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Published: July 12th 2006
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Munich
Saturday June 17th was the second US game against Italy in Kaiserslautern. Since I did not have a ticket to the game, I thought it would be more fun to go straight to Munich to watch the game at the FanFest, and then go out in one of Germany's biggest cities. After watching the game, I made my way out to one of Munich's best clubs, 8 Seasons, to see a Hed Kandi DJ set. The inside area was ridiculously hot, but I found temperature relief on the cooler outdoor terrace. By 5am, I was ready to head back to the hotel, not long before the rest of the group would arrive.
Conveniently we had booked a hotel for that night, with plans for the group to arrive at 6am the following morning, straight from the game. When the crew came in from the game, I was disappointed that I missed a great FanFest with tons of Americans, however I wasn't too upset when I heard that the train was so packed that they didn't have seats for most of the way.
I expected that meeting up with the group would be a transition from the hostel
Harassment
Attempting to sleep at 5am living to which I had become accustomed. Although we were staying in Starwood properties, like the Four Points, the Sheraton and the Westin, I can assure you that we did our best to replicate the hostel experience, as we piled five people into one room. In two out of the three hotels, we had one person sleeping on the floor. There is one significant difference between staying in a hostel room with 4 strangers compared to the four monkeys (Adam, Josh, Dan D., and Jer) I was with. Typically when people are coming and going at all different hours, they try to be quiet so they don't disturb anyone who might be sleeping. With this crew, if you happened to have gone to sleep "early", say at 3am instead of 5am, you would likely be subjected to harassment, random monkeying around and ipod speakers blasting away. Ah, it's great to travel with friends.
To add to the environment, we were also shocked to discover that the Four Points in Munich did not have A/C. For those of you that know Adam, who is a Starwood Platinum member and a master of complaining to hotels and airlines until they start
Wheelchair assailant
No more reaching up my shirt giving him free stuff, this was an opportunity. I'm not sure what the final point total we had returned to his account, but I think we got at least one night for free.
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Sunday was the Australia vs. Brazil game and the city was crawling with green and yellow. For those of you unfamiliar with the teams, they both share the same colors. In general, the fans from each team seemed to be very civil to each other. Might of had something to do with Austrialia, who had recently scored its first World Cup goals EVER, not having much of a chance. We watched the game at a very crowded beer garden in a huge park. The place was so packed that people were literally climbing into trees to watch the game. We decided to seach for a more comfortable venue at halftime, and that turned out to be a staircase of a bar, where we watched the back of a rear projection pull down screen that people in the outdoor area where watching.
Later that night, there was much celebrating in the streets--Brazilians, Australians, everyone seemed to be out. As we walked around the street, which
Aussies in a tree
Watching the Brazil vs. Australia game had been closed off to vehicles, we were initially stopped in our tracks by a group of very attractive Brazilian girls, who were celebrating in the middle of the street median. We noticed that we were not the people hanging out around the girls. There was a guy in a wheelchair, who seemed like he may have been mentally challenged in some capacity. At first, we thought that he was part of the group, but quickly realized that this was not the case. Mr. Slick Willy was coming up behind the girls and slowly sneaking his hand up their shirts! We couldn't believe it. It was even more shocked to watch him pull the same antics over and over again, and each time the girls would nicely tell him not to do it again. Unbelieveable!
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Another interesting incident occurred earlier in the day on the way to the game. We had stopped in to a bar to catch the end of the first match of the day. While we were standing at the bar, Dan got approached by an older Geman man who was both a "close talker" who moved his hands around along with every word
The close talker
Dan pinned against the bar he spoke. I looked over and noticed Dan up against the bar, with his back arched as if he were doing the high jump. The man was also poking Dan in the chest, not maliciously, but still getting really close. He didn't speak very good English and several times while he was speaking, Dan would say "personal space," to which the man did not respond at all. I can assure you that the four of us were quick to respond...by cracking up. Eventually Dan escaped, but only after getting both his cheeks grabbed as they were saying goodbye.
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While most of the group typically did not make it out of the hotel room before 2pm on any of our days in Munich. The day after getting unpleasantly woken up after I had gone to bed early, I wanted to actually do some touristy things, so I went to Dachau, one of the main concentration camp sites. I also needed to get away from the group and do something on my own, or I might have otherwise killed one of them after the rude awakening from the night before. I decided to do it on my own rather
than taking the tour because I thought that five hours seemed like a long time...six hours later I finished my visit. There was a really interesting memorial museum inside and I read through most of the history that it summarized. It was well worth visiting, especially as it was only twenty minutes outside the center of town. I also ran into a fraternity brother, Andrew Van Cleve, and his wife as well as a friend from San Francisco.
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Cleavon
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i think most people become mentally challenged around hot brazilian girls