Welt Meisterschaft

The Belvedere is a little removed from the bustling downtown area. To get there, we took the subway to the nearest stop, and had to walk for about 15 minutes in the REALLY HOT weather. At this time, it was about 3:15. The Germany – Argentina game was to start at 4, and we really wanted to see the game. We figured we would find cafés showing it when we were by the Belvedere, because when we were in the main part of the city, every café had signs up saying ‘WM LIVE HERE’. However, when we were walking towards the Belvedere, we realized that there were very few cafes – furthermore, we were walking down a street called Argentinerstrasse. Not a good sign. We get to the museum at 3:30, and notice there is a restaurant across the street. We run inside, see the two rooms full of Klimt paintings, and go out to the café across the street, which we realize is a Greek restaurant. At this point, Alison and I were exhausted from running everywhere in Vienna in really hot weather. The owner comes out, and in my desperation (it was like 3:55) I asked “Are you showing the World Cup? Soccer? Futbol?” trying every word I could realizing I didn’t even know if the guy spoke English. He then replies in perfect English – ‘yeah, we’ll turn it on. Come on in!’ We watched the first half there – the only people in this random Greek restaurant. After the first half we wanted to go back to the center of the city where there might be more people and more excitement. We tried to take a tram which stopped across the street, but none were coming, so we just walked along the tram lines back towards the city. As we got to the Ringstrasse – a circlular street that encloses the ‘old city’, we realized why there were no trams: There was a HUGE gay pride parade going on. We maneuvered through the throngs of people, and finally made it to a normal café where lots of people were watching the game, and watched Germany destroy Argentina. :D
Oh, also during our walk, we saw the Opera House: