Football Fever

I successfully managed the torrential Mumbai rains and made my way to Germany. Several hours by car took me from Frankfurt to Enschede in the Netherlands. Yes, Enschede. I know it sounds like a disease or some obscure and painful medical procedure but that’s where my sister and her family live.
Even though it’s a small place, even there you could feel the effects of the football fever that had spread through Europe:


Little did I know that this was just the beginning.

After a great weekend in Enschede I made my way back to Frankfurt. I got rid of the car and my bags and made my way to the center of town to see “the crazy soccer people” (as the helpful tourist information lady so delightfully put it).
The streets were full of people and buildings wearing flags (Italia was to play Australia in the world cup). But this was just the prelude to the real show. In the middle of the river those crazy Germans built two huge screens on which the crowd could watch the world cup games. Luckily for the Australians neither the screens nor the engineers who built them were Israeli.


Anyway, I couldn’t go on without having my 15 seconds of glory – so here I am on the big screen:


Really, it’s me:


All in all it was great. I spent half a day there and the atmosphere was just amazing with thousands of people cheering on.


And so I left Germany behind knowing that more interesting countries were soon to come.
To be continued…