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Published: June 28th 2006
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Train breakdown
How many Germans does it take to fix a train? US v. Czech Republic in Gelsenkirchen
My journey from Salzburg to Cologne, where I was staying, and then on to Gelsenkirchen was longest over-land travel of my trip to that point. I left at around 7am, and arrived in Cologne just after 2pm. Since the US vs. Czech Republic game was that night at 9pm and it was the only game for which I had tickets, I wanted to be sure that I was there early. Luckily I ran into my friends, Josh, Jer and John in the train station. They were already leaving for the game. Wondering why they were leaving six hours before gametime, I was surprised to discover that the game actually started at 6pm! Considering that they were holding my tickets and planning to meet me outside the gate of the stadium, there would have been a decent chance that I would not have made it into the game, if not for randomly running into them at the station.
After that stroke of good luck, we jumped on the train and headed north to the game. About twenty minutes into the ride, we started to smell smoke. Shortly afterwards, we noticed that it was coming
Super fans
Josh and me at the game with our red, white and blue wigs from the train car in front of ours! The train came to a stop in the middle of the tracks, and German rail workers jumped off the train to investigate. Smoke continued to blow, and next thing we knew, they had the fire extinguisher out. After another ten minutes, Jer witnessed one of the "engineers" kicking the side of the train. Of course, my natural instinct was to lean out the window, take pictures and start cracking up laughing. In the end, I'm not sure if it was the kicking or something else the fixed the train, but eventually we continued our trip. During our unexpected stop, it came to light that it was the second train breakdown of the day that John had experienced. Unfortunately, it would not be the last!
When we arrived in Gelsenkirchen, the line down to the tram was so backed up that we couldn't even get into the main station. We finally got into the hot, jam-packed tram and were standing right next to a group of drunken English guys who were singing songs at the top of their lungs throughout the ride. At first it was amusing, but when you are stuck
in a boiling tram car just a few feet away and with no escape, it was not so fun. Not even halfway to the station, we had breakdown number two (three for John). At that point, we told John that he was going to have to ride back to Cologne separately. Ultimately we made it to the game via bus with less than 30 minutes to spare. After all the fuss about having to register tickets to specific individuals and passport numbers, we entered the stadium without presenting any ID whatsoever.
The energy level in the stadium was incredible. Everyone seemed to be decked out in their team colors and paraphanelia, including us with our red, white and blue wigs and US jerseys (my "medium" jersey that I had Josh buy for me was so tight it was like I was wearing an Under Armor shirt. Fortunately is was a Nike dry fit.) The singing and chanting began immediately and more or less continued throughout the game. It become painfully apparent to me that the US is in desparate need of a chant other than "U-S-A". The Czechs definitely had a better selection than we did--and more reason to celebrate as they kicked our asses, 3-0.
For those of you how are not familiar with soccer, one of the big differences between it and other timed sports like basketball and (American) football is that once the clock starts for a half, it does not stop. Any time that is lost due to injuries is estimated by the referree and added back on at the end of each half. There are also no timeouts allowed. So if there is an injury on the field, proper etiquette is to kick the ball out of bounds. When play resumes, the opposing team will return the ball to the team that kicked the ball out so they do not lose a posession. Because of the way injury time works, faking an injury can also be used as a stalling tactic, as oftentimes the total actual injury time for the half exceeds the extra time added by the referree. Players that pull these type of antics will typically get booed by the opposition for obvious reasons. Or if it is a European team whose opponent fakes an injury, instead of booing, they whistle. I find the whistling to be extremely annoying, but I suppose that is the point of it. One Czech player in particular seemed to be "injured", killed some time off the clock, rested out of bounds for a few minutes and then returned to the game. Each time he got the ball, the US fans would boo. I was ever more amused when another Czech player (who I suspect fans thought was the faker) got the ball, fans would boo also.
With an opening game loss to the Czech Republic, a team we needed to at least tie to have a chance in the group, it did not look good for the US. It was a long ride home to Cologne both figuratively and literally. Somehow we managed to find a way to make two connections, and to extend what should have been a 90 minute trip into a three hour debacle, putting us back in Cologne about 12 hours after we originally departed.
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ernie
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monkey business
and the monkey business still continues... almost missing the game due to scheduling