The World Comes to Germany

In June 2006, the FIFA World Cup was held in Germany. It was a great experience, and it was made even better because Kaiserslautern was a World Cup city. Granted, it was the smallest one...but in my opinion that made it the friendliest one. In true German style, every detail of the World Cup was precisely planned and very well organized. There were parking zones and shuttles and signs explaining the German trash disposal instructions. There were glass-free zones and litter collectors and lots and lots of beer. I know that Anheuser-Busch/Budweiser was the "official" beer of the Cup, but you'd never know it. Thank God, German beer was easy to come by!
During the World Cup, I had more visitors. My fellow Scottish Country dancers from Charleston, Brenda and Irene, were both in Scotland for the summer. They decided to take a side trip to Germany for a quick visit. These ladies can drink you under the table one night and then hike 15 miles the next day. I can barely keep up with them! Needless to say, they're great fun to travel with. We ventured into downtown Kaiserslautern on the day of the Japan-Australia game.

Here's some pictures!

First, there's a shot of the street just outside the Kaiserslautern Bahnhof (train station). The atmosphere was electric, with Aussie and Japanese fans singing all their football songs. Both groups of people were great sports and everyone was having a wonderful time.

Next is a shot of Brenda and Irene outside the Bahnhof.

Last is a pic of the FanFest area. All the World Cup cities closed off a major part of their downtown to cars traffic, and within these pedestrian zones were vendors, shows, and FanFest areas with giant TV screens for watching the games. Even if there was no game in town, the screens showed whatever game was playing and thousands of people came out to watch.

The US Team also played in Kaiserslautern, and Americans came out in droves to support them. It was great, but also kind of embarrassing.
You see, most countries have "football songs" that they sing to support their teams. Some countries have an astonishing reporitoire. Unfortunately, since football (soccer) is not wildly popular in the United States, our chants were limited to "USA! USA!" - and this got old pretty quickly.