The World's Game

By Locke Mckenzie

As I sit in a bar in the middle of the Graben, one of Vienna’s oldest and most famous streets, I am surprised.

I watch a German man sporting black, red, and yellow striped hair, and a jersey of the Germany national soccer team climb aboard a statue of a saint blessing a young boy. In his hand he holds the ends of his country’s flag, a flag that does not generally have a place here in Austria. Once he reaches the bishop’s head, he reaches down and fashions a flagpole out of the holy man’s staff. Below him, a crowd of a couple thousand Germans (there were 100,000 there that day) sings soccer tunes.

I take a sip of my beer and remain surprised.

A crowd of Germans making what is unquestionably a German ruckus in the streets of Austria. This is something to gawk at. Considering the fact that the Austrians have been holding a grudge against Germany for the last 60 or so years - ever since Hitler and the Nazi party annexed the country in 1938 – the Germans’ extremely loud and shameless German-centric enthusiasm seems completely contradictory to everything I know.

Welcome to the European Cup, I guess.

When I found out that I was going to have the opportunity to go to the final game of the European Cup (Germany vs. Spain), I instantly knew that it would be something worth writing about. Especially for an American, the occasion was more or less a once in a lifetime chance. The funny thing was that after spending a few days in Vienna, one of the many host cities for this year’s cup and the host of the Final, I began to realize that the final game itself would probably be the least noteworthy thing I saw.

Even the stadium where the game would take place, an arena once used as an overflow concentration camp during WWII, somehow dwarfed the importance of the game in my mind. This was much more than a game, this was a matter of national pride. With memories of their past hanging sometimes all too ominously over the heads of the German people, pride can be a very sensitive issue.

After seeing this massive group of Germans parade around the street – and at the same time hearing the equally large group of Spaniards making their own noise a block away – it was obvious that sensitivity was not the theme of the weekend, and therefore I had to ask a new question: How could this international gathering of exaggeratedly nationalistic people ever be a good thing?

At first I found a positive outcome hard to imagine. When, as an American, do I ever think it beneficial to run around waving the Stars and Stripes over my head and singing the National Anthem? I expected racial slurs to be hurled and bitter nationalistic lines to be drawn on the streets of Vienna. What I experienced during the last days of the European Cup, however, greatly surprised me.

1. June 25th (Flash back to four days before the finals) - I am in a bar in a train station watching the Germany – Turkey game. The Turks are the largest and least integrated immigrant community living in Germany. The crowd in the bar is mostly white-faced Germans. Two Turks sit in the back. When Turkey scores a goal in the last 5 minutes of the game, the German man I am sitting beside turns around. Expecting him to make a derisive comment, I hear him ask, “How the hell are you guys always so good in the last few minutes?” “We eat a lot of Döner,” is the response.
   
   
2. June 29th (Hours before the game) - Walking through a crowded bar full of Spaniards (myself wearing a jersey of the German national team) a Spaniard catches me looking at one of the Spanish girls as she walks by. He smiles, and begins saying something to me in Spanish. The only word I understand is hermanas. He repeats himself a number of times, each time with more elaborate hand gestures, until finally the girl I was caught looking at turns to me and says in German: “He says you can have us. He likes the German girls better.”
   
   
3. June 29th (The Game) – Forced to sit on the Spanish side of the stadium in my Germany jersey I feel a bit outnumbered. To my right, my friend stands cheering with the rest of the crowd for Spain. To my left, an old Frenchman tells me he is also pulling for Spain because of France’s bad history with Germany. Nevertheless, throughout the game he attempts to speak with me in broken German about the good plays and the bad plays and how nervous he is that Spain might lose (he thinks I am German).
   

Each one of these instances was a moment in which two would-be rivals were able to come together over something they enjoyed. Instead of an atmosphere that fostered bitterness between different nations and their fans, which was what I expected given the hooliganism that generally accompanies European soccer, I found an atmosphere of openness. It was a moment in which representatives of different nations were able to make jokes and drink beers together; where they could impress some small snippets of goodness onto the minds of people who didn’t know them before. These are the instances that leave us knowing each other better and that can erase the old notions of past generations and propel us towards a more cohesive future.

Who would have ever guessed that an event where national pride runs strongest could also be an event where nations get along with each other the best?

Certainly not me.