Travel Europe - Food for the itinerant soul

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Germany in Perspective

July 5th 2006 19:33

Ok, so I was wrong about Italy. And now, Germany seems like the worst possible place to be right now. While Germany were still in the Cup, everyone was all cheery smiles and 'Here have das free stein'. Now that they're out - and the chips are down - it's like the Wall never came down. I tried to get on a bus today, and a German man chested me out of the way. Must have been from the East.

Now, not only do I feel empty about Australia playing no role in this unifying game, this balletic samba, but my Last Great Hope is out too. Leaving me with bile. Caustic bitter dissolving glibness, swirling around my gums. And just when things seem like they couldn't get any more shocking - here's a prediction: Portugal to beat France. Portugal to win the whole damn thing! Shall I skip over there then? Shall Lisbon be my next destination, so I can suck up the tide of euphoria, and find the Last Kabbalist sloshing cocktails with Madonna?

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Dortmund - Beer Love-In

July 5th 2006 01:37

Dortmund is actually known as Westphalia's "green metropolis", because nearly half the municipal territory consists of waterways, woodland and green spaces with parks – such as Westfalenpark and Rombergpark. Must-sees. Otherwise, there is absolutely no reason why you might want to go to Dortmund – except maybe to see the World’s biggest Christmas tree, formed by stacking hundreds of trees into the shape of a pyramid. To me, that sounds remarkably pointless, since you don’t make a taller person, simply by putting other people on top of their head. Funnily enough, in Catalonia, people-stacking is actually a sport in which Spaniards called Castellers form human castles by stacking people into various rude shapes and the occasional Gaudi replica. There is even a region in Germany called Castell! Perhaps that’s where the people of Dortmund got it from…

To be fair to Dortmund, it does offer beer. That, for many travellers, is a selling point. Unless you know that the soft pilsner, Dortmunder Union Export (Das Original), once the ambrosia of Germany's largest brewery, was amalgamated with pale imposters to form Brinkoff’s Brewery. I mean Dortmunder is a name you can shout – and bring fear into the hearts and minds of peace-loving Germans. But Brinkoff’s? Please. Haven’t they heard of détente? The Cold War’s over – we went to the brink, and there was nothing there; just a few seedy Prussians playing chess.
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From Stuttgart to Dortmund

July 4th 2006 00:59

Stuttgart was fun. We had good times. Things were going just swimmingly until Part Two of the Italian Job. Not a conniving heist involving good looking jewel thiefs; not an action-packed remake with sharp camera work and glazed onlookers; not three Mini Coopers burning round the laneways of Venice, ducking in and out of imaginary witches’ hats, spinning like draddles on Chanukah, donuting out around infamous busts of Italian artisans….

I’m talking about the great thievery of the 21st Century: the second fall of man, when darkness befell the verdant fields of Mother Nature’s wonder, when wily smog of Milanese origin encompassed the Garden of Eden and Adam, experiencing mild déjà vu, took the apple from Eve’s sweaty little hand, and tasted the nectar of evil and despair, insouciant free will, sybaritic eternal suffering. When Lucifer himself, Fabio Grosso, slithered his way into the path of the unsuspecting angelic Lucas Neill, a man of great heart, honesty and piety, and fell over him, metamorphosing into a gazelle struck mid-air by a gamehunter’s dart - the plight of biblical man was tarnished for a second time. Forget the Second Coming. Forget Messhiachs and other gutteral inflections. Stuttgart will never be the same again. Its rich soil has been infected - dessicated – by the scourge of Azurri guile.
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