football

Thank goodness Germany lost the semi-final. I don't know what would have happened if they'd reached the final let alone won the world cup. It was all crazy enough all ready.
I happened to be in Munich during the semi-final game, and while I absolutely refused to WATCH the game (no, I'm not one of those who beforehand claimed that she'd have nothing to do with the world cup and then still watched every game. I haven't seen a single game, and when the quarter-final was on,
I didn't even know it was Germany playing), we sort of couldn't escape the whole game on audio commentary when we finally managed to find a place that had NOT put the tv on the pavement
(Tapas, btw, YUMMIE!, almost as good as in Gomera). So we heard the whole game through the window and with about a minute shift from the window across the road (where some guy climbed and yelled out of the window every time Germany scored a goal).
And of course stayed until the end of the penalty shootout and then walked over to Leopoldstrasse, the main meeting point for fans. The first half hour there was ok, taking pics of all those crazy Germans wearing the German colours in any way possible. Then it got too crowded and the crowd too drunk,
and while I have no problems in Asian crowds (which due to the fact that people there usually aren't drunk in crowds tend not to be aggressive let alone throw empty bottles and pick a fight with everybody who happens to run into them), I started panicking and had to leave. We hardly made it to the subway and were some of the last ones to make it DOWN the stairs before the supervisory staff had to call the police
because they were unable to clear the stairs themselves with all those people trying to get in and out.

Two more days, and hopefully after that, Germany can concentrate on something else again, and it will be possible again to open up a newspaper without the world cup on each and every page and
stroll through town without references to the world cup in every shop window and turn on the tv without some non-vip discussing the world cup on every channel and go to a pub without tvs everywhere blaring the lastest football results and have something else to talk about. It sort of feels weird that it needs a football world cup of all things for newspapers to exult on how Germans can finally identify with their flag again without needing to feel that it is wrong to feel German :-S Ask any foreigner: Germans are Germans and will never be able to hide it as much as they'd like to deny it. I'm certainly no exception :-S