Frankfurt

Reid and I had one day in Frankfurt. We made the most of it as best as we could in pure World Cup style. This city has the best Fanfest of all it seems. The river Main bisects the town, so they set up the Fanfest on both sides of the river. Then they put two 16x9 meter HD TV's in the middle of the river and set up both sides of the river with the river walk as huge viewing areas. Supposedly about 40,000 people attended most days. Our day was England v Trinidad and Tobago followed by Sweden versus Paraguay. We did not arrive in Frankfurt early enough to watch Ecuador handle Costa Rica. Ecuador won that game and thus became the second team to qualify for the second round with a 2-0 record. England followed this up with a 2-0 win that also sees them into the second round. Needless to say, both of these teams fans were ecstatic with the days results. We ended the night at an Irish bar, O'Reilly's that was 50 feet from our hotel's lobby. great night, that also led to a tough morning.

I have decided by now that it is okay to represent the US in Europe. So my US jersey has been my standard uniform for about three days now. This should be reflected in the last couple days and today's pictures.

One of the themes of this World Cup is "Fans Are Friends" and also "A Time to Make Friends” We decided that this was a good idea and have some pictures to prove it:
Friends with Ecuador, who incidentally advanced to the second round this same day:


Friends with Sweden after their 1-0 win against Paraguay:

Flying the friendly skies with United Flight attendants:

Reid also making friends with the Swedish:

This gives you a little better idea of what the Fanfest looked like. We were on the river walk standing here watching the games. All the bleachers were behind us and that is the largest HD TV in Germany in the middle of the river.

We didn't see much else of Frankfurt, but here is a night time picture of the river area, the Fanfest is directly behind us:


Lastly, here is O'Reilly's the Irish bar we ended up at with all the jubulant English. We left around 2:30 AM and could hear them all night outside our hotel as the hotel had no AC, so we slept with the windows open:

I will try to do a Germany summary post early next week to cover some of the highlights.