Rosenbaum: "This will not be my last World Cup"

Where to begin? The World Cup is over for the US and my conditional tickets to the next two rounds vaporized when the team was eliminated. That means, depending on what Aaron decides to do with his second round, quarterfinal and semifinal tickets (selling them would easily fund his trip), I won't be going to any more games.

With that in mind, we went out in style yesterday. Well, maybe not style, but we certainly made ourselves known at the party. Arriving in Nuremberg in the morning, we met up with Aaron and Miles and our new friends. Picture 10 Americans checking out the Nazi Rally Grounds, which lie right next to the stadium, all decked out in red, white and blue. And there were a lot of other people just like us there. I'm sure that's what Hitler envisioned: that one day, people of all nationalities and races would wear flags, paint their faces and trounce all over his decrepit grounds. The Rally Grounds weren't really impressive, as they are crumbling and not preserved whatsoever, but the pictures of it from Hitler's glory days were.

There's really only one place to go after a somber trip to a Nazi historic site, and that's a beer garden down the street! There we saw more German fans rooting for Ghana, but the number of fans was overwhelmingly American. A hilarious band played American classic rock hits, ultimately getting more and more cheesy as the evening later wound down.

It's funny how every World Cup game, and location, has its own vibe. Kaiserslautern was jam-packed; Gelsenkirchen was awesome on the day but is otherwise a terrible place to visit. Nuremberg? It just wasn't a terribly exciting place. It wasn't until you got into the stadium that you felt like you were at a terribly important sporting event.

The game itself: frustrating. Again, we gave up a crappy early goal and, what's worse, Claudio Reyna got injured and ultimately left the field for the last time for the US. It was fitting: he was playing well and then got injured. Beasley and Donovan were dreadful and can no longer be called golden boys of US Soccer. You just can't play that poorly in your second World Cup.

The same can't be said about Clint Dempsey. My man had a great tournament, and scored a great goal. He absolutely hammered it in, and his dancing afterwords was great. Of course, I didn't see it until replays, as me and Joe were going nuts. Then, three minutes later, we had a dubious PK called on Onyewu, and the rest is history.

We drowned our sorrows at the same beer garden outside the stadium. It was rather fun. After singing with English Fulham fans on the train ride back to the main station, we ended up losing Joe's brother Rick and our chances of making the 10:30 train back to Munich were looking slight. Finally, Joe found him and we were able to hop on board at the last second. On board, we were told by a friendly German fan that we had won a trip home and that we should take it soon, and later mumbled "Bush Bush Bush Bush Bush!" and left. Ah, Euros.

The saving grace of the evening was that Ronaldo (whose weight has given him the hilarious nickname "Rotundo") scored two goals. It wasn't actually a saving grace, but it did make me giggle about my dog. The real Ronaldo probably celebrated by following the sun around the house and taking naps. And like his namesake, he probably conned my father into giving him a few extra treats at dinner.