The Day Of Our Lives

Well what can you say that can desrcribe the past 24 hours? Whatever we write here will not do any justice to what we all agree (outside our wedding day) was the best day of our lives.

The day began bright and early, leaving the hotel at 6.15am. A short walk to the station and we boarded the local train to meet up with the "Aussie Express" which was a 20 carriage long train to take us to Kaiserslautern. You could sense it was going to be a huge day with the platform waiting for the train was a sea of gold and everyone was singing and dancing.

The front carriage had been converted into a huge Aussie disco and the music was piped through the entire train with splashings of Cold Chisel, John Farnham and Men at Work.... just the tonic to fire up the crowd. We cracked our first beer at 9 oclock, more to settle the nerves than anything else.

When we arrived at our destination at about 11am, there was enough time to really soak up the carnival atmosphere in town, where there would have been around 100,000 people crowding the streets and just really enjoying the Aussie banter. There were plenty of Japanese fans around, however, they did not really make much noise as we were pretty much running amok.

We met up with Cousin Frankie who had managed to get tickets to the match through one of our other cousins, and he is rapt that he now has tickets to the other two matches. He had driven in the night before and bumped into an old soccer buddy, with whom he ended up staying with that night. We sat down for lunch with them in a beautiful square just outside the main fan site.

The time then came to head to the ground. The stadium itself was a short walk through beautiful parkland, but way too many steps for such a hot day!! We had seats behind the Aussies goal for the first half, but things really did not go our way. The crowd was getting pretty anxious, and when that bloody ref let the Japaense goal stand, you could sense that things might have gotten a bit ugly if we did not bounce back.

Of course we did, and let me tell you, that final 10 minutes of maddness was something that we will never forget. The first goal sent us into dilerium, but the next two had people hugging, kissing and crying (I actually shed a tear before the match started just like a big girl!!) It was a truly overwhelming event.

We were also lucky enough to be filming when we put in the third goal. The video of it is simply amazing. I will make sure I post it on the internet when we get home, because it is something that words really cannot describe.

On the way out Bec got interviewed by the BBC. Not sure if anyone at home would have seen it, but no doubt many of our British friends would have. We also bumped into George Negus on the way out, and we got him to kiss our Boonie Doll. This became a bit of a ritual as the day progressed with German, Japenese and Australian fans alike all wanting to kiss our very own Buddha doll.

Anyway, we then headed back to town and to be honest, the party was not as intense as it was pregame. I think it was because of the emotions involved, everyone was simply exhausted. We managed to find a quaint Italian restaurant and had a pizza and yet another Beer. We then parked ourselves in a nice park and chatted with the many Aussies around.

The train ride home went pretty quickly and we shared a cabin with the same blokes on the way up and had a few more celebratory ales. The night finished back in the hotel bar. I shared a chat with Frank Farina who is staying there and asked him how he felt knowing that it could have been him. He was pretty diplomatic about it, saying he was happy for the boys and it was not about him. He comes across as a pretty decent sort of bloke, but I still reckon there would have been a little bit of "what-ifs" in his head.

So here we are now in Frankfurt. We are here for another day before we head off to Munich via Berlin for a few days. We will go to the Frankfurt fan site to watch the Brazil/Croatia match and just relax the day away.

We cannot wait to hear all the stories from back home, but we are pretty sure none will come close to our day yesterday!!