As the World Cup arrived in Germany last Friday along with it came spectacular weather. Sun Sun Sunshine the entire weekend. Alex came home early from work, around 2 pm Friday afternoon, so we could get to the Olympia Park before they closed the gates. The first game of the series, between Germany and Costa Rica didn’t start until 6 pm so we though we’d be standing around to a half empty park when we arrived around 3 pm but we were wrong. Throngs of people, mostly drunk and already hoarse from the Deutschland! Deutschland! singing, were crowding the U-bahn station. Alex says it’s weird to see everyone so patriotic. When we actually got into the park more weird stuff occurred, yep, the Opening Ceremony.
What was up with the Bavarian get-up? “An army of men in Lederhosen banging drums and swinging cowbells between their legs” was over the top. I took a video of it because it was just an another absolute cheesy display of this not-so-distant heritage that should have gone out of style with the bathing gown.
The game and crowd were a riot. I must say 4 goals is pretty high for a soccer game. But I’d have to the agree with the nitty-gritty, never satisfied commentators. The German team need to improve on their D-game if they want to advance, both of the goals scored by Costa Rica, if you called it that, were too messy.
After the game we walked toward Leopoldstrasse. They closed the widest road that I know of just for this event. Pretty neat to walk in the middle of a street and see fans from Mexico, Brazil, and the Ivory Coast waving their flags and having a great ol’ time. I must say the city did a good job of keeping everything lo-key although we ran into one hooligan that we thought wanted a light but decided to test Alex’s Karate patience. Not a smart move, Hooli-san, but we kept it cool and nothing happened.
funny, a comment left below said the BE is better than BM. I prefer BM – shorter time, cleaner layout. i guess it depends on which one you started wth and is use to.