Friday, 3/22

The final piece of our trip puzzle has finally fallen into place.

One month from tomorrow we leave for our nine-day soccer trip to Germany. Everything has been in place for months with one exception, an exception that some might consider kind of important considering our whole reason for going over there is to see a particular soccer game.

That one exception? Tickets to the game.

It wasn't our fault; the Bundesliga (the German soccer league) hadn't released the times and days of the final few games of the season for their teams. They were waiting to see how a couple of those teams fared in the Champions League, along with which games they wanted to put on Friday nights (their version of “Monday Night Football”. Well, it's now all been decided, and we will be watching RB Leipzig and SC Freiburg play in Leipzig on Saturday afternoon, April 27^th.

We can't wait.

We actually haven't purchased the tickets yet. We can't until Wednesday morning at 10 Central European Time, which is (at the moment) 5am our time. I know I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how it's impossible for me to function before noon, so I'm hoping Loraine has no trouble clicking on whatever she needs to click on to get the tickets, as I'll probably be standing behind her with one eye open and 95% of my brain power still in sleep mode.

But at least we'll have our tickets.

Now that we know the exact day (and time) of the game, we can set firm times for some of the other things we wanted to do in Leipzig, including hopping on a train and heading over to the nearby town of Weissenfels, where Loraine and the town's mayor held a joint press conference six years ago, to see some friends. We also want to explore Leipzig itself, something we haven't had much of a chance to do. When we first settled on this trip we knew we'd be able to do all of that; we just didn't know when.

Now we do.

I won't know for a couple of weeks, but the game we're going to may be on TV here in the US. Fox Sports shows Bundesliga games, and with RB Leipzig being in 3^rd place in the league there's a good chance it may air here, especially considering that league powerhouse Bayern Munich (the evil Bayern Munich, as they're known around our apartment) playing the next day. If so, I'll let you know, not because we plan on being on TV but so anyone who's interested may get a glimpse of the raucous atmosphere we're subjecting ourselves to.

Now that the tickets are set (if not totally finalized) that's the last thing that needs to be taken care of, aside from the usual last minute stuff like packing. But we still have 32 days left for that.

It's gonna be cool.

On that note, have yourself a great weekend. If you're waiting for YOUR tickets to go on sale, I hope it happens soon!

8-)

(jim@wmqt.com)