Above left:Talk about taking street football to new heights. The Dutch fans kicking the ball pratically everywhere, even on a crowded street here in Basel. If you look hard enough, you can see the football just under the second canvas.
Above right: Photo taken in a Vienna toilet. Surely Luca Toni can score from here.
As the temperatures start to soar, the organisers decided to spray water into the air to cool the fans down. This is a scene outside St Jakob-Park.
How I miss the Dutch fans. They brought plenty of noise and colour – literally – to Basel where Holland played Russia in the quarter-finals. Just check out the colour of the water in the fountain that these Dutch fans are basking in.
Hi all of you back home,
And so, we are almost down to the last two. At the time of writing this, the match between Spain and Russia have yet to be played and Germany had just beaten “comeback kids” Turkey.
What a spectacular tournament we have so far, with the usual ups and downs, but only more dramatic than recent ones. Not just for the footballers, but the journalists, too. There was plenty to write about the Turkey-Germany game. There was drama, exciting football and plenty of goals. And there was also a black-out and a mass evacuation. Television coverage was interrupted several times because of technical problems.
As if that wasn’t exciting enough, the journalists at the media centre in Vienna had to evacuate as there was a storm going on, and officials were worried that winds would exceed the 120km/h that the building can withstand up to. And at the fan zone, fans had to leave the place as gale-force winds and lightning hit the city.
Anyway, during the past few days that I haven’t been sending over my diary entries, I have been filing my stories at Internet cafes and coin-operated PCs. I thought it was bad enough that the Internet connection at my hotel wasn’t ideal. Then, I began to appreciate life a little bit more after my laptop went kaput. Scary, really. I was contemplating if I should buy a typewriter and fax machine until my company swiftly sent a replacement laptop over to Vienna.
Made my day. Just to make up for lost time, see the few photos I took recently before the storm clouds gathered over Vienna.
Cheers,
Gary Lim,
“Wet” Man on the Run, The New Paper
Iain Macintosh – Your English Kaki based in London – covers the English Premier League for The New Paper. He loves to pop up now and then and banter with Postman readers here, some of whom may actually have dreams of taking him on in a wrestling match (read: Chelsea fans). Start wishing him well here by clicking on “comments” above and he may just bite the bait here from time to time. And of course, now that Germany have won, poor Iain has to do his forfeit for Gary and run across a Vienna bridge in just a pair of boxers. Now that’s what we calls Euro balls on the Run! (Look for his pictures in The New Paper on 1 Jul!)
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