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Published: August 7th 2006
A Fan Car
The owner of this car must really love his fussball. The entire car, inside and out is covered in Werder Bremen paraphenalia. He even has the Werder logo shaved into the back of his head.Sonntag 6th August, 2006.
Today was the Fan Day for SV Werder Bremen - the füßball team which we have adopted while we live here in Germany.
We decided to check the festivities out and the day began with a 9:30am training session, which we got up bright and early to go and see.
After this, there was the official presentation of the 2006/2007 team and then players were situated at each of the sponsors stands signing autographs and taking photos.
We watched the training session along with scores of other Werder faithfuls in the nice morning heat then made out way through the crowds to the sponsor stands to line up for autographs. The players were signing between the hours of 12 noon and 2 pm, and we left the training session at 10:45. We worked out our strategy for getting as many autogaphs as possible, and headed to the most popular stand first to tackle the busier ones head on. So we waited at 'bwin', Werder Bremens major sponsor where Miroslav Klose and Daniel Jensen were due to sign. We managed to get to the front of the pack and waited patiently while little kids
Training Session
This was some of the players at the training session, playing a variation of volleyball, by where you kick and headbutt it over the net. and parents tried to force their way to the front. We assumed a nice orderly line would be constructed, so we each waited on either side of the stand in case the line was started from either side.
Then the security guards - not my favourite people in the world - came and set up the baricades, and although I got jibbed, Rog managed to get fairly close to the entry point, taking him 10 mintues to get from his original position about 2 metres left to the front of the line. I stood my ground in front of the signing stage, getting squished into the fence and stood on by little people so that I could get photos of Rog and the players.
Once our "Klose" goal was achieved we moved onto the next most popular station - 'Patrick Owomoyela', the girls favourite... and yet another unorderly line with arrogant security guards and pushy little kids. I managed once again to get to the front of the fence to get good photos and Rog made his way to the line by squirming through people.
We got our 3rd and 4th autographs 40 minutes later, then moved on
Training Session
These were the other players doing other forms of training. making our way around the stands.
From this stage on, the other stands were nice orderly lines, only with the occasional German pushing in or attatching themselves onto the side of the line. Which might I add, Germans are very good at pushing in - in banks, post offices, supermarkets - a line has no rules... if you forget to step up as soon as there is 1 inch of space, thats it, you lose your spot.
So we inch by inch made our way through the lines. Rog lined up for one stand as I lined up for another and we got 3 signatures in 20 minutes.
Then more lines awaited us... again we decided to split up, I stood in the longer line while Rog went to the shorter line with the signing items - his trikot (jersey) and the official club magazine. We both stood in line for approx 40 minutes, and 2pm was drawing near. Rog managed to get right to the front of his line, being only one person away from getting two more signatures, when the lady of front of him was too slow off the mark and the players packed
Training Session
A portion of the crowds at the training session. up and went home. They or the security guards weren't gonna budge for anyone, so his waiting achieved nothing and he got no signatures from it.
Meeting back up with me in my line, from where I was about 50 people away from the front (only 30 - had side clingers not attatched themsleves) and at 2:10, these players also decided they had had enough and left.
So in the end we managed to get 7 signatures for the trikot and 6 for the poster as Rog forgot to get Owomoyela to sign it.
So by this stage it was now 2:30 and we were hot and dehydrated, so we decided it was home time. We walked back to the tram and jumped on along with too many other hot sweaty germans and went home.
(a mid-week training session is our next target to get the rest of the signatures, so we have a full jersey to frame.)
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