World Cup Hockey in Köln

SATURDAY: This weekend we were off to Köln to catch an exhibition game for the World Cup of Hockey. It was Dutschland vs Russland (Germany vs Russia). We left on Saturday morning on the ICE, Germany's super fast train. It got up to 298km/h - pretty fast, for sure. We got into Köln and saw the most important sights - the huge Dom, which is over 150m tall and took over 600 years to build. And then we saw the chocolate factory, which included free samples.

SUNDAY: Next day was the game. We actually got to sleep in though - the first time I haven't had to get up early (cause of work, travel, etc) in about 3 weeks or something crazy. We were definitely prepared for the game though - German flags, Canadian flags, Canucks flags, facepaint, and hockey sticks as flagpoles. After we put on the facepaint we realized we were late, so we ended up running through the streets of Köln waving our flags and yelling "CANADA" or "DEUTSCHLAND" all the way to Kölnarena. The game was pretty good. The Russians completely outnumbered the German fans, but as the token Canadians we were way louder than anyone else, so it sort of evened out.

The highlight was in the first intermission, when Kung and me got on the Jumbotron waving our Canadian flags. Then they put up some text that said something like "Ihr seid falsch" over our picture - "You are wrong." The rest of the game was great, the Russians didn't really try that hard, our goalie was way better, and Germany managed to tie it 3-3, which was probably the best we could've hoped for. After the game, Colin was running around shouting "Canada first, Deutschland second, Russia sucks." Well, some Russian took exception to that; he hit Colin, kicked Evan, and tried to burn Evan's flag. They got the flag back relatively unharmed, and nobody was seriously hurt. But my supervisor warned us about "Russian hockey hooligans", and it turns out he was right! Anyways, we got back to the hostel, and it was basically time to go, so we just got on the next ICE to Wuerzburg. Next weekend is the Bavarian Alps, weather permitting.