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  • Hamburg, Germany

    June 19, 2006

    We arrived in Hamburg, Germany yesterday around 12pm. We are staying in a great area. The Schanzen area is a magnet for the “in” crowd, trendsetters, cafe-goers and Asia food fans. You wouldn’t believe that there are so many shops and places to eat with a first glance but walking a little further and really scoping out the place you can see some wonderful shops.

    We couldn’t check in until almost 4pm so we got a couple of doner kebabs, pommes frites (fries) and Fanta then walked to a near by park. After checking in and taking a short nap, we got on the train and went to the FanFest (World Cup area set up for people to go and watch the game on a big screen). I can almost gaurantee that there were over 50,oo people. It was incredible. After watching some of the game we walked down St. Pauli, a red light district where prostitution is legal. There were all kinds of interesting shops.

    We got back on the train and went down to the City Hall. There we found a fun little area where they were having a light and water show. Today we went on a boat tour of the habor and canals. It was a historical tour and we were told the history of the canals and major habor surrounding Hamburg. The only problem was that it was all in German. It was a beautiful day and we had a great time seeing the city from the water.

    In just a few hours we will be going to a REAL football game. We’ve really been waiting a long time for this. It will be lots of fun. I only have 5 minutes left on the computer so I better get going.

    We’ll be home in a week.

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  • Tickets to the World Cup

    April 4, 2006

    As many of you know we are planning a trip to Germany in June. Our original purpose was to go to the World Cup which is in Germany this year (it’s like the Olympics and only happens every 4 years) but our hopes started to dwindle as we found out how difficult it is to get tickets.

    As the official website says, “Millions of football fans the world over are dying to get their hands on them. 3,070,000 of them corresponding to the net capacity of the twelve FIFA World Cup stadiums.”

    Tickets for the matches were sold in phases. It’s a lottery so you put your name in for certain games and then they let you know if you won the lottery. Well, we didn’t win any of the lotteries so we thought we were in trouble. Recently they started selling Re-sale tickets (tickets that people returned). It’s very difficult to get these because you pretty much just have to go to the website and hit refresh looking for tickets to come up. It’s very random and you never know what games and number of tickets will be available.

    Every evening Dusty and I come home, clicking the refresh button on ourlaptopss, waiting for a ticket to come up. We’ve gotten close a few times. Today was like every other. It’s 5pm and we’ve been trying to get tickets since noon. We finally succeeded in getting tickets. Everyone, we WILL be in Germany June 19th. I’ve included a little blurb about the World Cup.

    According to FIFA World Cup official website “No other sporting event captures the world’s imagination like the FIFA World Cup. Ever since the first tentative competition in Uruguay in 1930, FIFA’s flagship has constantly grown in popularity and prestige.

    Today, the FIFA World Cup holds the entire global public under its spell. An accumulated audience of over 37 billion people watched the France 98 tournament, including approximately 1.3 billion for the final alone, while over 2.7 million people flocked to watch the 64 matches in the French stadia.

    After all these years and so many changes, however, the main focus of the FIFA World Cup remains the same – the glistening golden trophy, which is the embodiment of every footballer’s ambition. “

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