WC2006: This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

OLYMPIC STADIUM, BERLIN (9:48pm local time) -- Three and a half hours into a four-hour train ride from Frankfurt to Berlin, I realize I can't find my digital camera. I took a couple of pictures in the Frankfurt station, so I didn't forget it. It's just gone. Three of us had cameras on Monday, so I should be able to get shots of the first couple of days by proxy. I'm trying to see if anyone turned it in, as I don't think it got nicked. I recall thinking at one point while I was wrangling my stuff, "don't forget that you put that there." I'm guessing that was probably when the camera and I parted ways.

After numerous visits to the "service point" to see if they could call Frankfurt and check, I stored my luggage and headed off on another sweltering odyssey to get to the stadium. The packed S-Bahn train got stuck about three stops out, and what happened got lost in the translation. Either there were people on the tracks, or their were too many people on the platform at the stadium. Whatever the case, the cars were, again, not air conditioned - I'm thinking the Germans just don't believe in it, as I type this from a steamy Internet café near Checkpoint Charlie -- and it's been hot. So waiting wasn't fun. It did create the necessary conditions for easily impressed Eastern Europeans again, with the Croats bursting into cheers whenever we started moving, just like the Czechs yesterday.

But we eventually got there, and the next trick was finding my friend and host in Berlin - an original Barnburner, by the way - with my ticket for Brazil-Croatia. The meeting point he had relayed to me had since been cordoned off, and naturally, we struck off in all the wrong directions to meet and then make it into the stadium. Finally, after all the trials and tribulations and lost cameras and sweaty trains, I was here, in Berlin, watching Brazil open up its defense of the World Cup.