We Are the Champions!

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Astute readers will remember from a previous trip (Today, we are all Lithuanians!) that serendipitous events make some of the best travel experiences. To that end, on my last work trip to Budapest in June I noticed that the entire nation of Hungary, even without a qualifying national team, took great interest even in the earliest rounds of the FIFA World Cup. A public viewing station was set up in a park directly outside my hotel room (! - fortunately I was happy to watch along), and some friends and I viewed one match in spectacular early-evening weather at the delightful outdoor pub Aqvárium, in Pest.

As I learned more about the schedule for the World Cup, I began to wonder if lightning might strike twice, and we might get lucky enough to see some really exciting football, with real football fans, during our trip through Germany. And then I learned that Germany fielded a strong national team this year, with a reasonable shot at the finals, and that the final match fell on the very day we were scheduled to arrive in Dresden. I promptly dispatched an email asking our dear friends and hosts if we could find a nice Biergarten (beer garden) with outdoor screens to watch the final, whoever those top two teams might be, and this was agreed and arranged.

Astute readers will remember from a previous post (Family reunion) that our first attempt at football in Schenefeld was successful, but perhaps underwhelming—everyone was tired, including Team USA who lost their knockout round match. Football in Berlin (Bear-lin) was nearly our salvation, as we'd've been kept up all night by fans in the neighboring restaurants whether we watched it or not, so it was great to just go with the flow and watch it and give ourselves a reason to enjoy their late-night yelling and honking when Deutschland crushed Brazil in its semi-final match; I even managed to stay awake the next night to see Argentina's goalkeeper single-glovedly win their semi-final against Netherlands on overtime penalty kicks.

And that's how we ended up in Dresden, on the actual day, ready to watch Team Deutschland take on Team Argentina for the actual Cup of the actual World.

Until we settled in on Dieter und Gudrun's terrace and watched dark clouds roll in and a torrential rain pour down just an hour before the scheduled start of the match. It let up just in time for us to walk to the neighborhood Biergarten which Dieter had researched earlier in the day and had personally confirmed would offer outdoor public viewing. When we got there the place was dripping, puddly, and empty; one forlorn server was packing up the last of the restaurant and obviously looking forward to going home to catch the match on his own TV sensibly indoors. Only partially deterred, we resolved to walk another kilometer through the Großer Garten to the Biergarten at the other end of the park, where we hoped another public viewing might be on offer. We were not disappointed! This more resilient Biergarten, though still only sparsely populated with fans huddled under its few umbrellas, had wrapped its outdoor TVs in plastic through the storm and was, now that the rain had cleared, unsheathing them for battle. We even found a spot underneath an umbrella, just in case.

I brought my bought-in-Berlin fabric flower lei in the colors of the German flag (black, red, and gold), and our nearby fellow fans sported Dr. Seuss hats, flag capes, and other regalia. (As I mentioned before, Germany is a bit uncomfortable with overt displays of nationalism, since historically that sort of thing hasn't gone well for anyone. They make an exception for football, which is unexpected and weird to see, even for Germans.)

We ate Wurst (sausage), drank Bier (ahem), and watched football through a full 90 scoreless minutes. When the German team made its most promising shots on goal, we all roared together, only to commiserate when those shots flew wide of the net. Another 30 minutes of overtime lay ahead, and when viewed from this angle I have to say overtime doesn't seem to make much sense. These teams battled to a nil-all draw in 90 minutes, and now we're going to give them another 30 minutes of exactly the same thing expecting a different result? But Team Deutschland proved me wrong, landing a solid goal with just minutes left in the extra time period and driving our Biergarten crowd into a delirium. High-fives with surrounding strangers, who had long since figured out we were football-deficient Americans and loved us even more for it. And when the final whistle blew, delivering an actual plated-in-real-gold trophy (I feel compelled to point out that it is not cup-shaped) into the hands of the German coach, team, and even Bundeskanzler (Chancellor Angela Merkel, in attendance in Brazil, who personally hugged each player), our Biergarten and the surrounding streets celebrated with fireworks.

By this time, it was well past midnight, and we walked about half a kilometer to the nearby Straßenbahn (tram, literally "street train") stop for a quicker trip home. This took us past the VW Gläserne Manufaktur (Transparent Factory) at the corner of the Großer Garten, and across from the factory, a seedy-looking sports bar worthy of Burien's finest. Drunken revelers were spilling out of it into the broad intersection at Straßburgerplatz, and we saw fireworks (M-80s, M>80s, and Roman-candle-looking things) whizzing by at very low angles across the very sidewalk where we needed to go to reach our tram stop. In past Fourths of July at my house when we shot fireworks directly at people and things, it was accidental, and didn't go very well (hey, my neighbor never spotted the burn damage on her rhododendrons). But Dieter, and mostly Gudrun, just plowed directly ahead into the firing line, as if daring a bunch of drunken young men to fire explosives at pensioners, and indeed the drunks blinked and, improbably, no pensioners (nor Americans) were injured. We got to enjoy the show from the tram stop and from the tram as it waited for the firework-and-reveler-related traffic to clear.

Even (especially?) if you're an introvert like we both are, find ways to make this kind of adventure happen. Memories don't get much better. DEUTSCHLAND!

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Photos

Determination
The waterproofing setup for our outdoor TV (a huge rainstorm had gone through about an hour earlier).

Prime seating
TV, Wurst, Bier.

Victory!
Greg and our table-neighbor celebrate Deutschland's win!

The Cup!
Team Deutschland lift their very expensive gold prize.

Celebrating!
Our Biergarten shrouded in smoke from fireworks.

Pretty sure we are going to be killed
Drunken revelers in the streets with fireworks. Not confident in their aim.

Comments

[J&J]

World Cup
What an adventure to share with the Germans!