Fine afternoons and discoveries

There is perhaps a view, if you have read the last couple of entries of my blog, that I have largely spent my time on my trip to the UK imbibing alcohol and propping up bars. I can report that this is not entirely the case. My brother, for example, has learnt two new things about the flat he has lived in for over two years. Firstly, that it has a roof terrace, and secondly, there is a garden outside that you can sit in. So, some knowledge has been gained at the expense of my liver. Sadly he is only in the flat for another month.

The knowledge involving the garden area was taken advantage of to fine effect yesterday, as the sun continued it’s blistering attack on London. A good friend of mine popped around to visit and ever so kindly brought with him a couple of rather fine bottles of wine. Well, the Rioja ‘99 was certainly delightful. We will perhaps extend the benefit of the doubt to the slightly sparkling rose. So we spent the afternoon, yes, drinking in the sun. But it was a high quality of wine, sitting under the former Hartley's jam factory chimney, so the experience was a little different at least.

Following the wine we moved upstairs and watched a game of football, largely from my point of view because I wanted to ensure Paul’s winning streak continued. He had predicted a Spanish win, which was delivered in extra time, following a decidedly less interesting game than the third place play off, the outcome of which Paul had also correctly predicted. For those of you interested in the odds, the odds of Paul being correct this many times in a row were 128-1, with a couple of assumptions. Not bad going for an eight legged tank dweller. I am still intrigued as to what he is going to be up to following the world cup, and if a betting investment strategy is something to consider pursuing.

Finally Phil cooked us all a tasty dinner, green curry with prawns, and then we went and wilted quietly in the ongoing oppressive heat, which, I am told, is going to go away shortly, so we can all get back to complaining about where summer is and how you just don’t get the heat you used to. I’ll drink to that.

Technology – brilliant stuff

I am not a technology luddite by any means, in fact, I would say quite the opposite, but for various reasons, mostly involving living in a tent for a year like some sort of hermit, I have been away from changes, and in particular the rapid pace of Smartphone evolution.

I was, of course, aware of the iPhone - the book of Jobs is hard to ignore wherever you are - and certainly the technology has been available for longer than a year and a half. But quite how ubiquitous this device has become only became apparent when I got to London and met up with all my friends, where it turned out that everyone I know now seems to have one. And it was quite amazing really, a large group of people converging in London, and all it took for us to find each other was the Google maps location feature pinged between each other, and folks who weren’t so familiar with the intricacies of London parks were still able to locate us. No doubt the Google equivalent phone OS, Android, would have been just as good at this. Still, it was quite handy, and good to see that technology is moving beyond the gimmicky to the genuinely useful. The rest of the day, technology aside, progressed nicely, moving from park to bar, we even managed to take in a cocktail in one of my favourite London cocktail bars, the underground, and excessively warm Frevds. Worth checking out if you are ever in the area for the cheapest and deadliest Long Island Iced Teas known to man.

Whilst speaking of technology incidentally, I had some other encounters with its darker side. My brothers car, for example, vexed no doubt that he had left me in it whilst he went off on his final office based errand, severing his five year blackberry noose, decided to lock me inside and set the alarm off, convinced I must be up to no good. Phil returned and turned it off, naturally some time after some people had wandered past and given me odd looks. I was also nearly thrown out of Tesco's for using my camera, apparently capturing images in store is against store policy. Rock and roll folks.

The final piece of the technology update was a rapid fire walkthrough of some of the key Playstation 3 games that my friend Craig had acquired over the last year or so. I used to be an avid gamer, so it was nice to get a quick overview of what had come out. A quick blast through Heavy Rain, a game which is essentially an interactive film (and therefore hard to blast through, but we touched on some of the more interesting parts, such as where I had to hack my characters own finger off), some platforming fun with Nathan Drake in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and then a bit of a beat-em up in the massively huge scale God of War 3 (the scale really is quite dizzy in the game, as you battle the gods themselves. Also fairly violent it must be said, as I pounded Poseidon's Head into a bloody pulp.)

Finally we all settled down to some racing in the frenetically paced Split/Second, which seemed to involve less actual racing, and more blowing everything up around us. Tremendous fun.

