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Published: June 30th 2006
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Pre Game
The Crowd in Stuttgart OK sorry for not posting earlier. It is difficult to get to working computers here, especially considering the amount of traveling we have been doing.
The reason we are in this part of the world at this time is because the FIFA World Cup is on, so i feel i should cover this event while it is on. Being in Germany while the cup is on should be an amazing experience, and it is, but there are a couple of things which make it a little bit more difficult to fully get into it. The amount of train travel we have undertaken has caused us to miss some games (in periods quite a lot of games), back at home i would have seen more games and i would have seen all the games i wanted to see. In the first week of our stay we missed some games i really wanted to watch because we were on a train or waiting at a train station (our next entry will cover they many wonderful train stations that Germany has to offer).
We decided to base ourselves in the Czech Republic in a town called Teplice. It is close to the
The Aussie Stairs
Difficult to Capture German border, pretty much due south of Dresden. There is little to no English spoken here and the Czech language is not as easily picked up as say a romance language. This basically means that when we watch games all the commentary is in Czech and all the post game analysis is also in Czech. Our only sources of English coverage is the BBC and sometimes the odd English newspaper. Suffice to say that the Socceroos don´t get any special treatment from these two sources. We are somewhat isolated from news of the Socceroos and i only found out certain bits of info from friends and when i go for (painfully long) surfs on the web. So in a certain respect i feel i would be more connected to the team and the progress if i was at home getting bombarded with the commercial media jumping on the bandwagon (something i have heard they have been happy to do).
Having said all that I (Keenan) was at the Croatia vs. Australia game with my football traveling companion David (aka Vanderman, Vanders, Scammy Jammy), and i have to say it was pretty sweet. I will attempt to capture the day
Pre Game 2
Yeah Stuttgart Was Busy here.
We awoke in Frankfurt the morning of the 21st after seeing Paraguay put away a resolute Trinidad and Tobago (the T&T fans were the biggest champs). It is not too far to Stuttgart, we arrived there at about 13:00 or so, and like the rest of the unorganised Aussies set about finding accommodation. We were not especially optimistic. We had been searching on the internet for a while for a place to stay but to no avail. The tourist information place hooked us up with some place about a 30 min train ride from the city centre. It was the day before the game but there were already copious amounts of Aussies in the city centre. We ended up heading to our hotel to dump our bags. We checked in at about 3:30 and couldn't´t be bothered going back into the city to watch the game on the big screens, so we found some screens in the little town we were staying in and watched Portugal beat Mexico and the Dutch draw with the Argentineans while drinking some tasty German beer, outstanding!
The next morning was game day, we slept in (much needed) and headed to the
Pre Game 3
The Croatians Were A Good Bunch stadium to pick up our tickets. It was lucky we did this early as we would have had a nightmare doing it a couple of hours before kickoff. It was quite clear who was playing that day from the colours flooding the streets. We got into the city centre at about 12:00 or so and there were already gold shirts and red and white chequered shirts everywhere. There was a good jovial mood to the place as fans supporting both teams were confident of victory and therefore progression to the round of 16. Most of the Aussie fans would greet you with a 'how we doing boys´ or something similar. All the Aussies were happy to have a quick chat with each other, the day before seeing an Aussie wasn´t that special but today it was all about solidarity.
The Croatians were also in good form. Catching the trains you could hear them say 'Australia´, then something else, then start laughing, then give us a knowing look... 'you are going down´. Some of them were a bit more outspoken. (a quick note here, whenever you see an independent ! it symbolizes a swear word, an expletive if you will). As we were walking out of the main train station, a bunch of Croats were smacking a few beers and smoking ciggies. One of them piped up with 'hey suxaroos, we´re going to ! you up´. Then they all laughed. You can all probably guess what the ! stands for in this situation. We just laughed and kept strolling along. They loved it.
We thought the place was pretty full. That was until we arrived at the fan fest area. The fan fest areas are set up in each city where games are to be played. They have massive screen up, food stalls, beer stalls and when there is no football on the have bands on. Pretty cool thing for the fans who were not lucky enough to get tickets to the game. It is also a good way to view games which are on in different cities in a World Cup atmosphere.
In Stuttgart there is a long parade from the main train station to the fan fest are which is littered with shops and cafes. We started walking towards the fan fest area and as we drew near the pace started getting busier and busier. We found that all the cafes were filled with Croatians (all in Croatian shirts) and all the pubs were filled with Aussies in their Gold. As you walk up the parade the fan fest is on your left, on your right there was a building which had steps leading up to the entry. The steps are those really long ones, not sure how long they were but probably about 10 meters or so and they were probably about 15 high. There was an identical set of stairs next to the first. The first set of stairs we passed was filled with Aussies. The next set was full of Croatians. When we passed the two groups were going at each other one chant from one side was countered by a chant from the other side. We entered the fan fest are to watch Italy play Czech on the big screens. When we came out about 2.5 hours later and they were still going at it, only there was more of them. We walked around for about 45 mins, managed to slip in a quick beer to two and then made our way to the stadium.
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