Bremen on a rainy date

To my horror, I notice that by logging in into the new Blogger while in Germany, my domain name has been changed to .de. And wherever I seek to change the error, Google does not allow.

As I speed through the peat bogs, another shower hammers down on my back, the big drops bouncing off my jacket, but finding their way into the running leggings I'm wearing on top of my bike shorts. They give off a cool sensation on impact, but lose their chilling potential as the wetsuit-like material protects me from the raging wind. I feel like eating, sitting down, or having a look at the surprisingly frequently appearing megaliths, but I pedal on. I have a date in Bremen.

I've had better weather during my cycling tours before, but this time I have brought what it takes to battle the cold and rainy weather. I agree, it is shitty to be packing your gloves and beany on a legit summer trip, but I'll pack whatever is necessary to keep the elements at bay. Just pretend it's autumn in Turkey.

Or summer in South Africa. My thoughts go back to another trip, two years ago, when I was in a similar hurry to keep a time. The occasion was eerily similar, it had snowed that night on the wet plateau we were crossing in the direction of Port Elisabeth. I was in a car with Jono and Jonty, two soon-to-be friends who later both visited me in the Netherlands, and we sped to the next town to be on time. When we hurried into the local Steers (a SA steak chain with the worst kind of native American theme), we found ourselves lucky enough to catch the Fifa World Cup's Dutch opener Netherlands-Denmark on the big screen.

The last football tournament I experienced in the Netherlands has been the 2006 World Cup, after that I've spent my even-year summers elsewhere. But whether it was in the Southern hemisphere winters of Oz or SA, or this year in the German summer: the weather has failed to impress.

Once again seated among strangers in nippy circumstances, the Dutch love for their team amped up to a alienating high in the last few weeks in a display of orange in simply everything imaginable, is put in perspective by group B's first matches. Even though I have seen German households also sporting flags and other paraphernalia in the local tri-colore along the road from the border til Bremen, a short look at the score today shows that they do have a striker in their team. As the crowd of blanket-clad Bremeners roars when Gomez finishes an opportunity beautifully, I consider sailing on under a different flag. No better place to be on group B's opening day then in cloudy Teutonia; and I have a feeling that the same might count for Wednesday to come.

Maybe changing into reinierkicking.blogspot.de isn't such a bad move after all.