Greetings from the business center at the City Partner Augusta Hotel in Mannheim, our home base for the U.S.-Italy match today in Kaiserslautern (it's an hour away by train).
Yesterday we took another train down here from Hamburg, went to the U.S. press conference at the Fritz-Walter-Stadion (a very cool setting -- the stadium is on a mountainside, with a great view of Kaiserslautern), then came "home" to Mannheim. We had a great dinner at a Greek restaurant (Opa!) right across the street, then talked fußball (I finally get to use the accent mark! -- by the way, the ß is pronounced as a double-S) with some England fans and a couple of U.S. college kids in town for the match.
The other highlight yesterday was being interviewed by Spanish TV for a story they were doing about the American team´s decision to stay at Ramstein Air Base, located 20 miles from Kaiserslautern. Anything the team does that´s remotely related to the military is going to raise eyebrows in Europe due to the distaste for the Iraq war, but the mini-furor about where the team spends the night was a bit silly. Anyway, I told the Spanish guy that we´re Americans and we can do whatever we want, wherever we want, and to whomever we want, and that if he didn´t like it, he could take it up with Senor Rumsfeld.
Or I just said that the Americans were just staying at the base for convenience reasons and that they weren´t trying to provoke anyone or make a statement about their sense of security. I forget -- it was a long day ...
Anyway, I´m hogging the computer, so I´ll take my leave. More from K-Town when we get there.
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