When Football meets a Music Festival
A weekend by myself, whilst Volker left for Hamburg for the night, left me with:
1. the apartment to myself;
2. two quarter finals: England vs Portugal and France vs Brazil;
3. a local music festival.
As I spent time catching up on emails, going through photos and trying to keep my blog up to date, I managed some catching up with friends over Skype™ and MSNmessenger™. The whole idea of Skype™ is awesome: it’s a free telephone service over the internet, using your computer as the handset. To get it, just Google™ it and then download for free.
Now, the phone connections you have with someone can range from perfectly crystal clear to communication between NASA launch control and one of the space shuttles. As it’s free you can’t really complain and the problem can be easily fixed by buying a headset microphone unit. However, the problem is that some people think it is perfectly okay to just call you. I’m not talking about mates, I’m talking about randoms! This is unacceptable behaviour!! You don’t just pick up the phone and randomly call someone on the other side of the world…do you?!? I know it’s free but come on!!
After humouring the first person that called, in a mix between her bad English and my not quite so fluent anymore Chinese, I decided that things needed to be done about this. Apparently changing to “Do not Disturb” meant that nothing would get through to you, even from friends, and that simply wouldn’t do. What worked the best was, completely contradicting my profile (English speaking, Australian in Torq):
1. answering in English;
2. quickly changing into French explaining it as the preferred language because;
3. I was currently living in Germany.
Confused?!? It certainly confused the hell out of the randoms calling and soon I attained a blissful, uninterrupted working environment. Had anyone answered back in French I probably would have talked to them to practice my French. Unfortunately, none of them did.
As for football, to continue my missed calling to be a football analyst:
England vs Portugal:
Essentially a disappointing display by both sides. No one really impressed as an attacking team as the game turned more into kick~to~kick between “professional players”. Without being too harsh, trying to understand the German commentary was more entertaining. England went down to 10 men and lost Beckham to injury and there still wasn’t any excitement! Portugal eventually won after a textbook display of “how not to” English penalty kicking. Sorry to my English mates but I reckon some would even agree with me on this one.
France vs Brazil:
Now this game was exciting and not because of my vested interest in The Bleus. There were plenty of worthy attempts and skilful play as both teams had their chances. Slowly, it looked like the French were beginning to get the upper hand over the highly fancied Brazilian team. France went on to score early in the second half and despite continued attempts buy the Brazilians to equalise, the final whistle blew and they were out of there!
My original hopes of a France-England and Germany-Italy semi-final were unfortunately dashed however should there be a French-German grand final I might very well be in a quandary. Perhaps escaping across the border to Switzerland and watching the game there will be the best option!!
The Saturday of football was engulfed in “culture” as well. Tischardt had a music festival. This entailed closing the main street, setting up a makeshift beer hall
with a stage at one end,
and then covering the whole thing with massive parachutes suspended from lampposts.
The music was a mixture: concert bands, cover bands, attempted rock bands, traditional German and even some yodelling. Some of it was actually quite good, no Hydrocoele mind you but entertaining nonetheless. Others were awful. One can only hope that they were sight-reading blindfolded because you couldn’t practice to be that bad. The locals didn’t seem to mind, although I believe this was due to:
1. they knew someone in the band; and
2. they were absolutely tanked on the beer.
As this was an alcohol free weekend for me, I was left with only one option: Run and Hide. Thank God for heavy shutters, good window seals and iPods™.
Monday and it was off to Köln (Cologne) in the western part of Germany. Volker, my good friend with whom I’ve been staying, is a pilot and certainly meets the criteria for being an excellent pilot:
1. well presented;
2. punctual;
3. co-ordinated;
4. friendly;
5. knows where he is flying to;
6. knows what time he is departing and arriving in all relevant places
7. knows which gate he leaves from.
Unfortunately, not all of these qualities are transferable to train travel. After a random delay on the way to our first connecting station of Mannheim, we quickly raced onto the next waiting train which, as it turned out, was the wrong train. Apparently platforms are a completely different thing to airport gates!! Luckily the train was headed in roughly the right direction. North, and it was then a short wait to make a connection in the correct direction. Despite the amount of crap I gave him for the mistake, it was really just another part of what makes travelling fun.
