I can’t believe I’m only now getting around to blogging last nights game. I’m getting old. I didn’t even party that hard and it took me half the day to recover. Maybe I’m not that old, I’m just out of practice.
Riot police just behind the Reichstag. Luckily they weren’t needed in Berlin, but in Dortmund, 300 hooligans were arrested and some were found to weapons on them.
This is the Adidas tent stadium that has been set up in front of the Reichstag. It holds 10,000 people and we may try to get tickets to sit there for the USA v. Italy match, so stay tuned for pics from the inside.
There were over half a million people at Berlin’s Fan Fest and all of them were in line with us to get searched by the four security people at the entrance. Actually, “in line” is not the correct term, as Germany does not seem to have the concept of “standing in line” (or “on line” as the British say), so in reality, there were at least a hundred thousand of us crowded around a small entrance gate trying to push our way into the festival. I like the concept of queuing, but it does not seem to be something that most of the rest of the world has embraced (especially France), just former British colonies – wait, does India queue?
The German male’s favorite pastime, watering the bushes
So the first thing we pass after getting through the entrance is the men’s bathroom. This is an area of bushes located next to the portable toilets that the German guys use because German guys prefer peeing in the freedom of the outdoors. I have liberalized quite a bit since moving to Germany, but in this regard I remain Puritanical. Pee pee belongs in a toilet or urinal, unless you’re WAAAAY out in the woods where no one will see you. Pee pee does not belong:
- Against the neighbors fence that was in plain site of my kitchen window in Rostock, especially at breakfast time.
- Against the front door of any of the fancy buildings on Friedrichstrasse while many people are passing.
- Actually, against basically any building in Berlin (and for one horrified colleague of Rainer’s, I will add here that pooping does not belong at Berlin bus stops).
- In the field next to the building I worked in in Rostock, although several hundred guys thought I should have a view of their wee-wees while I worked at my computer. Couldn’t they have at least turned away from the office building?
- On the Autobahn.
Some very beautiful Polish fans cheer on their team
The German players enter the field
It ends up that this is not the best place to go if you want to actually watch the game, since any time anything exciting happens, everybody starts waving their flags. But since I’m not that into football and just like experiencing the event, it was a fine place for me to be. I met an Aussi and a Scot while standing here. The Scot was rooting for Poland. The Aussi and I were neutral observers.
Polish fans take control of the traffic lights
Rainer enjoys his hard-won beer
At halftime, Rainer says to me, “Let’s go take a walk and look around the rest of the Fest.” This meant, “Come to the beer stand with me and stand 20 minutes next to the pot-smoking, beer-bonging hooligans while I fight my way to the front of the non-line.” The hooligans were accompanied by a very stereotypical-looking American frat guy. You know, the probably played high school football so he’s got some bulk, but isn’t big enough to play in college, so he’s got the beginnings of a beer belly guy. He was cheering on the beer-bonging, and I was wondering, don’t people ever get tired of being clichés? Then he turned to one of the German guys and spoke very fluent German to him. So I started wondering why I’m so crabby tonight.
In the end, Poland put up a good fight, but in the last minutes, Germany made a goal, knocking Poland out of the tournament. The German fans made sure the Polish fans knew that they could go home now by chanting “Ihr könnt nach Hause fahren!” over and over (“You can go home”). Click here to download my video of the goal and end of the game (7.8mb).
This is the point when I realized that you don’t think much of the hour ride in, but now you’re exhausted and need to get public transportation home along with 500,000 other people. So, we decided to make the 20 or so minute walk to Oranienburger Strasse (this is the bar area) and get some drinks instead of fighting the crowds.
We stopped at what used to be an upscale Tex-Mex place, but whose Flammkuchen of the Week was Olives and Curry, so I suppose the restaurant has changed management. On our right was a large table of Paraguay fans (Arribe Paraguay! Arribe Paraguay!) and in front of us was a large table of Swiss fans (Hopp Swiss! Hopp Swiss!) and in my hand was a Russian Colada, which is Colada mix with vodka and kahlua and wow, this was pretty awful (it was the drink of the day). Not only did it taste horrible, I found that I have no tolerance any more and I was buzzing half way through. It was a huge glass, but still!
