WC2006: Exclamation Marks The Spot

DERAG HOTEL AND LIVING, NUREMBERG (9:06am local time) -- Getting from Bingen to Nuremberg was remarkably painless. Being a DB vet and traveling with two other people - my friend's wife and their son headed back to Cologne and on to Chicago first thing in the morning - made things much smoother.

The hotel was a good find, and one for which I can take no credit. It's oriented toward long-term stays, so among the amenities are laundry facilities, and I had been planning on doing some laundry right about this point of the trip, but hadn't figured out how. I love it when a plan comes together.

There's also a tent out back where we took in the Spain-Tunisia match. The enclosed space ended up being prescient, as the thunderstorms all over Germany - and the rain was coming down hard during the televised match from Stuttgart - finally reached us around 10:30pm. This forced the wait staff to scramble, yipping the flaps of the tent until we were enclosed in a protective bubble while we waited out the storm. Fortunately, there was a beer tap and bar inside the tent, so we could have held out for days if need be.

It was a pretty quick and violent storm. The night before, the news showed thunderstorm icons over most of Germany, but just an exclamation point over Nuremberg. Still not sure what that meant.

After the rain stopped, we watched a little bit of hotel TV, including a hilarious segment on Sky Sports out of the UK totally mocking France's lackluster performance so far. We thought we might be able to watch game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals live at 2am, but that was not to be.