie, they were going home.
With how excited the New Zealand team & fans were, you'd think they'd won the World Cup. They were only playing for pride at this point, having lost all their previous games. After the game was over, as we were filing out, the New Zealand team ran around the stadium waving to everyone, and the New Zealand fans in the crowd went nuts, waving their flag & cheering.
Overall it was a lot fun. I wish we could have gotten tickets to Germany or the US, but it was still a lot of fun.
We didn't take enough pictures to warrant a full picture page, so click any pictures above to see a higher resolution version. The next post probably won't be until early August. There's not much planned until the last week in July when two of our friends, Kimber & Josh, are coming to visit and staying until early August.
London
I can't believe I completely forgot about posting about London! Sorry for the delay. :) For July 4th weekend, Shanna & I did something called a "blind booking" with German Wings, a local airline. You pick a group of cities, and you don't know where you're going until you finalize the booking. The major reason we did it was because the fares are dirt cheap...60 Euros for a round trip ticket. Our friends Adam & Penny also booked with us.
The flights were cheap for a reason, we flew out Friday evening at 7:30pm and were flying home at 8am on Monday. But with how expensive London is, plus the exchange rate which is even worse then the dollar to Euro rate, we were ok with only spending 2 full days there.
On Friday afternoon I dropped the dogs off, and when Shanna came home from work, we took the train to the airport and met up with Adam & Penny. The flight was smooth, and at 8pm local time we touched down in London. The first thing I noticed when we got off the plane was how nice it was to see everything in English. The money was also a bit confusing. The bills were easy enough to figure out, but the coins didn't make sense. The Euro coins are easy, the smallest coin is the penny, and the size increases as the value increases, with the biggest coin being the 2 Euro coin. With the British coins, the size had nothing to do with the value. The 1 pound coin was a fraction of the size of the 50 and 10 cent pieces. Needless to say we paid with bills whenever possible and ended up with a ton of coins at the end of the weekend. After going through Customs, we hopped on a train into London. We eventually got to Liverpool Street Station, which is a major hub in London's public transportation.
We eventually made it to our hotel, but it had been a long day, especially for Shanna since she had worked that day. We crashed as soon as we checked in, around 11pm.
The next day we arranged to meet up with Adam & Penny at our first stop, the British Museum. The outside architecture of the museum was just as impressive as it's contents inside.
Inside they had treasures from civilizations long gone, as well as from relatively modern history. The biggest draw had to be the Rosetta Stone, the tablet that broke the code of the Egyptian Hieroglyphs.
They also had artifacts from the Parthenon, Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, etc... One piece that I found fascinating was the Chronometer from the HMS Beagle, the ship Darwin sailed on when exploring the Galapagos Islands.
We had arranged to meet up for lunch around noon after we had explored the museum, and headed to a Victorian pub I'd read about called the Princess Louise. The inside of it was beautiful, by far one of the nicest pubs I've ever been in.
At 2pm we met up with a tour group I'd found that was guided by a person (instead of an audio guide) and it ran for 2 hours, showing some of the best sights of London. We started off walking to the Tower of London as he gave us the history of it. Next we headed to a dock on the Thames where we hopped on a boat that would take us to Westminster. While we waited for the boat to arrive our guide pointed out the HMS Belfast docked across the river. It's now a museum, and is noted for the fact that it was the first ship to fire on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.
On the river we saw Tower Bridge, went under London Bridge, and saw the famous London Eye, the huge Ferris wheel that gives you a great view of the city. Eventually we got to Westminster and docked next to Parliament and Big Ben.
After disembarking we continued our tour at Westminster Abbey. On the entrance they had carvings of "heroes", and the only non-British person on there is Martin Luther King, Jr. Next we headed to Queen Anne Street, one of the oldest in London. Of course, the house on the street that got everyone's attention was Sting's.
We then took a stroll through Green Park where we saw Buckingham Palace, as well as a pretty view of London and the London Eye.
When the tour ended, it was around 5pm. We didn't have anything else planned for the evening, so we headed over to Piccadilly Circus, the part of London that is modeled after Times Square in New York. We grabbed dinner at a pub there, then walked over to the M&M store. Shanna & I had really liked the one in New York City that we went to a few years back, so we all wanted to check out this one too.
After walking around there we decided to take a double decker bus back to the area where Adam & Penny were staying (they were in a different hotel) to check out some of the pubs there. We had to change buses a few times, but the first bus we got on had the entire upper portion empty, so we got to sit at the very front and see an interesting view of London as we drove around. We eventually got to their hotel area, found an Irish Pub, and ended the night there.
The next morning we all agreed we wanted to sleep in a bit. We had a full English Breakfast at our hotel, then met up with Adam & Penny back at Piccadilly. We walked through the shops, including the Apple Store in London!
Since we'd all had a huge breakfast, we skipped lunch and headed over to the discount show ticket booths. Our options were limited since it was Sunday, but the decision eventually came down to Lion King and Shrek: The Musical. Since Shanna & I had already seen Lion King, we decided to see Shrek while they saw the Lion King musical. It was a lot of fun...we even bought the Shrek ears they were selling.
The acting was great, and we had a blast. After we got out we all went our separate ways. Penny & Adam wanted to explore Piccadilly more, and Shanna & I wanted to check out a brew pub in the area called Porterhouse Brewing Company. The brew pub was a lot of fun. They had great beer, good food, live music, and a festive atmosphere.
