Überschadenfreude

So it was in Berlin where the idea that I’d kept a decent eye on my possessions evaporated once and for all, as well as being the location for a return to losing ways.

On that fateful train to Berlin (the laptop continued on somewhere towards Poland) I knew that for one, they had to party fairly substantially for Germany to overturn the considerable bias I already felt towards Holland in terms of a decision as to where to watch the final, and that for two, they had a job on their hands winning in the first place. But I thoroughly believed they would – Germany, not Spain, had played the best football of the tournament thus far, despite the howls of denial from the ignorant Alan “most average German team I’ve ever seen” Hansen. Just because you haven’t heard of the players, that doesn’t make them average Alan.

So I naturally assumed they’d take this form into their semi, and boy did the Germans assume it too. The thing is, even when the Germany side genuinely is average, the German people are still somewhat alien to concept of losing. So when the Germany team just put eight goals past England and Argentina, the fact that their opposition don’t really lose games either doesn’t register as particularly relevant.

The location for this one could only be the Brandenburg Gate fan mile. Unfortunately that picture is where the visual documentation of my time in Berlin ends, camera calling time on his battery life immediately afterwards. Nonetheless, due to the narrow multi-screened nature of the venue, there was absolutely no way of capturing (or comprehending) the vast numbers in attendance. At 300,000 strong, this was most certainly my biggest crowd of the tour.

Apologies for any keen Germans reading, because like the post before this, the one before that and what is to follow, this is to once more become about the Dutch. I thought in Sam and Paul I was choosing a unique story – two young guys, one in Dutch orange, one in German white - I assumed by striking conversation with the pair I’d be on for a night of quality Euro-banter as we cheered Deutschland onto that final we all wanted, sparking a late evening of debate over whose asses would be kicked by whom and in what manner.

Turns out they were both Dutch. Paul was, incredibly, just so desperate for a Holland-Germany final that he’d gone out and bought a cheap Germany shirt to display his support, presumably to be burnt in some sort of ceremony ahead of the final. So in seeking England fans in Munich I had encountered Germans wearing England shirts; now while trying to corner a German fan in Berlin, I ended up with a Dutchman in his arch enemy’s colours. They sure do things differently on the continent.

Paul and Sam were vintage Dutch, casually mocking the German team, people and language, while simultaneously gaining their friendship. Well, that is until the 73rd minute onwards, where the atmosphere dipped somewhat. Once more, the alien concept had manifested itself and they were out (whisper it quietly, but with two final defeats and two semi final defeats in the last eight years the German image is fast developing from inglorious victors to glorious losers).

But we just couldn’t resist but stay and observe. Despite all three of us possessing a genuine sense of warmth towards German people, being two Dutch guys and one English guy you simply cannot watch swathes and swathes of miserable angry Germans file past you, and not break out in a vast smirk. Of course no Englishman has anything to be smug about, but that doesn’t matter – the six-year-old boy in me who remembered Euro ‘96 would have wanted me to enjoy this. Schadenfreude derived from Germans is the ultimate Schadenfreude. Uberschadenfreude, they’d probably call it, if they had any idea how it felt.

The wittiest comment of the day came from another Dutchman, who quietly spoke into Sam’s ear as thousands of bowed heads marched past. “Yeah well, this is how they made us walk for five years.” Well, I did say wittiest, not most politically correct.

Sam, in his bright Hup Holland Hup t-shirt certainly attracted attention, but – with the exception of two nasty drunks who spat on him - it was overwhelmingly positive. Well, kind of. “You must kill those Spanish,” they said, again and again, so I was told every time I asked for a translation. It appeared the Germans have now developed a mechanism to deal with the anger of losing: direct it at the team who just beat you.

So back on the train to Amsterdam it was. It was the third time in ten days I’d be in the city alone, but it would be the first time ever that I’d experienced a World Cup final atmosphere.