The reality of travelling

Facts for the traveller:
1. Bills will always find you;
2. Money owed to you needs to be chased up through a series of irritating, and expensive, phone calls made at awkward hours of day since you are calling people in another time zone well removed from your own;
3. no one returns a call when it requires them to call you back at a time that might be a slight inconvenience to them or involves calling an international number;
4. administration is exactly the same for any business and company, changing plans and rosters at moments notice irrespective of carefully laid, paid for and booked arrangements made by “the Little People”.
5. tourist cruise boats on the Rheine can not out run a lightning storm it headed straight into before turning to travel away from it as the down pour, and thunderclaps directly overhead, cause all people to crowd into the humid, and already busy, lower decks;
6. passing the bank used by nude sunbathers, whilst on the way towards the storm, was not one of the high lights of the river cruise;
7. continuing to play the prepared recording in three languages explaining the sights from the Rheine becomes redundant when you can’t see out of the window because of the amount of rain falling outside!!;
8. most historical structures will have precisely placed scaffolding to ensure maximum disruption to any photos you are attempting to take!!

And now for sport:

France vs Portugal:

Having a vested interest in the French going through to the final has not blinded me to the fact that they were very lucky. I left Volker to get some sleep, for his early start the following day, and to find some Frogs and support Les Bleus. Draped in my expensive (€3) French flag, I meet a cool bunch of French people from Avignon who welcomed me with open arms. After accepting their heartfelt disappointment at the outcome of the last Aussie game against Italy, we sat down to watch a nerve racking 90 minutes of football. After Zidane scored a goal from a questionable penalty given in the first half (was he actually tripped or did be dive?!?), Les Bleus took the lead. From there they went into “save our arse” mode as the Portuguese made numerous attacks. If it were not for some excellent defence and some athletic saves by the French goalie, it would certainly have been the French going home at full time. The Portuguese forwards were unlucky not to goal as they did a lot more work on the field than the French. Nonetheless, the strategy worked and the French were through to the final. One can only hope that they play a more attacking game against the Italians in the final, otherwise they are likely to get their butts kicked as the Italians did play well against the Germans.