McDonalds . . . 88,88m says what is surely the world's most German sign. Go on.

It's okay to laugh at them.

Just across the street is another sign, this one pointing down a street in the opposite direction. McGowan's Irish Bar . . . 100m it says. The germ of an idea forms. Stand with back to McDonald's sign. Step it out. Right enough, give or take a few, it's about 90 steps.

We'll let them have their 88.88m, except we'll insist on using the decimal point.

But what about the other one? Stand with back to McGowan's sign again.

Step it out. A hundred steps. Fifty more. Fifty more again. In all, in or around 220. Go on. It's okay to laugh at us.

England were in town this scorching weekend so McGowan's played host to plenty of pink faces on Friday night. And not all wearing St George's cross, either.

There were a couple of Tipp jerseys in the corner, a Mayo one laughing with the geezahs outside, an Ireland one with Duffer across the back sitting at the bar.

That's the first thing you properly notice about the World Cup. The world is here. McGowan's wasn't the only place you could see signs of home.

Down at the Fanfest along the Main where two massive big screens float on the river showing all the games, you could pick out jerseys both green and Gah. Even when the riot police were coming into one of the squares above the river to put manners on the Ingerlanders who were making aeroplane signals and singing 'Ten German Bombers', you could see a few rubber-neckers nearby in their People's Republic of Cork t-shirts.

There's more than just us, of course.

Flags are draped from every hotel and apartment block. English ones are in the majority, as you'd expect, but there are more besides. Brazilians ones, Croatian ones, American ones, France, Ecuador, Australia. Even Chile who, regardless of what Kevin Doyle says, aren't here either. Frankfurt airport moves more people through it per day than any other in the world apart from Heathrow, so this is clearly where a lot of people heading off around Germany for the tournament have started their journey.

And it's nice to be in amongst it.

Even the dunderheaded Spitfire shower were quelled in relatively short order.

Indeed, it actually turned into entertainment of a kind with most people laughing heartily as one of them tried to charge a lady riot police person . . . how's that for tiptoeing around the language? . . . only for her to feint one way, dodge the other and nail him to the street with a single thrust of her shield. Our boy in Burberry looked decidedly sheepish as he was cuffed and taken away.

Speaking of tiptoeing around the language, this is definitely one of those countries where the paltry amount of reading up you've done in preparation can prick at your conscience. Not that it's remotely a burden . . . pretty much everybody can speak English and, in fact, most are glad to be able to show you how good theirs is.

There's none of the eye-rolling you get in France or the impatience you get at home. Still, you feel like a toad when you can't rustle up much beyond bitte and danke.

Thankfully, help is at hand in this regard in the form of a piece of advice passed on by the soccer correspondent of one of the other Irish papers, a man in possession of an older and almost certainly wiser head than this one.

"It's simple, " he says. "What you do is you ask them, in German, if they speak Irish. 'Sprechen Sie Iren?' There'll be a look of horror on their face. Then, when you follow it up with 'Ah, okay.

Sprechen Sie Englisch?' they'll be delighted. 'English! Yes, yes of course!'" It's a neat plan alright. You get the information you need and you shift the burden of ignorance from your shoulders, meeting your new German friend on some shared common ground. There's only one drawback.

There's a chance it could backfire horribly. It's a small chance, granted, but it's also a small world and with seemingly half that world here in Germany for the next month, surely that chance inflates a touch. What happens if you go up to somebody and give it the old Sprechen Sie Iren? and they come back with, "Gaeilge? Cinnte! Conas ata tu a mhic? Aon sceal?"

Then you're in real trouble.