T'N'T World Cup Trip 2006

An article from yesterday's International Herald Tribune

This article pretty much sums up what we've just experienced in Germany... We didn't make it to Berlin, but every city had a fan fest and each once we visited was full of people from all over the world here to party and soak in the fun.



Vantage Point: The mysterious pattern of fans and friends at the Gate

Rob Hughes International Herald Tribune
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 2006-->Published: June 21, 2006

Germany is rising again, and not just in the stadium. It was harder to book a place at the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of Berlin, than it was to buy a ticket for the Olympiastadion just nine kilometers away on Tuesday evening.

Indeed, out on the street and on the boulevard they are calling "Fan Mile," we were 500,000 people without tickets for the ball, but nevertheless a part of the phenomenon of mass support that Jürgen Klinsmann, the national coach, praised as part of the team effort.

Well, we were certainly shedding our share of sweat in the cause.

Under the sweltering sun, some of us got nowhere near the Gate - for that you had to arrive well before lunch. No matter, once the Berlin authorities realized what a fever was spreading, they arranged for large screens right down that so-called Mile, and even in the brightest light we knew enough to recognize the goal scorers.

Never, it seems, in the history of soccer has a game played by so few been cheered by so many. We watched it in the park, in the alleyways and at the very gate that has been synonymous with war and peace, and with division here on the east side of Germany.

But were the multitudes here to party or to live the day? Were they soccer fans or people following a trend and coming out of their homes and their places of work and their schools to share in something for once free of charge?

The first goal told us. As the ball was cut back to Miroslav Klose, there was a collective holding of breath. As he struck it, there was almost silence, and then the explosion of noise, the waving of tens of thousands of black, red and yellow flags, the shrieking of women's voices, and the child near me who simply jumped up and down on the spot shouting, "Tor! Tor! Tor!" Goal, goal, goal.
Who scored that, I asked five schoolgirls. Klose, they said.
What country is he from?
Deutschland.
You sure? I heard he was born in Poland.
One of the five knew that. But anyway, modern Germany is like modern anywhere else when it comes to taking the talents from wherever and adopting the winners. The girls had a parasol acclaiming another German, who also was to score a goal, and he too, Lukas Podolski, came from across that Polish border.

Maybe that is why the Germans are winning, and the Poles are going home.

But as I wandered around the throng, among more nationalities than one could count, there was an element of tolerance, an absence of threat. It was exactly what the organizers had said they wanted: soccer as the means to friendship.

If truth be told, this is normal for World Cups. The technology that has allowed for big screens to be visible even on so bright a day is fresh, but way back in 1978 in Buenos Aires, onward to Mexico City in 1986 and to every stop the World Cup circus has visited in its four-year cycle, there has been far more evidence of supporters reveling in a melting pot rather than skirmishing in the hooligan fashion that dominates the headlines.

Last week, when Germany met Poland, there had been, according to the police, fewer than 100 arrests, mostly for minor offenses, out of a crowd put at 500,000. How you count that crowd, especially when you are in the thick of it, heaven knows.

But as I write this, the sound of Berliners driving the streets, tooting horns, yelling the names of the Mannschaft, the team, are part of the more modern outpouring of nationhood.

Or is it nationalism?

There was a certain eeriness to standing among so many thousands in the park as the anthem "Deutschland, über alles" was relayed from inside the stadium where Hitler staged his 1936 Olympic Games.

This feeling passed, but it was inevitable, given that one's own mother had fled Berlin, her family never to be united again. And as part of life's mysterious pattern, she had been born in Gdansk, which then was a free state closer to Poland than Germany.

These things matter when we have a game, promoted by FIFA, soccer's governing body, identifying itself as a unifying force with United Nations approval. So long as we can keep the hooligans down, so long as the police have as calm a time as they appeared to be having on the Fan Mile, so much better for the game.

Soccer moves with, sometimes ahead, of the times, and there were youths in this mass of humankind who were listening to their hand-held computers, their mobile phones, filling in the details of those movements that were sometimes a blur to us.

Along the Mile, I met the Straube family from Cologne. They had booked their day when Podolski still belonged to FC Cologne, but no matter, they were here, they said, for "the fest."

These English words creep in. The Fan Mile. The fest. And the CNN factor of asking 18 times a day for viewers to send in their photographs and video of the wackiest celebrations they get up to. It is again a modern cult, fan or subscriber involvement.

If we think it is not exactly the roots of soccer support that families come out onto the streets this way - not German families - maybe we should think back to 1954. Franz Beckenbauer, simply known as "the Kaiser" of German football, says he was 9 years old the day the team of Fritz Walter achieved the Miracle of Bern, beating the Magical Magyars of Hungary in the final.

When the team returned home, Franz was on the streets to greet it. His mother had sewn the number 10, Walter's number, on his shirt. And this child, who had listened to the game on radio, formed the dream that took him to captain West Germany to win the World Cup in 1974, to coach the West German champion again in 1990, and to be president of the World Cup organization in 2006.

Sport is different from much of life in that respect. As I left the partying in the park, a boy, probably about 9, was trying the salsa, the somersault that is Klose's signature celebration whenever he scores a goal.

Innocence at the Brandenburg Gate.

posted by kvarkle @ 6/23/2006 06:07:00 AM