Wilkommen im Hamburg!

It's 9:27 p.m. German time, and 3:27 p.m. Eastern, and I haven't slept in about 28 hours, so forgive me if this post lacks coherency.

The good news, however, is that the fine folks at British Airways delivered my bag to the Hamburg apartment about an hour ago, thus making this morning's unpleasantness at the baggage claim a distant, irrelevant memory.

Anyway, Hamburg is, at first glance, a stunning waterfront city, with several lakes and the Elbe River running through it. Granted, it helps that the weather was downright San Diegan today. But it's still an impressive European city.

And, as you might guess, it's mad about the fussball. Fittingly, the first thing you see out the left-side windows of the plane upon landing is a flag of HSV, the local side in the Bundesliga, flapping proudly in an airport abutter's backyard.

The city was abuzz tonight for Germany's 4-2 win over Costa Rica (with a stunning clinching goal by Torsten Frings, whose bit of cheating ensured that the U.S. wouldn't reach the semifinals four years ago. After that goal tonight, Herr Frings, all is forgiven.), but fans from all over the world have converged here: Argentines, Ivoreans (their nations play here tomorrow), Ecuadorans, Poles, Italians, Americans, Swedes, just to name a few.

As for the U.S., they held a press gathering at the team hotel (which is guarded by armed cops) in which individual players sat in roundtable interviews with small groups of reporters for25-30 minutes. Good stuff, even if one Italian journalist was intent on asking U.S. players what they thought of the killing of Zarqawi. He then expressed astonishment that they seemed to be glossing over the subject, as if he thought he were interviewing CNN's Peter Bergen or something.

I guess it's a better question than, "If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?" Or "If you were a gay bee, would you love me." Yes, Jon Lovitz was funny once.