Foosball

Lord bless me, for I have seen the light. One month into our stay here and I have been converted. Goodbye baseball and your 4 ½ hour Yankees v Red Sox snore-a-thons. See ya basketball and your unending 81-game regular season that is only less meaningful than the first three and a half quarters of each playoff game. Brown it, football, where the Raiders will not be competitive until Al Davis dies (I know, I know, he’s a vampire… I’m fucked). Hockey? Don’t even get me started. Hello soccer, or as we Europeans call it, Football.



In German the word is Fooßball. I’m sure if you looked it up on wikipedia you would find that American foosball comes from the German word. I don’t even need to look it up. The evidence is all right there: Germans are master woodcarvers; Germans make wonderful games; Originally German soccer players were positioned in four rows, joined together by long metal rods, and were “spun” by their coaches. In the end it was just a short journey from my love of foosball to my love of Fooßball.

The day we left the states, the Celtics finished off the Pistons, creating probably the most anticipated NBA Finals matchup in twenty years: Lakers versus Celtics. I was sure that in a city as large as Berlin I would have no problem finding a sports bar that would carry the games on satellite. As it turns out, the biggest obstacle was not the start time (3:00 am CET) but the fact that the Finals coincided with the EUFA Euro 2008 tournament. I made some attempts to watch online via a friend’s Slingbox account. I even tried to listen to a game on internet radio. But then the Fooßball started and I forgot all about Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and the Quest for 17.

Nothing can equal the adrenaline of being there in person when the crowd rises as one to root on a swift counter-attack, long-maned strikers streaking downfield with their hair flowing in the wind. At the stadium you can see the whole field at once, the lines of defense, the spacing. I’d always rather be at the game, no matter what sport. But Fooßball translates quite well to television, too. I’m sure that American ad executives would disagree, but two commercial-free 45 minutes halves, with a pause in the middle just long enough for a pee and a trip to the fridge for more beer and a snack is a viewing audience’s dream.



I’ve already mentioned a couple of matches in earlier blog posts, though they were typically just going on in the background. Fooßball was unavoidable here for the month of June. When Brady and Melissa visited the quarter-finals had begun. One night we tried to watch the Germany Portugal match in a few public viewing venues, but were turned back, first by the standing-room-only crowds, then by the 9 Euro beers. We ended up at the one table we could find in Kruezberg – under the awning of a Thai restaurant. I’m sure it was the only free table simply because this was the only restaurant NOT showing the game. Not to worry, though. We had our choice of which screen to follow between the Italian restaurant on one side and the bar on the other. Germany won and the city echoed to the sounds of “Deutschland” choruses and honking horns well into the night.

Hoping to avoid the somewhat disappointing behavior of soccer hooligans the next night, we opted for what we thought would be a more refined (read: older) crowd at a promising sounding Bier Garten plucked from the pages of Frommer’s. Weren’t we surprised then, when we found Joe’s Wirthaus Zum Lowen to be smack in the middle of the Europa Center, packed with drumming Turkey fans. We stayed, lured initially by the 1-liter steins, but eventually by the high drama of the match, which saw Croatia score a soul-crushing goal with 1 minute left in overtime. We slunk low in our seats as Turks streamed out, shouting angry curses at the TV… but then: Senturk knocked home a brilliant strike to tie with literally seconds remaining. Everyone came rushing back in. The game ended even, but in truth it was all over but the crying for Croatia, who stumbled 3-1 in penalty-kicks, setting off an even bigger celebration in the city center than the night before. As we rode home I wasn’t sure whether to be glad or sad that we would by hundreds of miles away in Bavaria in three nights, when Germany and Turkey would face each other in the semi-finals.



I have to admit, everything after that match was a little anti-climactic. The Germany-Turkey game was not that well played, though watching in the living room with Alex and her parents made things pretty special. Between sharing a fine Ulm-ish brew with Franz (Papi) and watching Alex and her mom jump up and down glee after Schwein-ee (Piggy, literally - or Bastian Schweinsteiger to the journalists) found the back of the net, I can’t think of a place I would rather have been. Alas, for the finals I was limited to soup and a small glass of beer, still recovering from a 24-hour stomach flu. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who caught the bug. Germany looked good for about 10 minutes, then pretty much handed the trophy over to a superior Spanish side who played better than the 1-nil decision might suggest.



So now the excitement is over. We’ll see how long my adoption of the German National squad lasts… probably until they have to face off against one of my other adopted teams like England or Italy or France, or (one can always dream) the US. Maybe I’ll root for Deutschland even then. It’s hard to go against them when you consider the German word for team is “Mannschaft”.