Greetings and welcome to Düsseldorf and to Germany! This is my own first posting to our program weblog for the summer 2006 season and I wanted to use it as a chance to bring you up to speed on what, in the minds of, it seems, almost every living German man, women and child, is of paramount importance right now—die Fussball Weltmeisterschaft, the Soccer World Cup!
“Die Welt zu Gast bei Freunden”is the official motto of this year’s WM, which of course is being played in 12 stadiums in 12 cities across Germany. The phrase doesn’t translate literally very well (”the world, as guests, to be friends” sort of) but a more elegant English version and the usual translation is “A Time to Make Friends”. And the “Gäste” have been coming here in droves from around the world to watch their teams compete in what (unlike I must say our own American football world championship) is, in fact, a world competition. Thankfully, since the start of the championship on June 9, there have been few incidents of “soccer hooliganism” in spite of pre-WM fears that the famously rowdy English and perhaps Polish fans would riot through the normally sanguine and orderly streets of the German host cities—remember, this is the country where, usually, the rule of the day is “Ordnung muss sein!”
A quick WM update: We are well along towards the big final game in Berlin, in the Olympische Stadion, on July 9. The tournament has been whittled down to 4 remaining teams, all from Europe (unusual, but a consequence of last night’s defeat of mighty Brazil by France in das Viertelfinale, the quarter-finals. In the semi-finals, hosts Germany will play Italy, and France will play Portugal. The winners will meet in Berlin on July 9 for world supremacy in “the beautiful game”.
Well, needless to say, the Germans are delirious that their Mannschaft is doing so well. In their typically pessimistic way, the pre-WM press on the German team was overwhelmingly negative—coach Jurgen Klinsmann, in particular coming in for heavy criticism (he lives part of the year in California—bad; he introduced new training and fitness methods and brought in assistants from the USA—bad; usw (etc.). Now, of course, Klinsi is a genius and could get elected to political office here if he wished!
One last point I’d like to make in this post—a retraction really—of one of the lessons I taught you all during our program orientation. I told you that Germans have a distaste for, a fear really, of nationalism (due principally to the catastrophic consequences of the ultra-nationalism of the Nazi period). Thus, the only places you used to see the German flag flown was on the Reichstag building in Berlin and in the little Schräbergärten, which are areas outside of the cities where the locals can rent or buy plots of land and grow some veggies and flowers (we will see some in our travels around the country this summer and I’ll fill you in on their history then!). Well—on your arrival this week in Düsseldorf, you will be greeted with a veritable sea of red, gold, and black—flags, hats, scarves, shirts, you name it! Almost every car will be flying a national flag or two. Germans are wandering around with their faces decorated with their national colors! Nothing like this has been seen around here since October, 1989, the month the East Berliners walked up to their side of the Berlin Wall and pushed it down. So—forget what I said about the flag thing (although we shall see whether and when things go back to flag-normalcy after July 9).
This is an amazing time to be in Europe and especially here in Germany. Das Abenteuer beginnt (the adventure begins)!
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