Off to the World Cup - 2006!!

I had spent an hour in the internet cafe near the hbf (hauptbahnhof) before heading out to Dachau, so we were later getting out to the Allianz Arena than planned. The Munich U-bahn was a lot better equipped to handle the crowd than the Gelsenkirchen S-bahn, but the trains were packed anyway! We went one stop back down the line to beat the crowd, then sweated along with a bunch of mostly German fans on a long ride from the Marienplatz out to Fröttmaning.

The Allianz Arena is a funky plastic doughnut, just inside the outer ring road in the Munich countryside. We carried the backpack this time, which the security guys didn't pay much attention to, and were just in time to watch the teams parade in at mid field. We sat in the northeast corner, the red sea of Tunisia in front of us to the right, and the green of Saudi Arabia way off to our left. A flag-draped Spaniard was laughing with a bunch from Switzerland, who were wearing shirts with their seven-game itinerary printed on the back.

The crowd in Tunisia's corner went wild when they went up 1-0, singing and jumping and lighting off a flare. ("Is that legal, Daddy?") The green flags went crazy when the Saudis equalized. We watched until 80:00 from behind the south goal, and then started the walk back to the train. We heard a great roar, and the echo off the hill, "Goal, Saudi Arabia!!" We never even heard about the Tunisian equalizer (in stoppage time) until the next day. Leave early!

It was mostly Germans on the platform, but again a huge crowd of them. We took the train one stop out, turned around, and were joined by the crush as we rode back through the stadium station. We rode with the crowd back in to town, hearing that the Olympiapark had been closed due to overcrowding. No big surprise, the German team playing that night against Poland. That crowd was wild! We finally wound up back at the hotel, watching the late game on the television in the room, having found that the little Bavarian place down the road was closed, and the Italian restaurant downstairs had no TV. The boys say they want to get to bed earlier tomorrow!