Australian Open

Well, I don't think I have to explain what the Australian Open are... but I can tell you what they have to do with me:

Monday, January 16, 2006 I went to see the first day of the tournament. Why exactly the first day? Well, I have some Cypriot friends here. And one of the players - Marcos Baghdatis, the one that even ended up to play in the final round against world champion Rodger Federer - was Cypriot as well. I.e. my friends wanted to go to the Australian Open the day he was playing and so I went with them... probably as the only German or better the only non-Greek-Cypriot amongst all those other heaps of Cypriots and Greeks they united with in the Melbourne Park to cheer on their compatriot (see picture):

Marcos Baghdatis:

But I had a lot of fun - and after that day I even knew the rules of tennis ;-)

We had a general admission ticket which allowed us to move around in the whole Melbourne Park and switch between any of those smaller courts (see picture) and the Vodafone Arena as we liked.

The only place we had no ticket to go in was the Rod Laver Arena where the top-players like these were competing:

However, we tried to get in without the proper ticket... and only Stavros and me (and much later also two others) did manage to sneak in and to watch the above games:

Serena Williams vs. Na Li

Andy Roddick vs. Michael Lammer

After that last match somewhat around midnight I could say that this was a great day!