july 11th

your guest blogger today, for the first part at least, is der martin kirchberger. at about 8:00, bruce was awoken by the phone in our room. it was patrick, the owner of the kneipe at the soccer fields. he had a tennis emergency -- a 4-person team from an hour away had just arrived to play flintsbach's 4-person team. problem was, 1 of flintsbach's players couldn't make it, so they were short one man. he asked bruce if he'd play, which of course was easy to agree to. when bruce got to the courts some 10 minutes later, patrick quickly took bruce aside and explained that he was martin kirchberger, a flintbach native for more than 10 years. he made it clear to everyone that bruce was simply a nickname, so when patrick mistakenly called bruce bruce, they knew why. because of martin's rank in the town, bruce played 1st on the team -- meaning, he had to play the best player from the other village. his name was michi, a 16-year-old who couldn't have been 5 feet tall. of course, as a 29-year-old playing a 16-year-old, bruce was pretty confident as he waltzed out on the clay courts, only to get absolutely eviscerated 6-0, 6-2. the whole time, patrick's saying it's okay, no worries, you're doing fine. turns out, the 16-year-old is ranked 5th in bayern and that the remaining 3 players on the team were happy not to play him.

after 4 matches of singles, of which 3 were lost miserably to the opponents, we played two matches of doubles to finish up the day. bruce and his partner manuel did not get matched up against the wunderkind (who won his doubles match 6-1, 6-1), so he salvaged a little pride and served the hell out of a 6-1, 6-2 win. when all was said and done, flintsbach lost 102-100 (total games), so a couple points here and there would've done it. it didn't seem to matter to anyone else, however; they all happily got in their cars and went drinking together. bruce would've gone with, but having already spent 4 hours playing tennis (during which time benjamin waited in the room, read and slept) he decided to bail and hang out with his brother.

what we did next was awesome. christine had told us of a dorffest (a little village festival) in mühlbach (a tiny village between oberaudorf and kiefersfelden) in which her family was participating. benjamin and bruce got on the train, walked the 30 minutes to mühlbach, and got there just in time for a couple brass quartet pieces and a stein of beer. the fankhausers (christine's parents and brother) were happy to see bruce again and get to know benjamin, and they invited us to georg's birthday party (christine's brother) on the 26th. after eating nothing for breakfast or lunch and playing 4 sets of tennis, needless to say bruce's 3 beers (a stein's worth in the states) went to his head. benjamin didn't play tennis that morning, but he had 2 steins -- one normal and one raddler (half beer half fanta), so he was just as happy as bruce. we said our goodbyes and lumbered back towards oberaudorf, stopping at the lügsteinsee for a quick swim and another beer (why? why???). we made it to the train station, went one stop back to flintsbach and waited our beer out in our room for a while. for dinner before the finals, we went to our favorite, falkensteiner: benjamin ordered liver noodle soup, a matzaball-looking mess of liver and pasta in some kind of broth; bruce ordered jägerschnitzle, a tasty piece of pork covered in a mushroom sauce with spätzle to mix in. nothing alcoholic this meal, that's for sure. we had planned on going to patrick's to watch the finale, but as tired as we were after dinner, we decided to watch it from the comfort of our own beds, which was nice. we both kind of wanted the netherlands to win, but the way it turned out wasn't too bad. spain deserved it, in this author's opinion.