This was all set to the backdrop of the hottest day of the year and the smells of gently barbequing meat, which we enjoyed at Craig’s new house, which was lovely. We sat outside for the rest of the day, and partook of some American beer to keep ourselves cool, before settling in for the evening to watch Germany defeat Uruguay in one of the better games of the tournament, keeping Paul safe in his tank to face another prediction day. He has tipped Spain to win tonight as I understand it, in a dramatic break from his usual role of only predicting Germany games. I expect a lottery prediction helpline to be set up shortly.

After this we had fun watching Zombieland, an enjoyable road trip movie with Woody Harrelson (and a brief cameo with Bill Murray which really made the film) and distressingly dark humour, before I hopped on the night bus back to my brothers house, and enjoyed listening to the leather capped Special Brew clutching passenger wax lyrical on a number of topics close to his heart. Night buses clearly have not evolved since I left.

Today will be a relaxing Sunday, watching the British Grand Prix, perhaps some scrambled eggs and then Phil plans to whip something up for dinner tonight. Should be good. Enjoy yours, whatever you are up to.

German tragedy, octopus victory

Well, I learnt a few things tonight. One of these things is always to check the safety of the reclining chair before sitting in it with a beer in hand. The second is always to check when informed that beer is going to be available, that it is the normal beer with actual alcohol in. And the third was to trust in predicting cephalopods, as Paul, the so called psychic octopus, who has now correctly predicted every game that Germany has partaken of in the world cup, correctly divined tonight's defeat against Spain. Hats off Paul. Perhaps you will avoid that Spanish paella dish for a while to come yet.

I had heard of a rival to Paul, some sort of radio show based hamster (clearly football punditry is open to random species in Germany), who had predicted a German win. I suspect he may be re-evaluating his career options.

So, Germany went out. To be honest, watching the game, they never really felt like they were in it. The team that destroyed England and Argentina didn’t seem to be on the pitch for most of the game. Spain were, from my point of view, the team that deserved to win it all the way through, and it could have been by a larger margin.

This, therefore, should mark an end to a lot of the football related news on this site. The German flags will come down, the car horns will be dampened, the street sounds of vuvuzelas will ring no more. Sad, but a semi final finish is nothing to sniff at. Next up, the world croquet championships. Assuming such a thing exists to report on…

More stuff

The ongoing review of stuff that Vera owns is still ongoing, I can report. This is actually reaping some dividends for me, it turns out that having a girlfriend who is taller than me means that most of her clothes fit me. Transgender dressing aside (only on the weekends), my clothing range has expanded. I even have some new trainers. The g-strings do chafe slightly however.

It turns out that stuff collection is a pretty big sport over here. Tomorrow a truck will pootle through town and pick up all the extra spare stuff that people no longer want (the pile outside our house is growing rapidly), and it seems that the piles outside other peoples houses are at least equal to the mountain outside ours. Is everyone from Walberberg about to up sticks and head to New Zealand I wonder? It seems unlikely. Although if anyone is in the market for an ancient pair of skis, there are some outside the house opposite. Bargain hunters are already roaming the streets, searching for choice items in other peoples discarded items. It’s like a giant furniture sale, except everything is free. Bring your own trailer.

In football related news, Germany take on Spain tomorrow in the semi-finals. Word has reached me that the psychic octopus, Paul, has predicted a Spanish victory. Thus far he has predicted every outcome of Germany’s world cup career successfully, so clearly his predictions cannot be taken with a pinch of salt. Even if the Argentineans suggested Paul may be better off being served as a paella. Bless. Still, hopes continue to be high, and we’ll be watching the game carefully. With any luck, both Germany and Holland will qualify for the final, then Europe will casually fall into war. Excellent.

Village culture

Some serious cultural happenings are occurring in the village of Walberberg this weekend, which conveniently happens to be the village I am living in. As we live on the main street, not much effort is required to actually observe the culture, other than peering out of the window, as you can see from the photo. The housemates and I are reluctant to get any more involved than this in the goings on, but this does seem sufficient to draw suspicious stares from those actually taking part. I stood outside the house for a brief moment of time to observe the passing parade of people dressed up, flag bearers, band members and so on, but the looks I was given did not indicate that I was welcome to be doing so. Traditional German culture and half naked beach bum sporting camera do not perhaps mix too well.

