To understand Kafka, one need only visit Prague in the summertime.
Prague is very proud of Kafka; he's on nearly as many T-shirts and posters and coasters as the Golem of Prague (though not nearly so many as the Czech World Cup team, of course – that would be a travesty). They even have a Kafka Museum here.
I didn't go there.

The trip is more than half over, and so far at this World Cup we've seen relatively little soccer.
But we've seen a shitload of train stations. And trains. Trains, trains, trains.
Thanks to the baffling intricacies and inconsistencies of the FIFA and U.S. Soccer ticketing procedures, AC had booked and prepaid our hotels before we got tickets to the USA v.

The trams from the stadium back into Gelsenkirchen were a joke. They were running one train every five minutes, with two or three cars with a capacity of 30 people each, with 52,000 people to move. Every tram was bulging at the seams with human cargo, like an entire school of tuna had managed to stuff itself into a single can.
We opted to walk to the local "Fanzone," which are large cordoned-off areas with diamond vision screens set up in each of the host cities, where fans can get together and watch the games.

Yesterday was a very bad day for American soccer. We were hammered 3-0 by the Czech Republic, and they deserved every goal they got.
But it was a good day for the American soccer fan.
Yes, we were all disappointed at the team's slow play and lack of creativity, and I assure you that by the mid-second half the fans in the stands were every bit as critical as you were, and debate the U.

So far, the rowdiest visitors to Germany are . . . well, the Germans.
At the moment, one day before Cologne hosts its first match, Portugal v. Angola, the town is a bit like the Monday before Mardi Gras at, say, 4:00 p.m. It's not so much rowdy; it's more like bursting with the potential for rowdiness.
Great gaggles of fans in red Portugal shirts are wandering through the streets of the Alstadt (Old City) with open beer bottles clutched in their fists, toasting the flak-jacketed platoons of Polizei.

The troops have landed!!
Or at least one troop. AC saw fit to fly British Airways, which means I have a two-hour wait for him to arrive. I won't bore you with the arcane and convoluted series of contingency plans we came up with in case we couldn't find each other. The fact is I'm sitting outside his gate, sipping on my third Binding lager.

D-Day is here at last!!
My wife drove me to the airport this morning. I'm sure our conversation reflected thousand, perhaps hundreds of thousands, going on all over the world this week.
"TIVO the good games for me," I implored. "Just in case I miss something. Or in case I'm too drunk to remember. Especially the games I'm going to.