Rachel's in Germany!: Soccer fever is sweeping the nation

This morning was painting class and I finished up my last figure painting and gave my teacher (Christian) a couple of my paintings for the student exhibition. Acrylics haven't been easy, but overall I'm proud of my work in that class, and Christian seemed pleased with it too. And either way I got my course credit slip, so that's the most important thing!

Then this afternoon was the public viewing of the USA-Deutschland game! I borrowed the German flag that has been sitting dormant in our kitchen to wear as a cape. On the U-Bahn I saw lots of other people wearing their colors and all dressed up too. I was actually the very first one at the meeting spot and I thought I must have gotten something wrong because I'm never the first to show up for anything. But after a couple minutes, some of the other students showed up too. It turned out that there were a lot fewer of us than had responded to the event on Facebook, but by the time the game started we still had a pretty decent group. I was really glad to see Laura again--I think the last time we were together was that day we went to Miniatur-Wunderland back at the end of March! She brought two of her friends from Spain who were visiting for the week, which was cool. Cristina, one of the HAW tutors, met us at the station, and she brought a face-paint stick so we could all put the flag on our faces. We went in pretty early, so we ended up sitting around for almost two hours before the game started. Overall nice weather, thankfully--it's been kind of cloudy, rainy, and cold the past few days--though it was definitely on the humid side and the clouds kept sprinkling down random drops despite the sun. A couple of other students came during that time: Emese from Hungary, Camille and a couple other girls from Belgium, Bettina from Switzerland, Lucy from Austria, and Eirini and a few others from Greece, most of whom were fully decked out in German-flag garb.

The rest of the American students showed up later, decked out in red, white, and blue, and when they saw my red-yellow-and-black flag cape and face paint they all yelled at me and called me a traitor and wanted to know what my problem was. I said I didn't care and I always root for the USA, so today since I was in Germany I was going to root for Germany. Seriously, who wants to pull for the opposing team when thousands of people around you are all rooting for Germany?

I have to say, the American students--who showed up just before the game started at 6 and were already tipsy--definitely cemented the American reputation for being obnoxious. Not that Germans can't be obnoxious when they're drunk, but my fellow citizens definitely were making their presence felt, particularly during the first half of the game. They kept yelling "FREEDOM!" and waving their American flags, and people behind them kept telling them to put the flags down so they could see the big screen. One of the guys even put the flag over his head and drank beer through it. Cristina and I finally moved away from them a little bit, because they were blocking our view and also because we didn't want to be nearby in case anything went down between them and a German fan. But thankfully they settled down after halftime.

I actually ended up watching very little of the second half because I started drawing, and then Eirini and Cristina asked if I would draw them, so I did. Then everybody wanted to see my sketchbook, and they were all admiring my London and Paris drawings and asking about my major and stuff. So I was kind of half-watching the game and half-thinking about art. I wasn't even looking when Germany scored the only goal of the game, but of course the roar of the crowd around me quickly told me that something exciting had happened. Near the end of the game I started drawing Emese, who was standing next to me, and a couple behind me started talking to me and asked if I could take a picture of them and draw from it, then send it to them. I was like, "Sure, if you want me to," and the guy said he would pay me for it! I said, "Um, sure, okay, if you want!" So I took a photo of them with my camera, then got their emails and found out what sort of a drawing they wanted. They were both all excited about it and told me thank you multiple times. (Wake-up call for me as an artist! I need to set up some kind of online portfolio, make some basic business cards, and figure out how much to charge for things!) That was definitely a cool moment!

The game itself was actually really boring--it was such an even match that the only score in the whole game was by Germany (yay!) near the start of the second half. But that didn't matter so much. It was more the fact that everyone turned out to support their country. Everywhere you looked, people were decked out in Deutschland jerseys and every kind of red-yellow-and-black accessory you could think of: scarves, flags, headbands, flower leis, ponytail wraps, wigs, sunglasses, face paint, striped bunny ears, and all sizes and types of hats. Cheers and chants were going on constantly. Of course, with the event being held on the fairgrounds, there were lots of stands selling fair food and drinks at ridiculous prices, and beer and grilled sausages were being consumed at an extremely high rate. While we were in the crowd it didn't seem like there were that many people there--maybe like 10,000--but when the game ended and everybody flooded out of Heiligengeistfeld into the streets, I realized just how many people there were. Indra had told me that it feels like a ghost town if you go anywhere during World Cup games, and she wasn't kidding. From the masses of people pouring out of the fairgrounds, it literally seemed like the whole city had turned out for the public viewing. Emese and I left at the same time because we didn't want to go get food or go to the bar with any of the others. We decided not to get on the train at St. Pauli because it was like a major human traffic jam just to get down into the station. We crossed the street instead, and it was incredible. Car traffic was stopped and people were walking every which way in the road. All the cars were repeatedly honking their horns and the people inside were yelling and hooting and hollering and waving flags, and the people in the street formed this sort of massive victory parade that marched down the block towards the Reeperbahn. It was almost like when the Lakers won the NBA finals a couple years back! Except this wasn't even the quarter finals or anything!

Emese and I walked through a section of Planten un Blomen, the downtown botanical park, and got on the train at Messehallen. Probably three-quarters of the people on the train were coming from the game, and at the Kellinghusenstraße stop there was a huge group of guys around my age standing around and chanting a team-spirit cheer, all wearing Deutschland jerseys. They got onto one of the other trains and started up a new cheer once they were inside. I looked out the train window at the streets as we crossed the bridges. Indra was right--they were mostly deserted. Only a couple of cars were driving. Even the marquee sign at the train stops flashed back and forth between "Next train arrives in 2 minutes" to "Game score: USA 0, Deutschland 1." It's incredible. The whole city literally devotes itself to soccer for a couple of hours. I don't think even the dedication to the Super Bowl in the U.S. is quite like that!

So while the game itself was honestly rather boring, the whole public-viewing thing was pretty cool. I might go again, although I have a feeling that the crowd will be a lot more rowdy once it gets down to the quarter- and semifinals!

Tomorrow Marni, Indra, and I are taking off for another weekend at Indra's house! We're leaving around lunchtime. I can't wait . . . we had so much fun last time we were there! Blog posts probably won't come until Sunday, though.

DEUTSCHLAND! DEUTSCHLAND! DEUTSCHLAND!