Parting shots

I've just come back from the Fan Mile, and the World Cup final, standing for three and a half hours and a lot of screaming & yelling and hair-pulling. Two other gals from the Institute - one German-American, one Swiss - crammed in with me, it was a blast. The Fan Mile, as the above photo shows, is a wide street (the main avenue between two Berlin landmarks) made into a giant viewing venue, with screens at least 30-foot-wide(one facing each direction) set up every 500 meters for at least a mile. Therefore a few unstrung thoughts...

The Fan Mile - with massive TV screens and fans of every persuasion (there were a surprising number of Poland fans out tonight) - was a blast, and something I'll never forget. A few memorable bits were:

- German teenagers shrieking for France, because Italy beat Germany and they couldn't cheer for them; ear-splitting "NEIN!" when French striker Henry went down in the first few minutes of the game.

- Rowdy Italian dudes deafening everyone with their horns, and then surprising us by going and buying us one, so we could join in...less surprising was that the same guy grabbed my cute blonde friend's ass after handing the horn to me.

- Suddenly seeing Bill Clinton on screen, talking about the next WM in South Africa and promoting his Africa/AIDS activist work.

- A half-meter of bratwurst (we are still in Germany) and beer in a mass venue that was not Bud Light.

- One of the Italian fight songs is the opening guitar riff to "Seven Nation Army" by the White Stripes. A guy wearing shorts and an Italian flag had a flag painted in the middle of his chest, but had inexplicably also painted one nipple green and one red. This was pretty hard to miss {see below}.



Above, French fans - and a few stray Italians - and below, the deafening group of Italians (grabber is center right).



- Fans from opposing teams getting along shockingly well. Shared sympathy (a little bit) and lots of photos together. That anti-hooliganism stuff works!

As for the game itself, I was ready to rhapsodize about Zinedine Zidane for being the classiest, most modest player - everyone says the greatest of the last twenty years or so. Then he head-butted an Italian player with 10 minutes left in the second overtime. Hard. Being France's clutch penalty kicker, this was especially stupid. Whatever words were exchanged between him and the Italian he butted, I'd love to know...and were they worth being remembered for a temperamental failure of judgment rather than a well-played game? Argh. I was going to get a Zidane jersey for Kolz, but I'd hate for him to catch flack if he wears it around in New York. I feel like everyone there will have watched the final and/or read about it, and Zidane will only be that French dude who head-butted that Italian dude and blew his chance to win the game. That is, if they recognize his name at all.

Here, our German/French fans after the last penalty kick.



And the big screen on the Fan Mile, with Italy victorious.



The month-long party will be ending -- and after being on the streets tonight after the Italy victory, I realized how extraordinarily jubilant everyone was after every Germany victory, including last night's "kleine Finale" ( = little final) against Portugal. There were a lot of Italians/fans celebrating tonight, but it was quiet compared to the constant horn-tooting and cheers for Germany.

There is a funny thing that nearly everyone does when they have a big flag - if two are walking with the flag between them, and you're approaching with another group of people, they'll do a little "oooooohhhhh...AH!" and hoist it over your head like a bridge. The sound is like the crowd makes in a basketball game before a free throw, or like you make when you're walking with someone else with a little kid between you and hoist him into the air.

And so I eat crow, Zelda and Graham. The Italians played beautiful football, and they deserved this. I wish I had seen more of them - I still stand by Ghana - but they made the game really fun to watch. And their fans are hilarious.

I realized, too, that this blog must make my time here sound like one party upon another. Papa Wabes used to tease me when I worked for the government, that our tax dollars were paying for me to talk with my mother on the phone over my lunch hour. And so I feel like I should explain that I'm working here, too - but I assume that re-learning connectors and verb conjugations is not as exciting to hear about as the insane world party that Berlin has been hosting. Apparently Love Parade starts next week - and so transition from easy-to-sing cheers and national colors to bumping techno and, as I understand it, a lot of nudity. But this is just what I hear. I will bring you up to date on that, and the contents of the Berlin Medical History Museum, as the week progresses. Hopefully also visits to the archives I need to see, too. Get excited!

Photos followed after I got some sleep...today I also tried to take a tour of Charlottenburg Palace, but ended up just walking round the Garden. I feel like I've walked enough for a week.