Another match!

I should be working... instead I've been hitting 'refresh' on the FIFA ticket site for the past far too long... and have just managed to score a €35 ticket for Iran v Angola in Leipzig tomorrow afternoon.

Yee-haaaa!

Toilet survey #31: Dortmund

Germany 1 Poland 0
14 June 2006

Sarah's Bog Blog goes to the World Cup, and temporarily becomes WC WCs...

Borussia Dortmund's stadium is huge and boxy and, like all the other stadia being used for the World Cup, has had a lot of work done on it recently to bring it up to scratch. However, I was extremely alarmed at the length of the loo queue on the main concourse; a definite case of cross-yer-legs.


By way of contrast, this was the queue for the gents' next door. Quite.


'Bugger that!' thinks Sarah, and heads downstairs in search of her seat. And, lo and behold, there were more loos lurking underneath the stand, which were blessedly queue free. Three cubicles to choose from. Bliss.


Clean, tidy, loo roll, ticks all the boxes.


Score: 6.5/10. Would have scored more highly had the queues upstairs been shorter.

Toilet survey #32: Gelsenkirchen

Argentina 6 Serbia & Montenegro 0
16 June 2006

Schalke's stadium at Gelsenkirchen is, not to put too fine a point on it, magnificent. The roof closes, the pitch rolls outside so it can get proper light and rain to ensure the grass grows properly, and the noise with the roof shut is astonishing. Add to that the fact that Argentina scored six good goals - including one absolute cracker - and I left Gelsenkirchen with happy memories of the stadium.

The loos were impressive, too, both in quantity and quality.
Six cubicles one side...


...and six on the other meant not a queue in sight, even at half time.


Inside, they were clean, spacious and had lots of loo roll.


Score: 8.5/10. Top stadium, top loos, top match!

Toilet survey #33: Munich

Brazil 2 Australia 0
18 June 2006

The stadium in Munich looks bizarre and impressive from a distance: it's like aliens have dropped an outsize white tractor tyre from the sky. Up close, however, they've overdone the brutalist concrete chic, and while it's still a great place to watch football, I have to admit to being a little disappointed it wasn't a little more special.

And then there's the loos.

The doors to each set of loos around the stadium perimeter looked identical, and even an hour before kick-off, the queues were all very long indeed.


Hardly surprising: it transpired that there were a mere two cubicles. Two. TWO. Yes. Really.


With that amount of usage, it's hardly surprising the cubicles were looking a little untidy.


At the end of half-time, I ventured loo-wards again, to a different set this time, where the queue had been every bit as long before the match. And guess what? It was vast. A total of 18 loos, in two sets of nine. That queue must have moved rather faster than the one I stood in before the game. Each entrance leads to loos...


Yes, nine each. My gast was well and truly flabbered.


It begs several questions. Why the disparity between the two sets of loos? And why no clues for the hapless females knotting their legs that the queue at the next set will move nine times more quickly?

Score: 4/10. They ruined what would otherwise have been a decent score by sheer numptiness.