Cologne is famous for holding the German version of Carnival, so the town is really set up to hold an event like the world cup and all that comes with it. There are walking streets everywhere and two huge squares. The squares are where they set up the fan fests. One fanfest was situated in the shadow of the Dom. The Köln dom is by far the largest building in Köln. It is said to be the third most important Cathedral after St Peters and St Marks. Here are a couple pictures:
Since the US was eliminated, I decided my new favorite team is whoever is playing France. Togo was playing France in Cologne on Friday night. Thus:
The inside:
Typical walking only street, part of the atmosphere. This was early in the day and so no one was around but later these streets were full until well after we had retired for the night:
The city is filled with beer halls, all the beer they serve is Kölsch style beer. It is really good, and pretty light. As we found, their marketing slogan should be: " Kölsch, the beer to drink when you are drinking more than one!" As we consumed tremendous amounts of the stuff and while it would definitely get you drunk, no one in our group ever got a hangover. One of the cooler things about the beer halls here is that the beer comes in small skinny tall glasses; most are 0.2 liters (about 8 ounces). This meant the beer was always fresh and cold. Very important during the heat wave that braced Germany for the duration of my time there. But they constantly exchange your empty glass for small ones. The only way you can get them to stop bringing beers is put your coaster on top of your glass to signal 'no mas'.
Picture of the fanfest with the dome in the background.
These people were pretty upset to lose to a girl and an American, but lose they did as we represented the table soccer players of America with dignity:
We arrived for the second trip to Cologne on Thursday afternoon. The same day that the US was going to take on Ghana. I quickly located an Irish bar that was going to show the US game and the Italy Czech game on separate screens. As this was the third match of the group the games were being played concurrently.
I was so excited for the game that I painted my face with red, white and blue stripes. Donned my US Soccer jersey, USA hat and tied my US Soccer warm up jacket around my waist.
Unfortunately, it didn't help.
One of the reasons for us to come back to Cologne was that Paty's sister Lucy and her husband Raul were there as well. He works for Coca-Cola and they were on a sponsors trip to the World Cup. They went to the Mexico-Portugal game and then the Mexico-Argentina game. We met them for Thursday night and all day Friday between their teams two losses. Although they might have witnessed the goal of the tourney in the extra time loss to Argentina.
Seeing Raul buying and wearing the fake hair to get in the festive mood is about as likely as Paty buying sunglasses at Wal-Mart, but it happened. Shows you how festive the mood was in Germany.
Being as the US was now out of the tournament I decided to adopt as my new favorite team, whoever is playing France. Thus:
Italy's opponent has now been added to my supporting list as the Australia result on a 93 minute penalty kick was lamentable.
Now since the French were taking on Togo in town on Friday, they were everywhere when we arrived on Thursday. We were having a few beers in the run up to the US game in a beer garden. There was a big group of probably stinky French supporters at a table near us. Someone kept making this rooster noise at random intervals. When ever the noise happened, all the French would stop what they were doing and cheer loudly. About 20 minutes after this sort of annoying us, I was trying to find whoever was making the noise and there it was:
They had an actual rooster with them! After that the noise didn't bother us so much, now it was only the French themselves.
The French have roosters, the Togoleese have stilts:
Overall, Cologne was a blast. We saw the Germany round of 16 game against Sweden from Cologne as well. I will do a separate post on that as this is getting quite long.
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