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Author Topic: Germany 2006
Wilf Day
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Babbler # 3276

posted 06 December 2003 05:48 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
A modest proposal: the BabblefootballfansflatKassel.

Let's take this from the top.

Every football (ok, soccer) fan dreams of going to the World Cup. For those who've always wanted to see Germany, or to see it again, when better than the 2006 World Cup?

A million football fans from around the world will join two million more from Germany at the best games of the "game of the world." FIFA's efforts in the last quarter of a century to help the nations of the football world to compete on an equal footing will bear fruit.

But how to arrange a month in Germany from June 9 to July 9, 2006, with games in 12 cities, starting in Munich and ending in Berlin?

Hotels will be very pricey. Maybe a bunch of us could pool our resources: the babblefootballfans. (When in Germany, get used to the Germannounclumps.)

We could get a "holiday flat" for a month, in a central city (but not one of the 12 host cities) and get German Rail Passes to go to afternoon games, sightsee for a couple of hours, and have dinner on the train back to the babblefootballfansflat.

Someplace like Kassel in north Hesse. Kassel is a city of 195,000 people, a university town with lots of attractions itself.

From Kassel most games are an average of two hours and 18 minutes away by direct ICE train. A typical day would be a Hamburg game: leave 10:34 a.m. on ICE 682 (full of football fans from Munich and Nurnberg) or 11:22 a.m. on ICE 78 (full of football fans from Switzerland, Freiburg and Frankfurt), arrive at Hamburg at 12:53 or 1:34 p.m. two hours or two and a half hours before game time (a little sightseeing), game at 3:30 p.m., over by 5:30 p.m., train home at 7:02 p.m. with some of the Nurnberg fans or 8:07 p.m. with some of the Frankfurt fans, back in Kassel 9:23 p.m. or 10:23 p.m.

The babblefootballfansflatKassel.

Larger flats there rent for about 400 Euros, ($635 Canadian) a week. Since no games are in Kassel these prices may hold true.

Then there's the game tickets, a bit cheaper than in 2002. In Japan and Korea they cost from $60 up, an average of $200, and from $450 to $1,100 for the final. The prices in Germany 2006 will start at 35 Euros ($55 Canadian) for the 47 first-round games. This fixed price covers all processing costs, taxes and the free use of local public transport on the day of the game. Tickets in the cheap price band will be available at 45 Euros ($71) for Round of Sixteen games and third place play-off, 55 Euros ($87) for the quarter-finals, and 65 Euros ($103) for the Opening Game. Ticket prices will begin at 90 Euros ($142) for the semi-finals and 120 Euros ($190) for the Final.

Still, not many are likely to want to pay for tickets to all 19 or so afternoon games, and the evening games will be only on TV unless one stays overnight in a hotel, missing the whole point of the flat. So those who go can share the excitement with those who don't. As a University town, Kassel has good pubs as well as "a host of internationally renowned art treasures, historic monuments, cultural and educational institutions, and endless parks." Its city council has a left majority: 26 Social Democrats, 12 Greens, and two left-socialists, 40 of the 71 seats, not counting an independent ethnic woman. It's 1 hour 38 minutes by train from Frankfurt airport.

Only three or four teams from North America and the Caribbean will go to the 2006 World Cup. Canada and Guatemala are not favourites to rank ahead of Costa Rica and Honduras 1n 2004, and even then we might not get past the last preliminary round in 2005. But whether Canada makes it to Germany or not, it will be a great World Cup.

Tickets go on sale in early 2005. We've got a year to get this mad dream off the ground.

[ 07 December 2003: Message edited by: Wilfred Day ]


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Willowdale Wizard
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posted 06 December 2003 06:18 PM      Profile for Willowdale Wizard   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
i'm in!
From: england (hometown of toronto) | Registered: Jan 2003  |  IP: Logged
lagatta
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posted 06 December 2003 06:37 PM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Sure sounds like fun. Do you know the town of Kassel? Is it a good place to study German?
From: Se non ora, quando? | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged
jeff house
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posted 06 December 2003 06:54 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Kassel??

This year I had an articling student from a German Law School. she returned to finish school in November. She lives right there in Kassel as we speak.

Here's what I know. It was entirely rebuilt after WWII, and is thus not very picturesque. It is built on a relatively high area, and is therefore almost the coldest spot in Germany.

