Berlin and football

Cafes in Prenzlauer Berg stopped extending happy hour for cocktails in case of overtime.

Streets recovered from the black-red-yellow spot virus, which only ‘Motz’ sellers managed to avoid.

Googlemail stopped offering you the best places for public viewing every time you typed the word ‘football’ in the email to your mom.

Teachers at schools delivered “we need to catch up with the classes, which you missed while waiting for the players by the Brandenburger Tor” speeches.

Solitude on the train between 22.00 and midnight became impossible again.

Scientology boosters brought more stress removers out to streets.

People started trying to decide whether to stay in mourning or put the faces of faked ignorance on.

European Football Championship is over.

Du bist so wunderbar, Berlin

I walk to Alexander Platz to take a train home. There are girls, moving along with the echo of the loud slogans shouted out by boyish voices that had just gone through teenage mutation. The girls are lifting their red-white skirts, and the tiny drops of sweat glisten above their pouted lips. It seems that even if the trains decided not to stop in the stations, they would still manage to jump on them. I didn’t know that Turkey had beaten Croatia on penalties in the last moment, so I am surprised at the way the Turks approach their loss to Croatia.

Apparently I am not the only one confused. I overhear some old German guy commenting on Croatia’s success. He seems very happy, and it makes me realize that football has just morally united two countries, which, apart from the one-way tourism exchange with a one-way emigration flow, have nothing in common.

I almost want to learn something about football, so I would know what one feels after a series of terms like ‘penalty kick’ or ‘sliding tackle from behind’ flow out of their mouth, and so I could finally buy a green carpet with the football ground embroidery from the ‘Euro’ shop.

But wait, I don’t really need to learn anything to be able to say that the colour of Berlin for me has already turned into white and black. And green, of course – when it doesn’t rain. And then the colours of flags fluttering after the game is over, because somebody will win anyway. And whichever country it is, it will still have some part of its population living here. If not Kreuzberg or Neuköln, then possibly Turmstrasse.

I would already get off the bus, but the woman’s voice in the recording tells me I can still go to the service stop. Sie können noch bis zur Betriebshaltestelle mitfahren. And I do, cause I don’t really want to get off. Getting off would mean choosing between the two football teams, between East and West, between Kreuzberg and Charlottenburg, between Woolworth and KaDeWe, between Kebab and Currywurst, between the sound of bikes being chained up and the echo of the voice of the man in the S-Bahn, who hysterically read out the name of the ‘Zoologischer Garten’ station and then never had time to re-record it; between the smell of burned butter, which crumbled off the Streuselschnecke in the bakery and a dissipating smell of weed mixed with morning fog; between the opinion that the remains of the Berlin wall sold in the tourist shops are real and the opinion that it’s a marketing trick; between Brecht in Maksim Gorky’s Theatre and a musicle in Theater des Westens, where you might be the only one who forgot to bring your graduation ceremony dress into life again; between a supporter of and an opponent to the closure of the Tempelhof airport; between BIO and the rest, between being a friend and an enemy, between heaven and hell.

I don’t want to choose between heaven and hell, so I stay. I cannot choose between heaven and hell, because if I go to either, I will have to leave all of the interesting people here – blinded nationalists, pathetic fanatics, a guy who almost killed me with his look when I threw broken sunglasses into the bin for paper; the driver who takes 23.41 € for Mitfahrgelegenheit service from Berlin to München, not more and not less; the girl who offered me weed and attached a ‘book worm’ label to me because I refused to take it; the neighbour who tried to test my linguistic knowledge by asking me to decipher the phrase ‘Messe Berlin’; the woman from Hausverwaltung who cannot do anything else but put you on the list, even though your flat is flooding; hypocrites, pseudo philosophers and girls with astronaut costumes in Oranienburger Strasse.

You tell me ours wasn‘t a love story and I believe you. I believe everything now. I believe that the guy who asked me for some exact amount of money really needed it for the trip to Dresden, even though I saw him asking ten other people for the same amount. I believe that somebody actually reads ‘Motz’ mit dem Thema Ubahn-Geschichten. I believe that Germany gives Turkey 12 points in Eurovision each year, because they like their song. I believe that somebody will really buy a broken water kettle made in 2002 in the Flee Market near Kastanien Alee, even though it costs substantially more than a new one. I believe that asparagus is as tasty as Germans make it sound. I believe that somebody in Berlin will be able to fall asleep after Germany plays against Turkey on Wednesday.

I finally get off and the girls wearing red skirts with a white crescent moon and a star embroidered on them are still moving along with slogans incomprehensible to my ears. I cross the street against the lights, and my eyes meet with a look full of despise. The guy, probably Heinz or Klaus, is angry about me violating traffic rules and looking as if he didn‘t know football had just finished. I tell him it doesn‘t matter who won, it only matters that there was football… There were a few penalty kicks and a sliding tackle from behind…

He looks at me and is probably about to call a mental hospital. I smile at him and realize that now I can finally buy a green carpet with the football ground embroidery, and that I have just got to know this city even better.