Home base

The small Swabian city of Oehringen, an hours drive from Stuttgart, is the home base for the Socceroos during their World Cup campaign. They laid out the welcom mat as young ambassadors welcomed each coach load of Australian fans to their city and handed out maps and guides.

Almost every shop window in town is football themed and adorned with Australain and German flags with many more Australian flags hanging from buildings around the city. They made us feel very welcome indeed. The town centre hummed to the eating and drinking of both locals and Australians as several bands played throughout the day. A nice touch to their web page is that it uses the Australian and not the UK or US flags for the English version.

While our main motivation for the visit was for the Socceroos training session it was nice to wander the streets seeing their beautiful town. They had a beautifully well prepared pitch and the locals turned out in force to join us for the training session. I know the Socceroos are in good hands.