1. the apartment to myself;
2. two quarter finals: England vs Portugal and France vs Brazil;
3. a local music festival.
As I spent time catching up on emails, going through photos and trying to keep my blog up to date, I managed some catching up with friends over Skype™ and MSNmessenger™. The whole idea of Skype™ is awesome: it’s a free telephone service over the internet, using your computer as the handset. To get it, just Google™ it and then download for free.
Now, the phone connections you have with someone can range from perfectly crystal clear to communication between NASA launch control and one of the space shuttles. As it’s free you can’t really complain and the problem can be easily fixed by buying a headset microphone unit. However, the problem is that some people think it is perfectly okay to just call you. I’m not talking about mates, I’m talking about randoms! This is unacceptable behaviour!! You don’t just pick up the phone and randomly call someone on the other side of the world…do you?!? I know it’s free but come on!!
After humouring the first person that called, in a mix between her bad English and my not quite so fluent anymore Chinese, I decided that things needed to be done about this. Apparently changing to “Do not Disturb” meant that nothing would get through to you, even from friends, and that simply wouldn’t do. What worked the best was, completely contradicting my profile (English speaking, Australian in Torq):
1. answering in English;
2. quickly changing into French explaining it as the preferred language because;
3. I was currently living in Germany.
Confused?!? It certainly confused the hell out of the randoms calling and soon I attained a blissful, uninterrupted working environment. Had anyone answered back in French I probably would have talked to them to practice my French. Unfortunately, none of them did.
As for football, to continue my missed calling to be a football analyst:
England vs Portugal:
Essentially a disappointing display by both sides. No one really impressed as an attacking team as the game turned more into kick~to~kick between “professional players”. Without being too harsh, trying to understand the German commentary was more entertaining. England went down to 10 men and lost Beckham to injury and there still wasn’t any excitement! Portugal eventually won after a textbook display of “how not to” English penalty kicking. Sorry to my English mates but I reckon some would even agree with me on this one.
France vs Brazil:
Now this game was exciting and not because of my vested interest in The Bleus. There were plenty of worthy attempts and skilful play as both teams had their chances. Slowly, it looked like the French were beginning to get the upper hand over the highly fancied Brazilian team. France went on to score early in the second half and despite continued attempts buy the Brazilians to equalise, the final whistle blew and they were out of there!
My original hopes of a France-England and Germany-Italy semi-final were unfortunately dashed however should there be a French-German grand final I might very well be in a quandary. Perhaps escaping across the border to Switzerland and watching the game there will be the best option!!
The Saturday of football was engulfed in “culture” as well. Tischardt had a music festival. This entailed closing the main street, setting up a makeshift beer hall
with a stage at one end,
and then covering the whole thing with massive parachutes suspended from lampposts.
The music was a mixture: concert bands, cover bands, attempted rock bands, traditional German and even some yodelling. Some of it was actually quite good, no Hydrocoele mind you but entertaining nonetheless. Others were awful. One can only hope that they were sight-reading blindfolded because you couldn’t practice to be that bad. The locals didn’t seem to mind, although I believe this was due to:
1. they knew someone in the band; and
2. they were absolutely tanked on the beer.
As this was an alcohol free weekend for me, I was left with only one option: Run and Hide. Thank God for heavy shutters, good window seals and iPods™.
Monday and it was off to Köln (Cologne) in the western part of Germany. Volker, my good friend with whom I’ve been staying, is a pilot and certainly meets the criteria for being an excellent pilot:
1. well presented;
2. punctual;
3. co-ordinated;
4. friendly;
5. knows where he is flying to;
6. knows what time he is departing and arriving in all relevant places
7. knows which gate he leaves from.
Unfortunately, not all of these qualities are transferable to train travel. After a random delay on the way to our first connecting station of Mannheim, we quickly raced onto the next waiting train which, as it turned out, was the wrong train. Apparently platforms are a completely different thing to airport gates!! Luckily the train was headed in roughly the right direction. North, and it was then a short wait to make a connection in the correct direction. Despite the amount of crap I gave him for the mistake, it was really just another part of what makes travelling fun.
posted by santas walkabout at 6:56 am
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