Friday, 12th October 2001.
German football hooligans

Freiburg! The encore performance! The first visit to Freiburg for some reason hasn't been recorded here on planetian.com, and some day I might get around to fixing that. But don't go holding your breath.

It was a day of more hiking in the Black Forest. This time a little jaunt from Sankt Peter to Sankt Margen. Along the way there were the usual encounters with the German people, including a retired couple who thought I'd be interested to know that they once had a tennis instructor who was from New Zealand.

Last night I treated myself to a night in a hotel, but no such luxury tonight! It's back to the old Jugendherberge classic. I copped the same slightly camp receptionist at the hostel as last year. Yes, it's deja vu all over again.

I met one of the other blokes in my room - an FC St Pauli supporter who has travelled down from Berlin for the game against Freiburg tomorrow. I met up with him and his fellow travelling supporters in the evening and we swapped stories about mulleted 1860 Munich fans and what-not.

When we returned to the hostel there were too many people in our room! It turned out that some bloke couldn't get into his room, so he decided to crash in ours. I said something about Goldilocks, but nobody knew what I meant.

random note: There was an accordion busker in the underpass near the tourist bureau who played a wide selection of tunes, including Lionel Ritchie's timeless classic "Hello", and a disturbingly jolly version of "Autumn Leaves".