On Sunday we played the team that is 5th on the ladder (we are 8th) on the glue pot turf of Boxmeer - it was the temperature where the turf becomes "sticky" and the ball is much harder to drag and perform skills. I started left midfield, funky left defender and mark left forward. I lost the ball early a few times, didn't play too well in the first half, but still worked hard enough to create a few chances. It was a reasonably even first half and ended up 0-0 at the end of the half. I was moved to forward on the right (thank goodness, cause I wasn't doing too well at midfield) and I think I played much better after that. I gave Koen a goal - except he missed it, haha but we ended up winning a tough fight 2-1 over a team that held itself in quite high regard. I think boxmeer will learn not to accept losing so much, as when talking afterward with Mark and Andrew, we didn't think that they were anything great. Bas (or bos) scored a match winning late goal to put us up 2-1 with 7 minutes to go - the team panicked a little bit but we held on to win, and move up the table to 8th position (when we arrived we were 10th). After the game we (well funky) introduced a new game to our new dutch friends.... 1. If you miss a goal - every player gets to punch them in the arm - it turned bad quite early, but it was still fun. We went to the de bok for tea, and got home reasonably early for a sunday night, as we had to wake up in the morning and go to city hall to work out our passport stuff. So in the morning, we rode our bikes (dinked tarks with quite a dodgy ankle) down to city hall and had a nice non conversation with the dutch lady behind the counter. We had to give them our lease agreement so that we could get our registration for the province here. She opened my passport to my indonesian Visa - and this is the first time that I was glad I knew some more dutch - Zie kom uit Indonesia" - translated as "they are from indoensia..... I don't know how she got a job in an official position but when there is no photo or anything and the front of the passport has the word australia written on it.... geez... But after 30 mins we had it sorted, got some good news that funky had already been registered because he is a UK citizen and we could get a car after all.... yay... so ... and off to Den Bosse we went via wouters to borrow his car. (not spelt correctly) that was to get our work permit, we ended up driving to the IND (immigration) center, and got our work permits (well we get to work for 6 months) - until they approve our application. So done... next job was to find some flags.. Nijmegen has the previously researched place to get australian flags, so into GPS that went and we found it. We also found the first hill in holland. We bought all they had and off to germany to buy our soccer tickets.... about 1 hour later we arrived at the ground after a little trip on the autobarn, and we found out quite quickly that we didn't know any german at all... not a bit... but they spoke english, we ordered our tickets on my CC, and we were booked in. I drove home as funky was tired, everything went well.. Weird though getting used to driving on the wrong side of the road. We dropped the car off at wouters, I went home to get our washing and take it to wouters to wash it... I had tea there, and we chatted for ages - polictics, travel, languages, religion, etc etc.. fun night. I got home and slept - a bit late because we had to get up and work in the rmoning.
The soccer day!!!
Mark's ankle had turned worse so he didn't work on tuesday. So we rode to work by ourselves and talked a little bit to yo. We are still painting, and we thought that a wood stained roof shouldn't be painted white... but who to you communicate that to someone who doesn't speak english...??? well we just did what we were told, painted it white - the owner came in and they had a mini argument about it.. then he told us to paint over it with black paint hahaha - we didn't care cause it was white on black anyway.. but oh well... that is thursday's job now.. After work we met at the de bok, and we headed off to the football - the germany vs australia game.... wow...
We donned our flags as superman capes, knowing we would be out numbered we took along 9 dutch guys to help us support our boys... and it must have worked.. well - let me go back a little bit. We waited in the car park when we got to the stadium, face painted up and face painted everyone else up, and in we went - people flowing everywhere - all germans - we were in foreign territory - really foreign. So after being physically frisked at the gate haha - (it's ok, everyone did) we found our seats and admired the stadium - it was just like telstra dome really, but a little bit better. We started singing and chanting, but the germans were all over us, it was like the world cup all over again. We started to lose interest a little bit, after half time we were chatting about how bad australia were and then someone said - 'pearse look' and australia were kicking a goal.... WELL WELL WELL.... not only did we not expect Australia to score, I said anything better then a 4-0 loss was a win!! we went crazy, absolutly crazy - the whole crowd was dead silent, and we were jumping around cheering and cheering, it was so much fun. Solem Germans everywhere... We had just settled down and then we got another one - this celebration was probably the one that cost me my voice... With euphoria set in, we sat ont he edge of our seat as australia hung on to win 2-1 - against a team that has been a soccer powerhouse for generations... Against the country australian hacks.. so out of the stadium we went - to chants of Aussie Aussie Aussie oi oi oi and walzing matilda, and I am, you are, we are australian - much to the dismay of the german crowd we were dancing past. So a failed attempt to convince the dutch to wait for the bus we hopped on the autobarn, and drove home - very very fast.. about 200kmph roughly. That was quite cool also. It sounds dangerous, but everyone is doing about the same speed, so it doesn't feel dangerous. The next day was getting a car day... I have to go so I will skim this section - long story short, we couldn't get a car because we needed the official document saying that funky actually was registered. What a load of crap - they rang boxmeer - confirmed that he was there, confirmed everything, couldn't fax it because we must have the original document... anyway. It is tea time, so we are going to eat tea. Cheers to australia and go australia!!!
Doi..
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