Touch Rugby
At last, a post that is not about traveling. Well, mostly not. Earlier in the year I discovered that a bunch of English speaking people play touch footy (or touch rugby to people outside of Australia and New Zealand) in the English Gardens. On a make shift pitch in the middle of a very large patch of grass (where others play soccer or ultimate frisbee), were a bunch of people throwing around a rugby ball. Fantastic. As I have found out, it is very much a developing sports in Germany. There are about 30 players in the group in Munich, and slightly less in the cities of Berlin, Frankfurt and Cologne, which also have clubs. Every month during the summer they meet for tournaments - the first this year was in Cologne in June, more on that later - culminating in the German championships, which conveniently finishes in September just before the Oktoberfest. Most people are expats from the UK, or Aussies, or New Zealanders, or from other rugby playing nations. There are several German players ...