Waldmeister?

A comment posted today said that I should really make some kind of comment as to the World Cup happenings around me. Good point.

Even though I am rather isolated from most of this kind of thing, being 100% isolated in such a situation is simply impossible. In fact, Germany learned that it had won the 1st game just as the Requiem was starting on Friday night. Our production is a joint cooperation with the ballet here. The first portion of the program is a dane interpretation of a Mozart Sonata—very quiet, contemplative and sometimes joyful. Well, what we heard on Friday, sitting on stage, waiting for our first musical cues, was more like John Cage does Mozart. The entire city had just erupted, blaring their car horns, screaming at the top of their lungs. Chris later said that the city had celebrated as though Germany had won the Cup (a term that I have always found so funny--the winner in German is called the “Weltmeister.” So, when Germany won in 1954, 9 years after the country had been obliterated, the sports announcer yelling with his genuine excitement “Deutschland ist Weltmeister! Deutschland ist Welmeister!” is a sound bite that really pulls at every German heartstrings akin to that famously touching one where reporter Herbert Morrison describes for radio listeners around the world the Hindenburg explosion. But, to me, “Deustchland ist Weltmeister” always sounded eerie in s a sort of “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles” kind of way.) Anyway, the town erupted and didn’t really settle down until well past midnight (the performance started at 8PM.)

Another startling change of late is the amount that people are displaying the German flag. I see almost no signs of patriotism on a daily basis—it is seen as a kind of taboo here, in fact. But, this seems to be the one time where it is ok for Germans to be proud to be German, Now there are German flags flying past on cars, and German flags in windows. I’ve even seen people wearing them as dresses and using the national colors to dye their hair with.

And the town partied while Chris and I slept, I guess. I awoke to find many a smashed beer bottle on the streets here in downtown. And, while I was practicing I saw some policemen asking some drunk guy sleeping in the park to put his clothes on. (I saw him still sleeping there later, so everything must have checked out.)

Every store here has taken advantage of the situation, offering some kind of Weltmeister special. You can get ice cream specialties like the World Cup Sundae, or buy a pastry with a little Marzipan soccer ball on top. Even we, unknowingly, have brought things home from the grocery store, only to find that practically every package had on it something to do with soccer.

I think the low point was the national church service, though, televised on Friday morning. Broadcast from Bavaria, of course. (Didn’t you know that the Germans think that Bavaria is this hickdom that it should be its own country? When Sesame Street started broadcasting here in Germany in the late 60s, Bavarian children were not allowed to watch, because the public officials there didn’t think German children could relate to Blacks and Whites co-mingling on the steps of their New York City Brownstones. Hmmm, sounds like racism to me...) The church service featured a giant, glowing soccer ball with the continents of the world all over it. In case there is anyone out there who thinks that there aren’t kitschy people in Europe, I have some news for you. I have come to understand that people with bad taste exist everywhere, in every form. In some ways, I think there are actually more here than back home, but that’s a topic for another day.