World Champion of the Heart
Weather: Hot and sunny. Just the way I like it.
CD: David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
On the Nightstand: Freakonomics - Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
I looked over at Hilmar and saw tears in his eyes. His head was buried in his hands. For a good five minutes I don’t think he moved.
The streets were ridiculously silent considering the masses of people clogging them up.
Italy had just beaten Germany 2:0 in a heartbreaker of a World Cup Semi-Final match.
I sat down next to Hilmar, our faces swatched with the black, red and gold flag just like everyone elses there. I eventually pulled him up and we walked arm and arm down the street, swearing that we would never eat pizza or pasta again while reminding anyone who would listen that it’s still a German Pope who resides in Rome. (The next day we found ourselves sitting in a pizzaria, getting dirty with a pepperoni pizza.)
There was still one more game to go however: The game for 3rd place against Portugal. We joined a million of our closeset friends on the fan mile in Berlin to watch the good guys pull it out 3:1. Flags waved everywhere. Celebrations carried late into the night. I can’t imagine the chaos had Germany won it all.
The World Cup is like no other sporting event in the world. Entire countries shut down to stay tuned. One could say the same thing happens when the Super Bowl is played, but when the Steelers win the game, no other streets outside of Pennsylvania will be completely shut down by revelers. The outpouring of support from an entire country is truly an overwhelming feeling.
After Germany’s victory over Argentina, Hilmar Jan and I found ourselves amongst the masses on the Ku’damm. There, in the shadow of the bombed-out ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Church from the war, hundreds of thousands of people were once again waving the German flag while I ran around marking strangers with black, red and gold stripes. It was a rather surreal moment. Jan turned to me at one point and said “Look at this”. I looked down at his arm. “I have goosebumbs”.