Still, it was interesting to watch. There is some reason for the parade, involving some weekend long festival occurring in the village, but we have not ventured further into understanding beyond that. It is sufficiently warm to just laze around feeling happily tickled by sun beams and ponder the delights of an afternoon swim in the lake, the culture is a nice bit of icing on a perfect cake, one doesn’t need to lick it to know that it tastes good. I have no idea where I was trying to go with that metaphor. If in doubt, change the subject.

We watched Germany trounce Argentina yesterday, a result which was somewhat unexpected, certainly with any of the German folk I know over here. Hopes are however starting to tentatively increase, the feeling is that Germany appearing in the final is no longer a distant dream. England being knocked out of the cup by the champions would somehow make that defeat feel slightly less tangy. Perhaps. Now that I am supporting Germany however they are doomed to failure. Ah well. We watched the game in the outside area whilst a tremendous lightning storm raged overhead, with accompanying torrential rain. Perfect BBQ weather you will no doubt agree. We then had a BBQ in the covered area, which resulted in a lot of smoke inhalation. So a classic BBQ all around, if lacking in sausage.

Finally, for now, I am popping over to London later this week to meet up with a whole swathe of people I have not seen in sometime, which I am really looking forward to. I expect there will be some drinking, some eating, and some merriment. Hopefully I’ll see some of you then :)

The realities of life

There are some things that are pretty much guaranteed, no matter where you are in the world, certain truths that are inescapable. Well, ok, this particular truth only usually applies to the UK, but I can now confirm that if one plans a BBQ in Germany, whatever the weather forecast may be divining, rain is going to appear sooner or later.

Today is Germany’s worldcup battle against Argentina in the world cup quarter final. I know, I said I wasn’t going to talk about football following the England departure, but it’s all around me here still, so it is almost impossible not to mention. The game is at four, on a Saturday, which means we planned to have a BBQ, enjoy the heat and watch the game over a few beers. A fine plan.

The day dawned rather beautifully at around 5.24am. I know this because it was far too hot too actually sleep, so instead I watched the sky turn to crimson out of the skylight. Yes, it is hot. Over thirty six degrees now, with some intense humidity to boot. People are wandering around perspiring gently. Unfortunately, it seems, the intense heat in leading towards some kind of huge thunderstorm. The humidity is oppressive, add a few crocodiles and we could be in the deep South of America, swatting mosquitoes and chewing on dead squirrels. Or whatever it is they do down there. My experiences are largely drawn from watching The Waterboy, and that episode of top gear.

So, intense heat, building thunderstorm, planned BBQ. A perfect combination. Luckily there is a large covered area so the BBQ can still go ahead, even if the rain comes (it has come, with accompanying giant rips of thunder, as I type). We popped to the shops to get supplies for the BBQ. I rather foolishly thought that doing this on blades would be a good idea. I can now reveal that exercise in this weather that doesn’t involve a large body of water is a serious error. Rivulets of sweat literally poured off me. I think I made a fine sight wandering around the thankfully air-conditioned supermarket.

Speaking of lakes, I went for a swim in the lake yesterday with Vera’s sister and one of the housemates (slight Big Brother moment there, my apologies), where we decided to swim across the lake and back. This is a little over 1000m total distance, which I can now confirm is a long long way to swim when there are no sides or bottom. We didn’t even get to have a break on the far shore as a swan family looked at us rather threateningly. And swans do seem somewhat more threatening when they loom over you. Anyway, lake swim complete, death by swan avoided.

I now sit under the covered area pondering the rain, chewing on water melon, pretending it is chunks of squirrel, and thinking that perhaps it may be about to cool down a bit, possibly even dropping below thirty five for a time, which would be ok by me.

Finally, I spent a while sorting out some of the videos from the Australia trip, and these are now on youtube for your viewing pleasure. Find them on my youtube channel, here.

Angleterre no more

And so with almost inevitable finality, England have exited the world cup. No doubt reams of exciting content will be written with opinion, but from where I was sitting, the better team won. Salut, Germany.