That was our last stop of the night. When we left the pub, we took a cab back to the hotel. The cab driver was friendly, and talked with us the whole ride back. The next morning came VERY early. We got up at 4am, and were checked out by 5:15am. I laughed when I asked the hotel clerk if the Tube trains were running at that time. He said "To be honest, I've never taken the train this early, so I'm not sure". We didn't risk it, and just took the bus that stopped outside of our hotel to Liverpool Street Station. Adam & Penny were there, and we all hopped on the train to the airport.
The London trip was a lot of fun, and I'd like to go back again in the off season. The only complaint we had was the ridiculous amount of people using the Tubes. We were packed in like sardines with every ride.
You can click here or any pictures above to see all the pictures we took in London.
The flights were cheap for a reason, we flew out Friday evening at 7:30pm and were flying home at 8am on Monday. But with how expensive London is, plus the exchange rate which is even worse then the dollar to Euro rate, we were ok with only spending 2 full days there.
On Friday afternoon I dropped the dogs off, and when Shanna came home from work, we took the train to the airport and met up with Adam & Penny. The flight was smooth, and at 8pm local time we touched down in London. The first thing I noticed when we got off the plane was how nice it was to see everything in English. The money was also a bit confusing. The bills were easy enough to figure out, but the coins didn't make sense. The Euro coins are easy, the smallest coin is the penny, and the size increases as the value increases, with the biggest coin being the 2 Euro coin. With the British coins, the size had nothing to do with the value. The 1 pound coin was a fraction of the size of the 50 and 10 cent pieces. Needless to say we paid with bills whenever possible and ended up with a ton of coins at the end of the weekend. After going through Customs, we hopped on a train into London. We eventually got to Liverpool Street Station, which is a major hub in London's public transportation.
We eventually made it to our hotel, but it had been a long day, especially for Shanna since she had worked that day. We crashed as soon as we checked in, around 11pm.
The next day we arranged to meet up with Adam & Penny at our first stop, the British Museum. The outside architecture of the museum was just as impressive as it's contents inside.
Inside they had treasures from civilizations long gone, as well as from relatively modern history. The biggest draw had to be the Rosetta Stone, the tablet that broke the code of the Egyptian Hieroglyphs.
They also had artifacts from the Parthenon, Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, etc... One piece that I found fascinating was the Chronometer from the HMS Beagle, the ship Darwin sailed on when exploring the Galapagos Islands.
We had arranged to meet up for lunch around noon after we had explored the museum, and headed to a Victorian pub I'd read about called the Princess Louise. The inside of it was beautiful, by far one of the nicest pubs I've ever been in.
At 2pm we met up with a tour group I'd found that was guided by a person (instead of an audio guide) and it ran for 2 hours, showing some of the best sights of London. We started off walking to the Tower of London as he gave us the history of it. Next we headed to a dock on the Thames where we hopped on a boat that would take us to Westminster. While we waited for the boat to arrive our guide pointed out the HMS Belfast docked across the river. It's now a museum, and is noted for the fact that it was the first ship to fire on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.
On the river we saw Tower Bridge, went under London Bridge, and saw the famous London Eye, the huge Ferris wheel that gives you a great view of the city. Eventually we got to Westminster and docked next to Parliament and Big Ben.
After disembarking we continued our tour at Westminster Abbey. On the entrance they had carvings of "heroes", and the only non-British person on there is Martin Luther King, Jr. Next we headed to Queen Anne Street, one of the oldest in London. Of course, the house on the street that got everyone's attention was Sting's.
We then took a stroll through Green Park where we saw Buckingham Palace, as well as a pretty view of London and the London Eye.
When the tour ended, it was around 5pm. We didn't have anything else planned for the evening, so we headed over to Piccadilly Circus, the part of London that is modeled after Times Square in New York. We grabbed dinner at a pub there, then walked over to the M&M store. Shanna & I had really liked the one in New York City that we went to a few years back, so we all wanted to check out this one too.
After walking around there we decided to take a double decker bus back to the area where Adam & Penny were staying (they were in a different hotel) to check out some of the pubs there. We had to change buses a few times, but the first bus we got on had the entire upper portion empty, so we got to sit at the very front and see an interesting view of London as we drove around. We eventually got to their hotel area, found an Irish Pub, and ended the night there.
The next morning we all agreed we wanted to sleep in a bit. We had a full English Breakfast at our hotel, then met up with Adam & Penny back at Piccadilly. We walked through the shops, including the Apple Store in London!
Since we'd all had a huge breakfast, we skipped lunch and headed over to the discount show ticket booths. Our options were limited since it was Sunday, but the decision eventually came down to Lion King and Shrek: The Musical. Since Shanna & I had already seen Lion King, we decided to see Shrek while they saw the Lion King musical. It was a lot of fun...we even bought the Shrek ears they were selling.
The acting was great, and we had a blast. After we got out we all went our separate ways. Penny & Adam wanted to explore Piccadilly more, and Shanna & I wanted to check out a brew pub in the area called Porterhouse Brewing Company. The brew pub was a lot of fun. They had great beer, good food, live music, and a festive atmosphere.
That was our last stop of the night. When we left the pub, we took a cab back to the hotel. The cab driver was friendly, and talked with us the whole ride back. The next morning came VERY early. We got up at 4am, and were checked out by 5:15am. I laughed when I asked the hotel clerk if the Tube trains were running at that time. He said "To be honest, I've never taken the train this early, so I'm not sure". We didn't risk it, and just took the bus that stopped outside of our hotel to Liverpool Street Station. Adam & Penny were there, and we all hopped on the train to the airport.
The London trip was a lot of fun, and I'd like to go back again in the off season. The only complaint we had was the ridiculous amount of people using the Tubes. We were packed in like sardines with every ride.
You can click here or any pictures above to see all the pictures we took in London.
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