Australia vs Brazil - Showtime

Got up damn early (by our standards), and I was handed the keys for the drive from Frieberg to Munich. The plan was to park near where some of Brett's friends were living, but finding it proved a little difficult as we were armed with a substandard map. Eventually we got there, but the second hurdle was finding a parking spot for a vehicle that would be more at home on a river than the narrow streets of Munich. We do get lucky sometimes, and this was one such occasion as an unusually large parking spot opened up directly outside their place. Once we had come to terms with our unbelievable luck, I backed the boat into it's resting place and we got out to meet Brett's friends - Simon, Julian and Tanja. For some reason we were to refer to Brett as "John" for the duration of our stay with them...

3am Brazilian drums at Burger King

We walked around a bit, went to the English Gardens to see the open-air viewing area... but it was shit. Decided to watch the later games at Marienplatz and get boozed. Snags and I opted for a quiet pub with comfy seats and TV, while the Mark/Brett team opted for the crowded beer garden which was overrun with Aussies and you could barely see the games. Naturally we met up after the games finished to continue ridiculous amounts of stein drinking, but not before I had to endure a sob story from a maggot Swiss bloke whose team had just lost to Ghana in an upset. We were supposed to rendezvous with Chris and Jon at some stage, but they once again proved useless at organising this. Not surprisingly we ended up at Burger King at 3am, where Snags demolished a Triple Whopper and we saw Brazilians beating their drums and chanting monotonously.

Allianz Arena

Match Day: Australia vs Brazil

Hopeful of getting a ticket, we jumped on the train to Allianz Arena. It soon became clear that only through the sale of a kidney or similar would we be going to the game. There were so many people looking for tickets, and with offers like "you can have my sister for ticket" and "will swap sex for ticket" it seemed like tough competition at best. Mark & Brett already had tickets, so Snags and I left them to it and headed off to Olympic Stadium where the Fan Fest was all set up with big screens etc. There were so many people there, but it was all really friendly as we watched the match in the sweltering 38 degree heat - some shade ANYWHERE would have been nice. At half time it was 0-0 and the Brazilian fans were getting a bit impatient. Not surprisingly Brazil beat us 2-0 in the end, but even if I'm one-eyed I still think we could have had a much better result had some refereeing decisions gone our way and our players could finish a bit better. Memorable was Kewell missing from about 3m, and Brazil scoring when they were offside. After the game a Brazilian couple turned to me and actually said they thought Brazil were lucky to escape with a result, and thought it was a bit ominous to see them performing so poorly. They had never seen Australia play, or even knew we had a team, so they were full of praise and totally surprised at how well we played... which was pretty nice to hear.

Aussie flag draped on statue

Crazy architecture

Dome thing and gardens

Hilarious ticket signs

Huge football pitch carved into a hill

Open air area with terrible screen

Profile of Snags as night descends

Some important building

Stadium Station

Surfing a standing wave - woo hoo

The other big screen

Watching the game

Yellow Church