En-ger-land!!

So the world cup starts today and I've got to say that I'm pretty stoked about it all. When I arrived here just over 4 years ago the cup and certainly the English supporters served as a ridiculous induction into English football culture. They are fucking mental for it basically and there's no other period of time when this place goes so crazy.

In lieu of a Kiwi team I'm definitely supporting England and amazingly I'll also be supporting Australia against Brazil simply because, in the history of life, there's never been more of an underdog. Only the one game though obviously....I sincerely hope they crash out of the cup promptly after that. Ozzie! Ozzie! Ozzie?

Rock AM Ring '06

Seeing as the line up was so insane and combined with the added bonus of it being Europe's largest Metal festival, Rob, Tanya and myself decided to fly dirty RyanAir from even dirtier Stansted to Germany, rent a little Mervy and navigate our way up to Frankfurt's Formula 1 track the Nurburgring where 70,000+ metal fans were decending.

We also thought it a great idea to buy VIP tickets at almost double the price which may seem extravagant but well, WELL worth it. We had a separate camping and car parking area close to our own private entrance to the festival. Access to the F1 members lounges, an elevated view of all the concert proceedings and direct entry to right in front of the stage.

There was over 100 bands playing during the 3 days with the highlights being Paul Weller, Morrisey, Goldfrapp, Guns & Roses, Depeche Mode, Tool and Metallica.

Metallica was absolutely a stand out performance playing the entire Master of Puppets album and then encoring with every single hit off every album they've ever done. They played for over 2 and a half hours and basically I was so happy with it I could have cried.

Check out the carnage here