Saturday 21 June 2014 Bochum

Cool Cloudy 18C

After a late night at the wedding reception, we slept in a little this morning. Around 11, we headed over to a restaurant in Lunen for breakfast and spent an entertaining brunchtime convincing German palates that Vegemite was indeed palatable - mixed results ....

Christof's father thinks it may be making his gray hair darker and himself possibly younger, while Christof's older brother isn't having anything to do with the stuff. The rest of the 15 or so local people at the brunch were exceedingly polite when Tarina went around the large table with a plate of vegemite on toast although there was a lot of draining of glasses and coffee cups around the same time :)

We have been made to feel very welcome and special and have enjoyed the hospitality of Christof and Nadine's extended families. After brunch there were some emotional farewells as Karen (Nadines' mum) and Ursula (Christof's mum) said goodbye. One polite gentleman asked me if all Australians were as nice as me. I hastened to assure him that they weren't. I told him that they were all much nicer :)

With lots of hugs we will see Christof and Nadine back in Sydney after the rest of our holiday in Europe and Michael and Claudia shortly after.

Still feeling a little seedy and in need of some fresh air, we decided to drive over to Dusseldorf for a little sightseeing. We waved to Mercedes and Vodafone on the way in and went for stroll along the river bank by the old town.

You may not be aware in Australia, but there is a thing called the World Cup going on somewhere in South America which brings Europe to a standstill at 6:00 p.m., 9:00 p.m. and midnight each night at the moment. To make a long story short, Germany was scheduled to play Ghana tonight and many many German fans down by the Rhine River in Dusseldorf were working on getting to an initial stage of alcoholic paralysis from which a suitable standstill could be launched at 9:00 p.m. when the Germany game started. This involves much beer, eating, chanting and singing, lead by grown men dressed as priests standing on bar tables and singing football songs, Simple really....

After a pleasant stroll, we decided to leave them & head back to Bochum.

We had a bar meal at the hotel tonight while watching said game. Surprisingly (to the German fans, it seems) Germany was held to 2-2 draw - a very exciting and close match.

In contrast, the streets around the hotel was quite quiet afterwards (maybe something to do with the hospital over the road?) - in distinct contrast to the celebrations after the previous German win while we were in Frankfurt.

A bit of packing and off to bed - Budapest tomorrow!