A matter of priorities

If you are ever in Germany and have an opportunity to watch the national team play football, with a fellow German colleague, jump on it. It is an experience not to be missed. Back in the US, we do have our fair share of Fan-dom. However, it is an incessant agenda that permeates through ESPN or the expansive media advertisements. Sure the fans live up the day by dressing up and acting the fool, but the nationalist agenda is entirely forgotten as the US hardly plays any other country. You seriously can’t count Canada! But here, the normally subdued reserved Germans, suddenly do a Jekyll and Hyde when football (Foosball) comes around. There is a buzz in the office of what lies in the evening ahead. Every moment spent not working is spent analyzing and remembering years of historical confrontations. When game times arrive, you find yourself in an open air bier-garten fighting your way to a clean line of sight to a big screen. Your once tempered colleague has now adorned a large German flag and whatever red-black-gold paraphernalia he can lay his hand on. Your eyes dart around and you notice everyone is here. Kids have their faces painted and are chattering football legend names. The ladies come too, not just to dress up as a fan, but to be a fan. The beer flows in between the anticipation and the kick off usually takes it all a notch higher. For the next two hours or so, you follow intensely that small ball on a large screen finding its way through numerous long socked legs to a relatively large goal. And as the German team scores, you rise and roar. If the other team scores, you just keep hoping. Once an intersection, now a cross section of German fansIf the German team wins, then you might as well forget hoping for a quiet night. Cars are loaded up with one set of fans and the street squares are stocked with the remaining lot. The cars honk and the stationary fans sing songs of glory. Flags are everywhere and strangers come together celebrating a glorious occurrence. The normally stiff German Polizei stand harmless aside. Sometimes even stealing a smile when no one is watching! If you are going nowhere, any road will take you there
To be fairly honest it doesn’t really matter if the match is a round one confrontation or a semi final. There is no such thing as a quiet party. It is a social release of proportions I have never seen ever in the US. Football is not a reason for the party. Football is the party.