The general assumption, from a safe distance, is that the smaller countries have come here to make up the numbers; that just being here at the World Cup is good enough (as Roy Keane perpetually complained about the Irish). Yet talk to the Costa Ricans and you’ll know that football is serious business, Friday’s defeat to Germany hurts. The night ride from Munich to Augsburg - standing room only, such was the football crush - was made immeasurably more bearable by the emotional, expressive Ticos fans. Put it to them that they were, after all, playing a good side and 4-2 isn’t too bad after all, and one got a snort, followed by a lengthy explanation, in Spanish and English, of why Costa Rica should have attacked more and why the team strategy sucked.The fans are emotional, but they wear their money on their sleeves. There are more around 6,000 fans from the tiny Central American state, each paying $8,000 for the trip — and they haven’t they assure you, paid that money to see their team give up without a fight! It’s that kind of passion that makes one wonder just how seriously we in India take our cricket. Hands up, all of you willing to mortgage the flat and catch the flight to Trinidad next March.Klose to perfection• On a similar theme, it was good to see the German fans celebrate - and celebrate they did! The party started just in the Allianz Arena complex, where the dancers and actors from the opening ceremony had a tent laid out. By 10 pm, when this reporter walked to the bus stand nearby, the beer was flowing, the singers were in good voice and German colours were everywhere. As one approached the city centre, the same scenes: it was Oktoberfest in June! The morning’s papers are full of it, of course, and, amid the concern over a leaking defence, there is special pride around Munich over Philippe Lahm and Bastian Schweinsteiger, the young stars who play for Bayern and shone for their country.I didn’t know this then, but Lahm means “lame”, or slow, a quality the young man emphatically disproved in a sparkling display. It certainly helps to know German because then I would have read that Miroslav Klose, the birthday boy who scored two goals, was suffering from an eye infection. As one wag explained yesterday, that was why he scored with his feet instead of his head as he usually does; he simply couldn’t see the ball! Abroad Munich Choo Choo.• About the only freebie that the Federation of International Fleecing Associations extends to journalists is a Deutsche Bahn mobility card for free first-class rail travel throughout Germany. It’s very handy, because the train system is reasonably efficient, distances aren’t that great (Munich, in the south, is relatively cut off from the other venues) and first class on the ICE - inter-city express - is pretty spiffy. Yet traditional German efficiency has been off-track; local trains have been 5-10 minutes late on several occasions and today’s long-haul to Hamburg was delayed by 45 minutes because the original train developed a fault. Yet there was a replacement train and the announcements were suitably apologetic. Once on board, it’s luxurious; I’m typing this out only because there is a power outlet for every seat. I could have chosen to look out of the windows instead at the picture-postcard scenery, the various shades of green, the giant windmills, the little villages that suddenly appear with tiled roofs and a church. This is, after all, the land of fairy tales and great painters and hopefully over the next month there will be enough of that to inspire!Silence Please!• Germany has many customs alien to us Indians, but one that will prove hard to adjust to, in the weeks to come, is the premium they put on silence. My host in Augsburg would tell me every night, without fail, to switch off the PC in the room. The reason? “Unnecessary noise” from the humming hard-disk. Things get more extreme in public places. Talking on mobile phones is frowned up in buses. The other day a dreadlocked young man was engaging in a lengthy, loud conversation interspersed with equally loud laughter. The driver first motioned to him to cut it down. Then, when it didn’t work, announced over the bus PA to cut it. The man, duly aggrieved, went up and argued with the driver but to no avail. Indians aren’t the only ones who will have a hard time following this rule; East Asians, especially the Japanese, talk equally loudly into their mobiles.