At 12:30am we caught the S-bahn home, so I can’t speak for how well Berlin handled getting the crowd home except that by 12:30am it was gone. We finally got home at 1:30 at which point I crawled into bed and was not capable of coherent thought until this afternoon. I then spent the afternoon learning Adobe Premiere Elements, with my World Cup video being my first ever video creation. I hope I didn’t go overboard on the extras in my enthusiasm.
Oh, and the England v. Trinidad & Tobago game was quite the nailbiter, but England made 2 goals in the final five minutes. To stay in, T&T now needs to beat Paraguay.
And now I’m off to bed. Hopefully Herbert Grönemeyer’s official World Cup song “Celebrate the Day” will not be running through my head all night tonight like it was last night. It’s a great song… oh way ay oh way – oh way ay oh way – celebrate the day ay oh way… NO!!!!!! Peace out!
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I missed the Germany-Poland game, but I am not happy about it. Everyone says it was a terrific match, and I would have been happy to see Poland win (I have a number of Polish students). There is a huge video setup in front of the Kölner Dom, just outside the Museum Ludwig where we were playing, and there were so many fans that there was no way me and my violin were going to make it through them on my bicycle, had to make a tortuous detour just to get outside the fan zone. It was roughly halftime when I finished my performance, and I biked to my girlfriend’s house, but she is adamantly anti-TV, and refused to let me watch the rest of the game, although I was allowed to listen to part of it on the radio. NOT the same thing.
Tonight was the England game, the English team not particularly sterling. The goal apparently only possible because Crouch shot himself in the air by pulling on his opponent’s hair. Whatever happened to the English sense of fair play??? (Incidentally, I never heard of an English expression “on line” for queing. But on the other hand I haven’t lived in England for a while, and language does tend to change).
Recorded the match on my laptop because I had a show in the opera tonight and was going to watch it but one of my lodgers said it wasn’t really worth seeing, so I am going to watch another couple of episodes of the American series “Veronica Mars” which my son sent me. Need some mindless entertainment.
But first I am going to download and watch your video.
Nice work, Christine! Clever use of the special effects.
It occurs to me that your rant on the phenomenon of public peeing neglects to mention the curious corollary that in Germany it is considered extremely bad form for males to urinate standing up in other people’s houses.
Men aren’t supposed to pee standing up at other people’s houses? I did not know that. Makes the public peeing even more strange.
I think I’m right about “standing on line”, but we’d need a Brit to weigh in here to be sure. Maybe I just made it up somewhere along the way.
Never heard of Veronica Mars, but tonight’s episode of Nip/Tuck was excellent (the one where Kimber gets kidnapped by the Carver for those who watch) and fit perfectly in between the England and Sweden matches.
And yeah, England wasn’t great, which is what made the game exciting. T&T almost scored at one point.
Oh, and I mentioned Herbert Grönemeyer in my post and wanted to elaborate. He is a HUGE German popstar, although most Americans probably only know him as the young reporter guy in the movie “Das Boot”. But he has some really good songs. On the other hand, he is also capable of tremendous kitsch, but that’s what makes him so special.
Other German music I recommend: Sportfreunde Stiller (except that their label copy-protects the CDs so I can’t put the songs on my MP3 player and that bugs the crap out of me), Die Ärzte, Fettes Brot, and Falco (Austrian, but still German language). Argh, now instead of the World Cup song, I have Emanuela by Fettes Brot going through my head.
German singers: I am partial to the “Wise Guys”, they are very professional and funny.
Never heard of the Wise Guys, I will have to check them out.
Oh, I misspoke when I said that I don’t attend operas anymore. I do actually go to operas when people I know are performing in them. I took Rainer to see a performance of Marriage of Figaro in Komische Oper here in Berlin (the girlfriend -now wife- of a friend of mine was performing Cherubino – she was great).
Figaro is one of my all-time favorites…I did a terrific production of it in Edinburgh with Barenboim and the English Chamber orchestra.
Have never been to the Komische Oper, but play in Berlin pretty often, and have a lot of friends in Prenzlauer Berg.