A good match, for a women's game...

In German football speak, the word for 'extra time' is 'verlaengerung', not only meaning extension being an extended word at the same time. But word extension is common in German, especially when it comes women's football. Female players are called 'fussballerinen', the referee is a 'schiedsrichterin', the Americans are the 'Amerikanerinnen'; the only word missing a female touch is the ball, which could be aptly called a 'ballin'.

It seems that I am not the only one who still hits some hiccups in adapting to watching female soccer. At some point I literally heard the commentator say "that was a good shot for a woman"! Regardless if there was a little pause between the two sentence parts or not, it is a rather high-handed remark.

The final of the World Cup yesterday once again made clear the changed landscape of a sport that is primarily designed these days to be consumed via the television screen. The depiction of women in sports differs a lot from the average portrayal of the caring and patient lover cum child bearer that television inherited from the 1950s in the US. The football players (or playerinnen) are muscled and confident warriors striding around the pitch, commanding and colliding. The only thing missing from the average league play was the excessive nose blowing so often portrayed.

Watching the game with a group of guys, we found ourselves drawn tot he practice of rating the looks of the players and googling the names of the favourites for extra foto material and background info, until one of us exclaimed: "but guys, this is how women usually watch football!". And from that moment the long absence of women's football on tv felt like an undefendable flaw in the system. You have it all: the exciting execution of high level sports and female beauty as a bonus.

And yes, I could be banished tot he ranks of reactionaries for this type of reasoning, but I would like to argue that the heightened succes of women's football is at the same time a result of an emancipation a long time in the making. The fact that I find myself in the position to be dazzled by skill and appearance speaks for not only the visibility but also the agency of the women competing for the cup. Were the adoring female football fans until now the epitome of a male dominated sport, that role will in the future belong to me when I will discuss all the players on the field with my friends and sympathize with their tears when they lose, while a big Nike Hope Solo poster is hanging from my bedroom wall.

"Der Weg ist das Ziel"

Whoever thought cycling hundreds of kilometer along a canal would be boring couldn’t be more wrong. But if this excitement is a positive feature lies in the eye of the beholder.

A few clichés about cycling rehashed: you see a lot you don’t see when you take train or car. And this is true. But many of the things you pass would be better left unseen. On a train you close your eyes near the Dutch-Belgian border and wake up in France. But if you hit the first bits of urban sprawl of Hannover, you know you’ll have to claw your way through a fair bit of ugliness.

There is more prettiness in the rural bits of Germany that feel like one big propaganda film for German production capacity ranging from farms to energy and from steel to recycling. But all is encapsulated in vast stretches of woods and fields that are in full bloom. If at the end of the day you have stains on your clothes from three different types of wild fruit, you’ve done well for yourself and the enjoyment of what the countryside has to offer.

Being used to the fail free system of bike paths and directions in the Netherlands, the East has some tricks up its sleave. When another indicated cycling path ends on a large industrial pavement, a few guys handling heavy machinery look up only for a second, and you have to start guessing whether or not at the end of the wharf a fence closes off further thoroughfare and a detour around another bit of industrial area needs to be undertaken. So another cliché is apt: many roads lead to Rome, or in this case Berlin. But similarly truee: there is not one single road that will get you there.

Five nights in we've gotten past Hannover on the Mittellandkanal, and weve stayed at all possible places. Fist night we were treated to a guest room in a self sustaining commune off the grid, the second night we stayed at an official campsite, third night we camped near the canal in a clearing in the bush, the fourth night we were allowed to pitch the tents on a little terrace overlooking fields with five or six different types of wheat and a massive orange sun descending and last night we were offerd a spot in the garden of a machine builder and his wife but were upgraded to a room when the beers and Lithuanian berry wodka had made the light vannish unnoticed.

Today will be slow, our heads a little heavy and legs nice and sore. Today I prefer working a bit more on my sandal tan lines.