Watching it in Germany was pretty interesting. The build up was all about England’s star player, Wayne Rooney, although they did take a bit of time to reflect on the 1966 world cup. The other people in the room were clearly all supporting Germany, and it certainly feels very weird to be supporting a team against such odds. The noises were all wrong, when I felt there should be cheering and excitement, there were instead noises of panic. And indeed vice versa. Of course, there weren’t too many noises of excitement from the England supporting side.

Celebrations were somewhat muted to start with, as I think folks didn’t want to be too in my face about how badly England were doing, but by the end, when it became clear no recovery was in sight, the muting was removed. I was asked on occasion why England fans were dressed as Knights or Bomber Pilots, I had no particularly brilliant riposte lined up. We like celebrating death during football presumably.

After the “Goal that wasn’t”, the German commentators had an excellent debate about implementing video technology, which was almost heated. I was given the impression that otherwise the talking heads were your standard talking head, great at saying nothing over long periods of time. The goal that wasn’t was clearly acknowledged to have been a goal by everyone I was watching it with, and the relief after the next two goals went in was palpable, like they had earnt the win rather than won on a poor decision.

Sure, England may have played differently had they come out 2-2 at half time, but I can’t really see it having ended any other way. Germany face Argentina next, which may actually be a real challenge.

I expect the fluttering flags and other England supporters paraphernalia will now be being packed away for our next footballing attempt, by which point our players will be in wheelchairs. Don’t lose heart though folks, we’ve still got Murray and Wimbledon to keep us entertained. Oh, and the English representatives aren’t doing half badly in Formula 1. Over here the flags still fly as Germany head deservedly to a quarter final spot. Good luck to them!

Of web browsers and Wimbledon

Life online used to be a lot different. The internet largely consisted of websites hosted by geocities and if you wanted to access these online horrors you fired up Netscape Navigator through your dial up AOL connection (keyword: rubbish) which you probably got for free via one of those AOL discs that for a time seemed to take up 90% of all postal mail, and all was, well, pretty pointless and crap.

Now, however, we have choice all over the place, and the internet is so common in everyday life that we take it for granted. I started off my internet browsing career with Netscape Navigator (ah, that little wheel), moved onto Internet Explorer, then to Opera, to Firefox, and finally to Chrome where I am currently residing until something better comes along.

I am telling you this because today Chrome was exceptionally useful. The router, that box of magic that connects everyone in the house to the internet, had had a failed update applied to it, which had turned it from a wonderful box of trickery into a box of black plastic which flashed error lights woefully. Normally you could just pop online and find some solution (a challenge in itself when the thing that is broken provides the internet connection – luckily in this case a backup router was available) but the router, being German, and pretty much only available in Germany, only really had help offered by internet users in German. As previously mentioned, my German is pretty poor, so far I can tell people to go faster (all that watching the world cup in German is starting to pay off) and find beer, but complex router instructions are beyond me. Which is where Chrome comes along. Fire up a page in a foreign language and Chrome will helpfully ask you if you want it translated, which it does quickly and efficiently, thus saving the day. And so the router was saved, hurrah. Chrome is also pretty darn quick and secure compared to other browsers, if you haven’t given it a go yet, you can grab it from Google here.

So that was web browsing. We watched two critical world cup matches yesterday, at least critical if you are either English or German. The curse of my support seemed to have been lifted, as both England and Germany won, the problem with this is that now England and Germany will face each other in the next round. Great stuff, if you happen to be supporting England whilst living in Germany. It will most certainly make for an interesting Sunday afternoon. Plucky Australia put up a brave fight but went out (they did get their first female Prime Minister though) while the USA also went through. Tremendous stuff all round.

In Tennis news, Wimbledon has hosted it’s (and in fact, probably tennis’s) longest ever game, with a fifth set between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut going all the way up to 59 games each before being paused for bad light, after two days worth of play. A third day will hopefully conclude the match today, but who can tell. Maybe it will never end. The new record for number of aces in any match is certainly going to be tough to beat in future though…

Bonn voyage

As the incredibly humorous title would suggest, we popped into Bonn for the afternoon, which was rather jolly. Some tasks had to be performed first, and then we were free to wander the city at our will. I erroneously described Bonn as a town earlier, this was certainly not correct. Anywhere with a university building quite as large and impressive as Bonn has certainly should qualify for city status.

