Harp Inn - World Cup (Ger-Arg)

Given that my girl was still out of town, I sought another World Cup experience to top the ones from last weekend. A friend at work suggested the Harp Inn for the Germany-Argentina 7am quarterfinal game, with the caveat that it would be pretty crowded. I should confess that "crowds" are one-third of my event-skipping-criteria trifecta as an old lady (the other two components are horrible parking and traffic) and pretty much scared me out of going.

But my eyes popped open at 6am and I took that as a sign. I jumped into the shower and headed down to the Harp. My courage started to waver as parking was already full (eek!--2nd component of the trifecta!--I should turn back!) and I had to park at some other shopping center. It didn't get better as I walked into this:

But on the plus side, there was pretty much good viewing of a screen from any point in the bar so I just stood by the wall with the other loner fans and started watching. What followed was probably my best World Cup experience so far, though it was probably due to a perfect storm of a bunch of factors.

First, I started chatting with the guys behind me who insisted on buying me a beer (yes, I know, another 7:30am beer), "You can't watch soccer without beer!" And the next thing I know I've got a big glass of Stella in my hand:

I didn't get a chance to eat breakfast before I came so the beer got me in the spirit of things pretty quickly.

Second, the vast majority of us were rooting for Germany. And third--Germany kicked a$$. Argentina has Lionel Messi, currently considered the best soccer player, and they were shut-out, losing 4-0. The whole crowd was high on beer, excitement, and winning. After each goal, there were high-fives all-around with plenty of hooting and hollering and clinking of beer glasses. It was the kind of game that you'd expect a bunch of babies to be born 9 months from today. I left the Harp lit on the Stella and the awesome energy. And it wasn't even 9am.

No I did NOT get in my car and drive, thank you. I wandered over to a Panera to get breakfast. Unfortunately, everything on the menu looked eggy and reminded me of the rich breakfast from last week and started to get that burning-hole feeling in my stomach again. I walked out realizing that what I really needed was oatmeal and I walked to a Starbucks.

I'm standing in line at Starbucks and I hear "Frances!" and glance over. It's my beer buddies from the Harp!

We spent over an hour talking about how great the game was--we all agreed that we were first bummed that it was standing room only by the time we got there, but it made for better energy to be standing during this game. And we concurred how we were all on the fence about coming out to watch the game at that hour and how psyched we were that we did.

Honestly, I don't know if this World Cup experience could be topped--