Sunday, July 09, 2006

Well Worth the Wait

From the train station we made our way out to the ticket center at the stadium in Frankfurt. Since FIFA does not allow corporate sponsorships of stadiums during the World Cup, the venue, normally called Commerzbank Arena, is simply known as FIFA World Cup Stadium Frankfurt.

We already had our tickets in hand for Monday's USA-Czech Republic game, but needed to pick-up the tickets for Wednesday's game in Munich between Tunisia-Saudi Arabia. (When we told the Aussies we were going to this game, one of them simply asked "Why?")

We were also on a waiting list for Tuesday's game in Frankfurt between South Korea and World Cup debutant Togo, so we were hoping to find out about the status of those tickets as well.

Unfortunately, the line to pick-up tickets took as long as a soccer game, 90 minutes, although not without its entertainment. An Englishman behind us was being needled by his friends, including one with an Austin Powers-like accent who said: "Get out of this damn queue, mate. It's gonna take you five hours! We can be in Amsterdam in four hours!"

Our long wait was rewarded however, when we found out we got the Korea-Togo tickets. I'm sure few Americans have ever been as excited to get tickets to see Korea-Togo, but we left the ticket center delighted: three games in three days were coming up!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

In addition to the 90 minutes we waited on line was the hour we spent walking around the Stadium complex just looking for the ticket center. We walked halfway down a jungle path only to turn around, and then about two miles around the entire complex in the other direction till we found it, only to be greeted by that massive line.