Bonn, I also learnt (culture was literally oozing out of the walls today), was the birthplace of Beethoven, and some relevant Beethoven knowledge was laid down upon us. A plaque marked the house he was born in, a statue of the man himself was found in one of the squares. The city overall was incredibly pretty, with large parts of it pedestrianised, featuring cobbled streets and wonderful buildings, as well as large park areas. People were  basking in the sun outside the huge university area, some of them even going to far as to remove their t-shirts. The wonderful rule allowing you to drink freely in public places was obvious, with people happily quaffing from bottles of their favourite beers. No attempts at loutishness were observed.

Today also marked the start of the world cup, so it felt only right to find ourselves a spot at an outdoor area which featured numerous screens as well as large glass pitchers of beer to watch the start of the tournament. Even for a non-football fan such as myself, the location was tough to argue with, and the game worth a watch. There were even some Mexican fans who I suspect were probably disappointed not to come away with a win. Such is life.

Finally we left Bonn, having taken a number of photos, drunk a bit of beer, and seen a number of churches. It’s not too far away, so I suspect we’ll be popping back. Tomorrow we’re heading out to a birthday party somewhere,  where I can only pray someone with a TV set won’t mind me watching the England game. On Sunday, we’re heading into the nearby town to watch Germany vs. Australia. I’m currently undecided as to which team to support ;)

That football thing

I admit that my knowledge of football is seriously limited, mostly drawn from the Fast Show sketches of Ron Manager and playing for the school team when I was about seven. However, I am aware that a world football (or soccer if you’re from one of those nations that calls it by that name) tournament is about to be upon us, so I have enlisted the help of my English friend Craig to provide an entirely unbiased* overview of what this thing is all about. With any luck, I’ll be able to get more guest writers for this blog thing and before I know it I’ll be kicking back, drinking cocktails by the pool and eyeing up my bevy of maids as the money rolls in. Or something. Anyway, the rest of this post is from Craig. Cheers dude.
*May be a lie.


Three Lions lose in South Africa
This may sound like the title of a new Disney classic (or a breaking Sky News Report) but I assure you it’s not. Every four years something momentous happens - I’m not talking about the Olympics or Leap Years, I’m talking about the FIFA World Cup, being held this year in South Africa.

You’d have to be blind to miss the fact that it’s coming. Everywhere you go you can see national flags flying, all the pubs have banners up advertising the games to come and the whole country is starting to buzz in anticipation.

As a football fan you always remember the first World Cup you watch. I have hazy memories of England in Mexico in 1986 with the infamous Maradona “hand of God” but for me the first real World Cup was Italia 90. I had the shirt, the Panini Sticker Book with a huge bundle of swaps - I even managed to complete the Esso Coin Collection for England and Scotland (which I recently found out is worth a massive £5 on eBay – great). The evenings were spent in the park trying to recreate Lineker, Platt and Gazza with a football, nowadays it’s less park and more pub and the closest I come to impersonating England's current footballers is stumbling out of the bar in the early hours hammered. Italia ‘90 was the furthest England have been since that day in ’66, again we played West Germany and this time in 1990 we had Gazza’s tears and a heart breaking defeat on penalties, the final one missed by the fantastically mulleted Waddle.

So what chance have England got this year then?

It’s hard to judge as there are three or four other teams that have the potential to be World Champions. Brazil and Spain have to go down as the favourites, Spain being the current European Champions and having quality in every position. Argentina will also be a threat if Maradona can get his act together, pick a stable side and avoid falling out with everyone. Finally there’s always the Germans, they have a very young squad this year of talented players. I think Euro 2012 will belong to them but this year I’m not sure they’ll have the experience to win the whole tournament.

In England, as always, we fill ourselves full of optimism before the tournament starts, the press will usually do anything they can to undermine some players in the team, we’ll get one crucial injury (Ferdinand already!) before finally we accept that we aren’t as good as we think we are as we crash out again on pens. Our “Golden Generation” is getting less gold and more grey and they won’t have a much better chance of winning it. The key to England doing well is Rooney staying fit (and on the pitch), so with a little luck and determination we will hopefully be celebrating the knighting of Sir Rooney in the New Years Honours!

By Craig. Findingtheuniverse football correspondent extraordinaire.