Well we made it to Berlin to be greeted by our Swedish friend Sven who lives there. With Sweden playing in the World Cup in Berlin last week, there was the biggest gathering of Swedes outside Sweden ever... Personally this was verified by the fact we were staying with 7 of them, great bunch of people. Instantly we were greeted with "Throw another shrimps (sic) on the barbie!" and also a very cheesy song by a 7 year old Swede about Sweden´s best soccer player, which had become basically a national anthem...
Berlin involved plenty of soccer, doners and beer... also bar hopping in East Berlin was fun - our favourite bar name was one called "White Trash"... we are watching almost every World Cup match which unfortunately doesn´t leave a huge amount of time for sightseeing... but I think I will return to hang out with Sven in quieter times in August. We went to the Sweden game which was great, at the 1936 Berlin Olympic stadium, a little infamous for being built by the Nazis and used as a propaganda tool by Hitler. But putting this aside it is a magnificent stadium and filled with yellow Swedes it was quite a sight! World cup fever has hit and 500,000 people were on the streets of Berlin each night watching the games in "Fan Fest" areas, amazing.
Then it was down to Munich Fan Fest to see the Aussies go down bravely to Brazil, and this was our final night of a week without a bed (hostels are at ridiculous prices and/or booked out, so we´ve been sleeping in the car, in Sven´s kitchen or balcony, not good but not as bad as you might think).
So it was a relief to get to Innsbruck, a town in an absolutely spectacular setting in the Austrian Alps. This morning we hit the rapids for a bit of white water rafting, and succeeded in flipping the raft on the very first white water section, we loved it (however the water was still pretty cold and we all had a split-second moment of panic)! A wiener schinitzel for lunch today (gotta do all the cliches) and it´s off for more soccer tonight.
Go Aussies on Thursday in Stuttgart! Thankfully that will be our final night in Hotel Peugeot Partner.
Mick
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