Die Mannschaft

And now I would like to take a moment to describe my World Cup experience, which has been absolutely fantastic.  It's great being in a country where soccer is the most popular sport anyways, but when its a World Cup year and the national team is doing well, then even more so. Our program director is a big football fan, so the school gave some spare keys to students so we can go into the school at night and watch the late games on projectors. Most of the group games were either at 6, 9, or midnight, which is actually perfect timing as people finish work and classes just in time to watch. And of course, beer is a staple for any football match here, including in the schools. Awesome. However all the matches, especially during the group stages, led to some long days and late nights. For example on the US's first matchday I had class from 10am to about 5pm, then Germany played at 6pm, and a few hours later the US played at midnight. That was a long day...

And in order to make the the whole thing more exciting, a bunch of my classmates entered a betting pool. So every put in 5euros and we try to predict the outcomes of the matches. It has been really fun and I was in 1st place/near the top for awhile, but now it's too late to come back. The winner would end up with like 150euros or so. 

Now Germany is in the final after thumping Brazil 7-1 last night. I went to a public viewing area to watch the game with a bunch of classmates and I even met up with some of the guys I go Kegeln with. Expectations are high all around for Sunday's match and I really really really want Germany to win. How crazy would it be to be in the World Cup winning country?! Sehr verruckt. I would have liked to go out and party last night after the game because everyone was in such a good mood, but I couldn't muster the energy.   

Also when I was in Munich Erika and I had a chance to watch the Germany vs. Ghana game at a huge Biergarten. It was a really nice setup, lots of benches, 10 liters of beer came with our reserved seats, and a whole lot of Germans cheering. It was a really great experience, something that I don't think happens very often in the US.

EDIT: I just found this video and thought it was awesome. Merkel shows some real passion for her country.

 Reppin'

 So the 2 girls on the left behind Erika are her old friends from Uni who are living/visiting Munich. The 4 on the right are the people from Erika's new internship.  They were all super nice and the guy was impressed by my football knowledge as an American. 

This is actually the Argentina game, 2 hours before Germany. But the place was still pretty full. Got crazy at kickoff.

Anyways, I think if Germany wins the World Cup this year, I will have to buy a Thomas Muller shirt, number 13. 13 is actually a "good" number for German football. It was the number worn by another Muller, Gerd Muller, who had the game winning goal in the 1974 WC finale. Gerd Muller also has the 3rd most goals in WC history with 14, and he only played in 15 or 16 WC matches which is pretty incredible.