Living the Dream My travel journal to help keep friends and family up to date with where I am in the world.

Left Munich on the Aussie Express for the biggest game in Australian football history on Thursday. We arrived in Stuttgart about 12:30pm local time and along with the Croatians, took over the place. We watched the first game at thge Fan Fest venue before making our way to the ground. There were many Croats around and it felt like we would be outnumbered but once we we in the stadium that fear was quashed. The stadium has faily low stands and normally a running track around the pitch but we had great seats. The game had everything. Goals, cards, send-offs, refereeing stuff-ups, harsh challenges. Everything you expect from a derby match and two teams fighting to stay at the World Cup.

After the final whistle, the Aussie's went nuts. We stayed in the ground for some time as the Aussie team came back out to do a lap of honour and thank the fans. The team danced to the song 'Land Down Under' as the supporters sung as load as they could and danced in the stands. The game was the first one I had been to where we spent most of it standing up. I think the Croats prefer to stand and it was one of those games where you could not sit down anyway as the end to end action had you on your feet.

Stuttgart was closed by the time we got back into town but the streets were alive with people dancing and singing in the streets near any venue which still served a beer. We didn't have any accomodation that night so we just crashed at the train station with plenty of others in the early hours before saying goodbye to one of our mates whom had to make his way to Frankfurt to fly home after saying goodbyeto another whom had to go back on the train for his coach transfer back to London. We jumped on a train for the short 40 minute trip north to Heidelberg. Where we spent most of the time sleeping so far.

Some other interesting things about Germany (while I remember them):
* The footpaths are devided into two halfs, for people and bikes. There are bikes everywhere here.
* Everybody walks on the right side just as they drive on the right. We must annoy people when we forget this.
* They drink a lot of mineral water which has annoyed the crap out of us when we buy the wrong water! Need to remember to say 'No Gas'.