There was a moment on Wednesday afternoon when, as I tore northwards along Autobahn 27 with the accelerator in my hire car floored and scenic Lower Saxony a blur on either side, my recently acquired and otherwise faultless GPS piped up shrilly: "Perform a U-turn wherever possible." Maybe I've not picked up on the subtleties of the computerised voice's more sarcastic side. Perhaps it was a challenge. But then this has been a rather surreal first day.
It started poorly, the taxi ordered for 5.15am failing to arrive with a belated phone call to the company at 5.30am (the poor bloke who picked up clearly hadn't been working the night shift) prompting a rather manic dash to Manchester airport for the early morning flight to Hanover.
I made my own attempt to wake myself up en route, only to be asked to turn my iPod down by an elderly Danish woman sitting behind me on the sparsely occupied plane. Given that she had to be asked three times by the stewardess to fasten her seat belt, and had actually got up and tottered off down the aisle while we were still ascending, that seemed a fairly blatant case of selective hearing.
It may sound pernickety - the whingeing of the fortunate - but it's easy to allow oneself a certain dread of what awaits on a month-long trip like this which can dampen the excitement of a tournament, but it's hard not to buy into the expectation over here. Hanover offers constant reminders of the competition ahead, the colours of the competing nations everywhere and the slick city centre a picture. The stadium is stunning, the media centre housed next door in a converted swimming pool with the diving boards now hovering high over desks and computer monitors. At some stage, a journalist who has been pushed just that little bit too far - someone who cracked having been blanked in the mixed zone for the umpteenth time by a Togo reserve - is going to take the plunge off one of those three ominous platforms. It's a brave hack who sits beneath those boards.
Beyond the mundane - checking in, securing accreditation, attempting to negotiate the streets of the city with the GPS growing increasingly tetchy at my ineptitude ("In 1,200ft, bear left ... in 600ft, bear left ... Perform a U-turn wherever possible ...") - today was about trying to see the Trinidad & Tobago squad at their base in the village of Rotenburg, near Bremen. Hence the frantic journey north on the Autobahn to their training session at the tiny Stadion In Der Ahe, a tree-lined non-league ground. Some 3,100 locals had flocked to watch them prepare, squealing girls whipped up into Beatles-esque frenzy at the sight of players more used in some cases to the relative obscurity of League One or the Scottish First Division. Yet watching them play, and then listening to the likes of Chris Birchall (Port Vale), Russell Latapy (Falkirk) and Shaka Hislop (West Ham), their enthusiasm is infectious.
Of course, they're led by a manager who has tasted success at Real Madrid and Ajax, and coached Holland at a World Cup finals. Leo Beenhakker gave his press conference in English, German, Dutch and Spanish, cracking jokes in each before breaking off to have a fag and a smoked salmon sandwich (on Schwarzbrot). Asked why he thought there were so many Dutch managers and coaches at the finals, he just deadpanned: "Because we are so good." Class.
Yet, 110km back in Hanover later, news filtered through that Wayne Rooney was en route back and Djibril Cissé may have broken his leg. Forget that. There's a monk in full sackcloth doing keepie-uppies on 2DF Heute Journal. That soon flicks over to an orchestra ball juggling whilst tearing into a Beethoven symphony, the French horn section catching the ball in the bell of their instruments while the conductor makes mock disapproving faces. I think I may be tired. A colleague has just texted to tell me that: "There's a Michael Jackson look-alike doing what appears to be a taikwando 'pattern' on the platform of Bremen station." Things are apparently "going really well". Enough.
