Track And Field World Championships: A German Medal, A Kenyan Sweep and a Russian Diva

Finally I was able to watch two sessions of the World Championships in Osaka. They were showing some finals and some heat-races. A German guy won the silver medal in the Discus Throw competition, something the two commentators were very happy about. That guy absolutely went insane after he was sure the medal was his, ripping of his shirt in front of the spectators. Something you would expect from thiose crude German barbarians, right? But he had every right to be happy, leaving two times Olympic champion Virgilius Alekna of Lithuania behind him. The winner was Gerd Kanter from Estonia, in third came Rutger Smith from The Netherlands.

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Track And Field World Championship in Osaka

The 11th Track & Field World Championships kicked off at Osaka, Japan this weekend and a few medals have already been won by some athletes. I was watching the 20 km men’s walk last night when coming home slightly drunk. This is wonderful stuff to watch before you go to bed. There isn’t happening anything, just a few guys walking through streets. But because the weather over there has been very hot and humid lately a few people weren’t able to cope with the conditions.

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Bundesliga: Day Three – Bayern keeps rolling

Hamburger SV – VfL Bochum 1:2
VfB Stuttgart – MSV Duisburg 1 : 0
FC Bayern München – Hannover 96 3 : 0
Bayer Leverkusen – Karlsruher SC 3 : 0
1.FC Nürnberg – Werder Bremen 0 : 1
Borussia Dortmund – FC Energie Cottbus 3 : 0
Arminia Bielefeld – Hertha BSC Berlin 2 : 0
Eintracht Frankfurt – FC Hansa Rostock 1:0
VfL Wolfsburg – FC Schalke 04 1:1

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A win in style: Summer Koushien is over

The summer tournament at Koushien Stadium is over and we have a winner. Saga Kita High School have won in style. A grand slam homerun in the bottom of the 8th inning took them to a 5-4 victory over Koryo High School from Hiroshima, who had advanced to the final for the first time in 40 years. This makes Saga Kita the first public school to win the title 1996.
I really enjoyed watching the few matches I was able to see. Although I know that there is a lot of talk about the pureness of “koko yakyu” (high school baseball)

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We won the first game at Wembley: Germany – England friendly

The big rivalry continues, although it might only be a onesided affair. Germany and England met at Wembley for the first time since Didi Hamann scored the last goal in the old stadium during a World Cup qualifier in 2000. There might have been the usual hype around such a match, but because it was a friendly and because there were a lot of players missing on both sides (Germany: Klose, Podolski, Gomez, Jansen, Frings, Ballack, Borowski – England: Rooney, Gerrard) noone really knew what to expect from both teams.

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The strange story of an old punk turned model in Japan

So I never had a morning like this. I was waorking as usual and while there was nothing to do I was looking at spiegel.de which is one of the (if not the) biggest German news site. And guess what I find there. An article about a friend of mine. He went to Japan to study there for a few semesters and now he’s a model there. Something we all here were going nuts about. That guy is anything but a model. He always looks like he’s way too tired, he always sneaks around like nothing can bother him, he always wears old clothes, worn out sneakers, and so on. But he’s a really nice guy and he’s a very good friend of mine.
So some guy I know from my internship last year did an article about him and his story which can be found here >>> Big in Japan: Wie ein Altpunk zum gefragten Model wurde (German).

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Remembering the good Times: Quest For Rescue Record Release Show

There are certain bands who, although they haven’t released anything in a long time, are always there and you never lose track of what they are doing. Remember how long it took Social Distortion to put out the follow up to their classic “White Light, White Heat, White Trash” LP? Well, Leverkusen’s finest Quest For Rescue are in that league as well. If remember it correctly the release show for their 2nd record “Turnip” took place at Cologne’s “Underground” in 1998. And although they played new songs every now and then at some show the new record never came out. But that’s history now, folks. It’s finally here.

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Copa Colonia 2007: "The ball knows us"

It’s a tough life. After drinking for the past two days, on Friday out of frustration, on Saturday because there was a good show, I was asked to take part in a football tournament on Sunday. Boy, that is hard. I had to get up at 10 am, I tried to at least wake up a little bit before the first game started at 11.30 am. Our team was “Bolzen” and we represented the magazine with the same name. A lot of players were acquired from Cologne Sunday League team “FK Trimmdich” and those guys can play.

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Bundesliga: Day Two – Horrible Results

Karlsruher SC – Hannover 96 1:2
FC Schalke 04 – Borussia Dortmund 4:1
Werder Bremen – FC Bayern München 0:4
Hertha BSC Berlin – VfB Stuttgart 3:1
Arminia Bielefeld – Eintracht Frankfurt 2:2
FC Hansa Rostock – 1.FC Nürnberg 1:2
MSV Duisburg – VfL Wolfsburg 1:3
Hamburger SV – Bayer Leverkusen -:- (Sunday)
FC Energie Cottbus – VfL Bochum -:- (Sunday)

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MLB: Boston signs a Cologne player

While browsing through the pages of the “Boston Herald” I came across some interesting news. It’s only a small notice but it seems that the Boston Red Sox have signed someone from Cologne (bottom of the page under the headline “Going Deutsch”).

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