Growing up playing soccer I always herd about the crazy fans in Europe. People going to a soccer game and finding them selves mixed up in a riot; you know that kind of thing. So needless to say I had to experience one as soon as I could. Our local Berlin team is the Herhta football club; they are not the best, but not the worst either. So yesterday Katy, Bob, our new friend David and I grabbed a beer (you can do that in Germany) and jumped onto the train that takes us to the local Olympic stadium. This is not your run of the mill Olympic stadium, this is were Jessie Owens helped to expose Hitler’s anti Semitism, by winning every running race 800 meters and under. It also holds the huge field that most of the video we have of the Nazi marching (mostly done for propaganda and scare tactics)
Once off the train there was an energy in the air that I have never experienced before at a sporting event. The fans are on a different level, take your most fanatical crazed sport fan from the US double his energy level and invite 40,000 of his closest football loving friends and that’s what this was like (oh yeah and they are not sober). It was for good reason that there where several hundred riot police that looked ready to rumble.
The stadium is clearly modeled after the old Roman coliseums; it is a big foreboding structure that would have been an intimidating place for an African American (Jessie Owens) to travel to in Nazi Germany in the 1930’s.
Our home team won, as every home team should do, the crowd went crazy and all was right with the world, but the actual soccer game was really a small part of being at the stadium.
Once off the train there was an energy in the air that I have never experienced before at a sporting event. The fans are on a different level, take your most fanatical crazed sport fan from the US double his energy level and invite 40,000 of his closest football loving friends and that’s what this was like (oh yeah and they are not sober). It was for good reason that there where several hundred riot police that looked ready to rumble.
The stadium is clearly modeled after the old Roman coliseums; it is a big foreboding structure that would have been an intimidating place for an African American (Jessie Owens) to travel to in Nazi Germany in the 1930’s.Our home team won, as every home team should do, the crowd went crazy and all was right with the world, but the actual soccer game was really a small part of being at the stadium.
As if the history/ soccer lesson from Saturday was not enough Erin and I decided to go on a little bike ride to Potsdam. For those of you that are wondering were Potsdam is and why we would go there I will fill you in. It’s a 12 mile ride threw forests and cobblestone roads away from our house, it’s also were Stalin, Truman, and Churchill met to slice up Germany/ Berlin into all those little pieces changed the world.
There is so much to see in Potsdam that it can’t be done in one day so we thought we would start with the prettiest. Sans Souci is on hell of a “summer home” the existing grounds are roughly 4 km squared and house a many lavish gardens, palaces, bath houses, tea houses, more gardens, and fountains. We spent a couple of hours there and just walked around the gardens and only saw about ¼ of the place and did not go in any of the buildings. If you come for a visit you can expect to come here!
So its 3:30 Saturday morning and I get woken up buy a guy moaning. Before you jump to conclusions he was on the front steps to the apartment building. Now the last time I heard a guy moaning like this I had just finished doing CPR on him so I thought I would get up to see what the deal was. Well he was not dieing, but he did kill some brain cells that night. The old guy must have had one heck of a night out on the town. In the states I would have given him several not so nice options of were he could go, but this being Germany at 3:30 in the morning what to do was a little unclear. The moaning continued for the next hour waking us up several times so I thought the thing to do was to call the cops. Have you ever tried to call the cops while in another country? It’s not easy, especially when you can’t speak the language, and when you finally get your point across they try and tell you that the street address you just gave them does not exist. Frustrated I gave up. I looked out the window at our poor drunken village idiot to see that he was gone; someone had let him in past the front door. Now our booze loving neighbor was slowly coming up the steps yelling please in German and shouting something violently. After an hour of this he finally made it past our door to the last flight of stairs. Wondering what he was up to I went out of our apartment to find an open door to what I assume was his apartment and him passed out in the hall way. So that’s our neighbor.. Wow city life is a little different..
To our moms that are reading it, don’t worry we live in a very very safe part of town and I will be amaized if this was not the most excitement we see all year.
That’s enough for now, hope you all had a great week!
Patrick
There is so much to see in Potsdam that it can’t be done in one day so we thought we would start with the prettiest. Sans Souci is on hell of a “summer home” the existing grounds are roughly 4 km squared and house a many lavish gardens, palaces, bath houses, tea houses, more gardens, and fountains. We spent a couple of hours there and just walked around the gardens and only saw about ¼ of the place and did not go in any of the buildings. If you come for a visit you can expect to come here!
So its 3:30 Saturday morning and I get woken up buy a guy moaning. Before you jump to conclusions he was on the front steps to the apartment building. Now the last time I heard a guy moaning like this I had just finished doing CPR on him so I thought I would get up to see what the deal was. Well he was not dieing, but he did kill some brain cells that night. The old guy must have had one heck of a night out on the town. In the states I would have given him several not so nice options of were he could go, but this being Germany at 3:30 in the morning what to do was a little unclear. The moaning continued for the next hour waking us up several times so I thought the thing to do was to call the cops. Have you ever tried to call the cops while in another country? It’s not easy, especially when you can’t speak the language, and when you finally get your point across they try and tell you that the street address you just gave them does not exist. Frustrated I gave up. I looked out the window at our poor drunken village idiot to see that he was gone; someone had let him in past the front door. Now our booze loving neighbor was slowly coming up the steps yelling please in German and shouting something violently. After an hour of this he finally made it past our door to the last flight of stairs. Wondering what he was up to I went out of our apartment to find an open door to what I assume was his apartment and him passed out in the hall way. So that’s our neighbor.. Wow city life is a little different..
To our moms that are reading it, don’t worry we live in a very very safe part of town and I will be amaized if this was not the most excitement we see all year.
That’s enough for now, hope you all had a great week!
Patrick
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