Soccer in Germany

Germany v. Ghana
Public Viewing



Our second day at the training we took a train to Kiel, a city about 20km away. Germany would be playing Ghana and we planned to watch the match at a public viewing in Kiel. Holgar, the boss of Reg’s department had told us that public viewings take place during all major German soccer matches (NEVER call it a game) and that 70K+ people typically attended. (Attended is much too small of a word to use to describe what Germans actually do at a public viewing.) Kiel is a harbor city and has semi-annual rowing races that turnout quite a crowd. This day, the match fell on the same night as the races and so the crowd was massive. A large screen had been set up in front of the water for the match to be projected onto and the surrounding vendors were anxiously waiting to grow rich selling their sausages, beers, Haribo gummies, secco and strawberries, and of course, their Chinese food. Reg had been to a public viewing once in Munich and so was less amazed by the red, yellow, and black streaming through the colossal crowd via flags, hats, wigs, faces, jerseys, and banners. At first sight I even I felt like I should be proud to be a German!

Before settling on a viewing spot, which could have been done hours in advance to ensure a seat, I had my first experience with “traditional” German fast food. Enter: the doner. This pile of awesomeness all rolled into your choice of bread or wrap and which is pronounced like “tuna” with a d, resembles a gyro but with different choices of meats, vegetables, and sauces. Reg had had one prior to that which also had fries in it, but sadly this didn’t appear to be an option this time. Mine, though it didn’t look or taste anything like pizza, was called a rolled pizza doner and was filled with falafel, corn, garlic sauce and some form of salsa, and then stuffed to the brim with lots of cabbage, lettuce, tomato. They grill the entire thing and then wrap it in foil for you to peel back and enjoy at your leisure. As with all of the food I have had here, the doner was fabulous. (So fabulous that we had to order a cone of pommes (fries) with ketchup, though I think it was BBQ sauce, for dessert.) The only question left now: How is it that d-o-n-e-r is pronounced duna?

Thirty minutes before the match started we looked for a spot to watch. 6 of us finally found somewhat of a spot, with standing room only and surrounded by the tallest Germans I’ve seen. When Holgar realized that we would never be able to see any of the game he led the mission to find a new spot. Because every seat in Kiel was taken, Reg, his co-worker Ingo, and I sat on a table, as close as cousins, in an alleyway outside of a sports bar. We had a crystal clear view of the match, as did the modest fifty other spectators covering the tables, chairs, and ground.

I was anxious to see Germany score more so because I wanted to see the crowd’s reaction (and didn’t want to see what happened if they didn’t) than for any other reason. The victory celebration was exactly how I imagined it would be—brilliant. While I was amazed by the power of it, the celebration was dicussed by Reg’s co-workers with comments such as, “Just wait until the finals,” “This is reserved,” and my favorite, Holgar’s description of the evening as, “Just another Wednesday in Germany.”

We wrapped up the evening back at the resort with a couple more hours of snacking and talking, snacking, and talking, and finally made ourselves go to bed, though I could have sat and talked with them all night.