According to her, "no one" speaks English there, so in that sense in might be good for German studies. Every five years, they have some kind of massive art show which brings in thousands of visitors from Japan. That is its chief present claim to fame.

Previous claim: In about 1929, someone broke into the local Nazi headquarters and then released a vast trove of documents. The documents established unequivocally that the Nazis were planning to gain power legally, not democratically, and then turn Germany into a one party dictatorship. The documents mentioned concentration camps, destruction of unions, and proposed murder of communists, and socialists and "non-German elements.


From: toronto | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
spindoctor
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posted 06 December 2003 07:27 PM      Profile for spindoctor   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Kassel is a very central location but not a very "fun" place to be...there's not a lot going on. Neither is it a very picturesque place....but you're right. It is very well connected by rail and bus to all the major cities in Germany....

You could really do a lot worse, I'll say that...


From: Kingston, Jamaica.....oh alright....Kingston, Ontario | Registered: Jul 2001  |  IP: Logged
DrConway
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posted 06 December 2003 07:52 PM      Profile for DrConway     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Seems to be a very expensive proposition, though. If I had an extra grand to throw around and a valid passport, I'd be in like Flynn, as the expression goes.
From: You shall not side with the great against the powerless. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Wilf Day
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Babbler # 3276

posted 07 December 2003 03:30 PM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
"Kassel is located in the picturesque Waldeck countryside of central Germany. It is well known for its parks, which are spectacular examples of art and contain monumental statues, castles, waterfalls, and lakes. The Hercules monument is the city's trademark. Nearby are Marburg, with a famous gothic church and castle, and plenty to explore in the alleyways of the picturesque Old Town; Fulda, a baroque town; and Goslar, a medieval town in the Harz mountains.

"If you are familiar with Grimm's fairy tales, you already are familiar with Kassel. Some 170 years ago the Brothers Grimm collected their fairy tales and legends in Kassel and the surrounding villages. (Just north of Kassel is Sababurg's Sleeping Beauty's Castle, a picturesque castle that dates from 1490 and was restored beginning in 1959 after a century in ruin.) They later took professorships at the University of Göttingen, but were expelled from the university (and Jacob from the state of Hanover) in 1837 for participating in the Göttinger Seven protest against the suspension of the state constitution by Ernest Augustus, king of Hanover." Our kind of people.

quote:
Originally posted by spindoctor:
Kassel is a very central location but not a very "fun" place to be...there's not a lot going on. Neither is it a very picturesque place.

As compared with what other central location? Can anyone suggest a better one?

Frankfurt is very central, with lots going on. The Organizing Committee for Germany 2006 has its main office in Frankfurt. It's also one of the 12 game cities, and the site of one of the quarter-finals. It's airport is the busiest in Europe. It will be bung full of football fans. Rents for holiday flats there will go through the roof. Kassel is the largest city between Frankfurt and Hannover.

Göttingen has only 127,000 people, even smaller than Kassel. Marburg has 79,000. Giessen has 71,000. Fulda has 63,000.

Bielefeld has 321,000 people in the city proper, and 1,423,000 in its metropolitan area including the nearby small cities of Gütersloh, Minden, Detmold, Herford, and eight smaller towns. Likely lots going on in Bielefeld. And it's handier to games in Cologne, Dortmund and Gelsenkirchen. Unfortunately, it's not on a rail line to the south, so you have to go to Cologne or Hannover and change. This makes it much farther by rail to Frankfurt, Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Kaiserslauten, Leipzig and Munich, which now take an average of 4 hours 23 minutes to reach. These differences don't cancel each other out, they add an average of 35 minutes onto the travel time to the game cities.

As for picturesque places, Germany is full of them. Being in a central location with a rail pass, I would go to one whenever I wasn't going to a game. Frankfurt is one hour 22 minutes by train from Kassel.

quote:
[Kassel] is built on a relatively high area, and is therefore almost the coldest spot in Germany.

Since we're talking June 9 to July 9, this sounds like a plus to me. BBC World Weather says the average temperature in Kassel at that time ranges from 12 to 22, 2 degrees cooler than Frankfurt.

quote:
According to her, "no one" speaks English there, so in that sense in might be good for German studies.

I didn't see this as a German immersion trip, but perhaps that would be a plus? Europa-Kolleg in Kassel is a favourite spot for summer studies in German, in July and August.


From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged

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