july 2nd

a long day, but a good one. bruce slept in again while benjamin went to breakfast and had a nice little conversation with the lovely fräulein who runs the place. we needed to pick up a few things (benjamin's tennis racket, most importantly) before everyone else comes (tomorrow), so we left for brannenburg, the city about 30 minutes by foot north. of course, we didn't think too much about timing, so naturally the sport shop was closed for lunch when we got there. instead of waiting an hour and forty-five minutes, we decided benjamin'll just go tomorrow while bruce sleeps. on our way back home, bruce got a dönner and we bought a couple of healthy things for the others and alcohol for brent. we dropped all the stuff off and went straight to the tennis courts to play our daily match, leaving directly from there to go swimming at the badesee. with only 20 minutes or so before the start of the brazil/netherlands game, we didn't swim too long. we watched the game at the sportplatz with the locals, drank a couple beers each and had fun juggling during halftime. after the surprise ending, we wanted italian for dinner, so ... we went back to brannenburg to the restaurant we visited three days ago (the waiter that served us has waved to us every time we walked by). you may think that a 30-minute walk is a bit too long to make just for dinner (especially since we'd already gone there and back once before today), but it's not like it's an ugly walk. here's benjamin about 15 minutes in:

dinner was great, we made sure to eat some vegetables, and we were back in flintsbach by the beginning of the second game, uruguay/ghana. we also watched this game at patrick's, but this time without beer (we'd had enough today). by the end of regular time, it had gotten cold enough to think about leaving, so we rushed home to catch the extra time plus penalty kicks in our room. and now it's over, we're emotionally and physically drained, and brent, boo and mo come tomorrow. oh, it's gonna be fun.