News from Germany
Jul. 4th, 2014 09:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dormouse1953I'm spending a few days in Cologne at the moment. When I booked the trip, I had forgotten that there was a football tournament going on, the Welt Meister (WM) as they call it around here.
And this evening I was getting ready to go out to eat when I heard an enormous roar from outside my hotel window. Seems that Germany had just scored. I'd seen the headlines in the papers all day "Ein guter Tag für Helden" so I should have remembered this was happening.
My hotel overlooks the Rhine and all the hotels and bars along the river had huge crowds outside watching the game on big screens.
It also turns out to be Cologne Pride weekend and there is a big fair set up in a nearby market. As I walked through it just now, there was what looked like Germany's equivalent to Graham Norton introducing the proceedings but competing with all the bars showing football.
There was no escaping the football and I eventually found a place to eat where the football was inside and I could eat outside. The place was crowded (the second half was just starting) and service was slow, but I did get a good meal. When someone asked if he could stub his cigarette out on the ashtray on my table and he discovered I was English, he commiserated over the England team's early exit.
The party seems to be continuing outside.
Incidentally, an oddity with my hotel room. The loo flush is a large rectangle of brushed aluminium on the wall, so place that if you lean back when sitting on the toilet, it flushes.
And this evening I was getting ready to go out to eat when I heard an enormous roar from outside my hotel window. Seems that Germany had just scored. I'd seen the headlines in the papers all day "Ein guter Tag für Helden" so I should have remembered this was happening.
My hotel overlooks the Rhine and all the hotels and bars along the river had huge crowds outside watching the game on big screens.
It also turns out to be Cologne Pride weekend and there is a big fair set up in a nearby market. As I walked through it just now, there was what looked like Germany's equivalent to Graham Norton introducing the proceedings but competing with all the bars showing football.
There was no escaping the football and I eventually found a place to eat where the football was inside and I could eat outside. The place was crowded (the second half was just starting) and service was slow, but I did get a good meal. When someone asked if he could stub his cigarette out on the ashtray on my table and he discovered I was English, he commiserated over the England team's early exit.
The party seems to be continuing outside.
Incidentally, an oddity with my hotel room. The loo flush is a large rectangle of brushed aluminium on the wall, so place that if you lean back when sitting on the toilet, it flushes.
