Köln, Cologne, and the World Cup

I don't understand the game of soccer. And there are a lot of things about the game that I don't like. (0 - 0 ties, for example.) But 90% of the worlds population is crazy for the game. And every four years, all the crazies get a chance root for their nation in the World Cup.

It so happens that the World Cup is being played this year and Germany is the host nation. Beginning June 9, thirty-two countries began playing at 9 different sites with a hope of getting to the final game in Berlin. This is the biggest sporting event in the world, they say, with over a billion people watching one or more games.

Cologne, Germany is one of the host sites. It is about 3 hours up the road, just past Frankfort. The only hard part about getting there is the fact that in German the name of the city is Köln. Don't look for roadsigns to Cologne, look for Köln. On Saturday, June 23, we went up there with Gabi Vega, her mother, and Jessica Moreno (visiting from Indy).

The first thing to understand is that about 10 times more fans have traveled to Germany than can actually fit into the stadiums. (Tickets are sold on a raffle basis. We tried to get some for Mexico and US matches and struck out completely.) To accomodate all these soccer nuts, the cities have set up "fan zones" with giant screen TVs where they display all the matches, regardless as to which city the match is played.

Cologne was absolutely packed with people and absolutely crazy. There were no games last week-end in the city, but everyone watched in the fan zones, or in bars, or on street corners. The streets were thick with people from every country in the tournament, usually draped in their flag. Germany played the 5 pm match and their fans dominated the crowd....singing, chanting "Deutchsland", and drinking lots of beer.

...and, by the way, there was lots of beer being drunk.

The crowds were remarkably polite despite the vast amounts of beer and sausages being consumed. The closest thing we saw to an "incident" was when the police had to help some poor German boy pull his pants back up after dropping them as part of his victory celebration. It was like a big fraternity party.

Following are a sampling of pictures to give you a feel for the world cup atmosphere in Köln last week-end.