Hooligans

Soccer is becoming increasingly popular in the U.S., but in Europe, soccer, known more commonly at football, or futbol in German, is more like a cult than a sport in terms of the passion and loyalty that teams inspire. There are over 26,000 football clubs in Germany alone. On Saturday, Greg and I decided to take in a game. Heading to the stadium, the Olympiastadion, I realized that it was the same place where Hitler had presided over the 1936 Olympics where Jesse Owens, an African American athlete from the United States, won four gold medals. The scene on a Saturday afternoon in May of 2017 was vastly different.

When we arrived at the stadium, there were police herding fans from the home team into parking lots and stadium entrance ways that were separate from fans from the opposing team. European soccer, unlike any other sporting event in the US, is notorious for attracting violence between fans during the game.

Greg and I wandered around the parking lot looking for a group from the home team who looked like fun. Sooner than later, we met a gang of hollering and jumping fans fans. We asked them “Who wants to party with Americans?” Turns out they all did! We shared laughs and drinks. The guy who spoke the best English, Andy, told us they’d sneak us into the front section, or otherwise known as “the hooligan section”, where you needed to be season ticket holders. When we got into the section I was taken aback by how many different chants they knew. Despite the fact that most of them were on (or had passed) the verge of blacking out, everybody managed to chant in synch. It was like second nature. In the States, we do not have such a vast collection of chants and songs like they do in these futbol matches.

Though Hertha lost 6-2, the fans stayed until the end and were just as rowdy as before the game. Everybody went back to the parking lot and the party kept going.

After the we left, I walked around the city and was reflecting about what Andy, one of my new friends, had told me at the game. He was telling me despite how ashamed current residents are of Germany’s dark history with the Nazi Party, the city of Berlin doesn’t hide it. Rather they embrace the history so we can remember to never allow such atrocities to happen again.

There are cobblestones scattered across the city with names of Holocaust victims next to apartments where the person used to reside. They say the date the person was born, the date they were deported and the date they died. Most victims died within less than a week of being deported. There are also signs across the city of “Places of horror that we’re never allowed to forget.” that lists various concentration camps. 

Philosopher George Santayana said it best, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This message echoes all over the city. Even in the middle of a crowd of ranting football fans cheering on their team. I didn’t expect that. Not at all.

30 straight

The second day of the program we started at the tv tower and took a long bike ride through east Berlin. The tour guides were explaining to us how rapidly the neighborhood has been changing, notably before and after 1989. When the wall came down, almost everyone living in the east moved to the west, but others recognized an opportunity to acquire property for very cheap. Now the east has more hipster, young neighborhoods because of the low price compared to the west.

Biking around the city was an enlightening experience. We crossed Admirals Bridge and Gorlitzer Park, where immigrants from Africa loiter and sell drugs. We later biked at Tempelhof, an abandoned airport where thousands of Syrian refugees live. Locals were biking down the runway, walking their dogs, gardening and watering plants, playing sports, running, having a picnic.

We ate a doner, the equivalent of our taco bell in Berlin, except a doner kebab is a delicious, Turkish sandwich made from meat cooked on a vertical skewer and rotated around. In fact, the word doner comes from the Turkish word donmek, to turn or rotate.
http://www.abandonedberlin.com/2015/03/tempelhof-mother-of-all-airports.html

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/2010-04-11-germany-doner-kebab_N.htm

Around 10 pm we took the S-Bahn across town to a club called about blank. We waited in line for what felt like an eternity, and we were the only ones talking and having a good time. Everybody else just didn’t look like they wanted to be there. We were definitely those loud obnoxious Americans. Also every guy was wearing a black shirt or jacket. I stuck out, being the one guy wearing a white shirt. When we got the front, the bouncer asked us how many we were. With our blatantly American accents, we said we were 5. He kind of gave us a hint, he asked “Are you SURE you all 5 are together?” When we all cluelessly looked at each other and nodded our heads, he apologized and told us to leave.

The second club we went to, Sisyphos, was apparently even more exclusive. We changed up the game plan, and separated into three groups. This time, we tried to look slumped and depressed, you know, as if we were just too cool for this place. I talked to the bouncer with a French accent, and sure enough, it worked.

We get in there and there are several techno rooms across the club and an outdoor bar with way overpriced beverages. Everyone in the club was dancing, just going to their own beat, nobody was trying to one up anybody with some dance move. It’s like they were in their own world. Much different than clubs in the US, where dancing is more social and people dance in a circle together, instead of wandering off for their private solos. We danced and lost track of the time. I exited one of the dancing rooms to find the sunrise blaring down on me. It was 6:30 when Greg and I left the club. Time for bed, except. . . we had another tour scheduled starting in a few hours. The grueling life of a foreign exchange student in Berlin. 

We were wandered around the deserted streets of Berlin. It looked like a scene from the walking dead. We knew that if we took a nap, we would only be more tired, so we searched for a jolt in the form of nicotine. We walked into a tiny convenience store where there were a few other guys who were doing the same thing we were, running away from sleep. We bought cigars and talked with these guys for about an hour and a half. We talked about everything, from sports and sharing stories, to discussing the economic and refugee situation in Germany and comparing governments.

We finished our cigars and said our farewells, then arrived back to the hotel around 9:30. We ate breakfast and left for the walking tour at 10:30. Everything was going well. I was a lot more awake than I had expected. We walked over to the Brandenburg gate and all of a sudden I hit a brick wall. The need for sleep had finally caught up to me. We then walked to the Holocaust Memorial where we walked through a series of imposing, high-standing columns next to each other. Walking through it made me feel anxious and on guard because the turns were so tight. I thought I would run into someone, and I kept losing sight of the others in my group. The tour guide mentioned that feeling was common, and that Holocaust victims felt like constantly.

We got back to the hotel around 3 pm. I slept on impact upon crashing the bed.

Arrival  

When I landed at Berlin-Schönefeld airport I immediately felt the city’s unique presence. At baggage claim, I was cramped up shoulder to shoulder with people from all over the world. Along with German and English, I heard French, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, and some East Asian language I couldn’t recognize.

I was greeted outside with a warm hug from my good friend Adri, who is an American expat living in Berlin. We took a bus, then the s-bahn, then another bus.

Elated to have arrived in Berlin, I was eyeing everything around me. The biggest thing that stuck out to me the most on the ride over was how much the city was covered with graffiti. Nearly every building, garbage can, bus, sidewalk corner was marked by the hands of some self proclaimed graffiti artist. Only in Berlin will you see just as much graffiti in the nice neighborhoods as you do in the more sketchy ones.
https://foursquare.com/top-places/berlin/best-places-graffiti

I dropped off my bags at Adris apartment in Schoneberg, an upscale residential neighborhood in the west, and walked around the neighborhood. Still recovering from the jetlag, I asked Adri if there was a place to get some coffee nearby. She told me “In Berlin we drink Club Mate”. So she took me to the closest convenience store and I bought a Club Mate which is this high caffeinated drink in a large glass bottle. Enjoying the drink, we strolled through alleys and side streets where there were some of the coolest most elaborate playgrounds I ever saw. It put the US playgrounds to shame. No joke there was a mini castle that was probably older than the US itself and to these kids it’s just another playground. Anyway, we eventually wound up at Viktoriapark where there is a huge green hill that overlooks the whole city. Not a bad place to cure jet lag.

http://www.visitberlin.de/en/spot/viktoriapark

Reflection of my first time in Berlin

This is a picture of me through the window of the U-Bahn during my first time in Berlin. This was taken probably 2-3 years ago. Stay tuned for more posts throughout the two weeks I am in this incredibly photogenic city again.