Matt's World Cup Diary

Day 12 – No games

Most of the final day was spending in Café Solo, watching Mark fail to do the Sudoku and reflecting on the holiday.

I’d have to say it was easily the best of the 5 tournaments I’d been to – largely because it was held in such a football mad country. This meant the atmosphere wasn’t just around the grounds but the whole city and surrounding area. Where ever a game was being shown there’d be large crowds watching – different to Portugal and France – where generally only the football tourists would be watching and a world away from the US where you wouldn’t know the World Cup was on a few miles from the ground.

The other factor was that the Germans were really friendly and not just the waitresses. People would chat to us and recommended bars and restaurants without prompting. We were often offered help in buying train tickets – which can be desperately confusing in Germany – and the organisation meant that in any major place there were plenty of English speaking people around specifically to help us.

Bizarrely the Germans were also especially friendly to the English, we’d have to admit the 2 nations are pretty similar and whilst a lot of England fans took this as a reason to try and provoke them most Germans saw it as a reason to support us. I don’t know anyone who went over who didn’t come back with a more positive image of Germany than they left with.

Football was of variable quality but with good company it was a great holiday.

Matt