Good times here in Berlin. Germany are playing Ecuador across town in a few minutes, and I think we’re planning to head to one of the giganto Fan Fest locations. Some quick hits:

–The pre-game atmosphere, hours before the game, was pretty impressive. People were banging drums on top of buses, and they were playing Wagner at the mall. And these are Germans we’re talking about here – not usually given to this sort of display. Pretty good stuff.

–In terms of World Cup fashion, it’s apparently become completely acceptable to walk around wearing your team’s flag as a cape, even if they’re not actually playing that day. It’s all the rage.

–I’ll admit that even I was shocked by how late this town stays open. Shocked. It’s like Vegas with clocks. And it was a Monday.

–After poking around for a couple days, we finally located a gigantic Haribo stand. Gummy fruit salad, anyone?

–On the topic of food, our crew caved last night and ate vegetables. I think we were actually kind of desperate for something green. Salads all around. (Though I did manage to eat some fried pork cutlet with my salad.)

–In the random coincidence department, the guy sitting across from us on the train yesterday was wearing a t-shirt from Linda’s Tavern, which is the name of my rec league team in C@L. Hilarious.