Well I’d thought I’d start off the pondering with a little World Cup contemplation. The Italians have won it. Seems all a bit unfair to me, they only just scraped through with a dodgy peno against Australia. Ah well so be it. They were asking two ‘top’ sports journos (they were from the Daily Mail; say no more) on BBC News 24 what the highlight of this World Cup would be. They thought it was a bit over rated to a certain extent. By no means one of the best World Cups. Personally I’ll remember it for all the cards, red and yellow. So many red cards were dished out it got quite amusing at one point, not to mention that English referee giving out three yellows. Fun and games.

Ultimately, aside from the football I hope this World Cup has given Germany the chance to show to all of those that went to visit that the German people are more than just the body of citizens of a nation to whom the rest of the world poke fun at and make war jokes. I hope, especially for the English fans, that we leave the “two world wars and one world cup” stigma behind. Afterall it is hardly fair to blame a generation and vast majority of the German population for acts that werenot commited by them or even in their lifetime. It’d be nice to push the German stereotype towards the lederhosen, the big beer, hairy armpits and bratwurst and away from the goosestep, swastika and Hitler in the same way that it’d be nice to push the Enlgish stereotype towards bowler hats, socks and sandles, sun burn, ice cream and fish and chips and away from loud lager drinking football hooligans.