Davis Cup Tennis in Hamburg

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Why are we in Hamburg? For the Davis Cup of course, no we are not big tennis fans but when Pat Rafter is paying you can hardly say no.

Our original plans were to travel more of Eastern Europe an area of the world we both love but when this deal came up that all changed and we found ourselves back in Germany!

Four nights in Hamburg and three days of tennis FREE and the only pay off is that you must dress up in the Fanatics Aussie gear - well I can do that! The deal was offered by Fanatics a group we traveled to Galipoli with for ANZAC Day.

We arrived in Hamburg expecting a run down hostel instead we stayed at one of the best run hostels we have stayed at. Our first night we met with the group (40 Aussies mostly living in London) and went out to a German Beer house where we enjoyed some tasty food and 1 litre steins of beer.

The following morning we were up early for our first day of tennis, two singles matches where Tomic won and Hewitt lost. The game began with a heartfelt national anthem followed by a few rowdy Australian chants. The day was extremely cold and the contrast in German clothing compared with our shorts, T-shirts and thongs was quite a sight. The Germans definitely got a good laugh out of it. We were freezing, our roommate ended up with a fever that night - that's dedication!

The following day was a doubles match where the Aussies made a close win, I especially enjoyed watching the doubles as it is much faster pace. The highlight of this day was at the end of the match when Lleyton hit his ball into the crowd and Aaron caught it. Being the gentleman that Aaron is he gave me the ball and I got to go on centre court and try my hand at winning a trip to Turkey unfortunately I lost however I got to keep the ball. That night the group had a night out on the town, heading into Reaper Barn, Europe's biggest red light district. With all its lights and craziness we felt like we were in Las Vegas not Hamburg.

After a bit of a sleep in after a big night we made our way into Hamburg's city where we checked out some of the sights and purchased some gummy bears from the famous gummy bear shop. We have decided to spend our next two weeks driving through Germany with our final stop Munich for Octoberfest. With this in mind we purchased a GPS which we should be able to reuse in Australia. Then we were off for a last day of tennis, the day was going to be close one, our first game was lost and it all came down to Lleyton who fought to the end but just couldn't bring it home.

The tennis was great as was the atmosphere! Our last night was spent packing our bags again and eating with the fanatics crew before they headed out for a big night. We decided we needed to have an early one so that we were ready for our following day of driving.

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