WM 2006

(Ghana vs Italy)
After a depressing array of uncompetitive games on Sunday – not even Angola against Portugal, colony against coloniser, breathed life into the tournament - I hoped for better upon returning to Berlin. On the way up we stopped at Stuttgart. Walking up the street that runs from the station was necessary preparation for the football craze that was so absent in Weimar and Balingen but which now awaited me in Berlin. National shirts of all sorts littered the street. Everything was shaped like a football, even a rare hedge. There was a crippled man juggling a ball with his head, neck and to substitute his feet, a pair of crutches.

On the train Australia against Japan found its way into the mundane announcements of the train conductor. Mexicans boarded the train half way up Germany, where they had been studying their teams’ training in an admirable display of dedication to the national team. One group consisted of eight Mexicans, a family of all ages, led unsurprisingly by the only one wearing a carriage-consuming hat. Further along the train I came across another Mexican with an even bigger hat. Like the dedication of Dutch fans can be measured by the dazzle of their orange shirts, so Mexicans seem to compete according to the size of their hats. In the row in front of me, they talked happily with two elderly German women, an enjoyable scene that the World Cup was providing. In the evening I went to the Kulturforum to watch Ghana against Italy. It was a serene outdoor setting in central Berlin – a huge screen balanced on slightly sloping ground. Some sat on the floor while others leaned back on deckchairs. It lacked however the intensity of a swelling bar or an overcrowded platz.

The African teams offer a potentially colourful atmosphere in the promise of an upset. The exception is Tunisia, who is rather unfortunately discarded by fans as a nation not representing the true character of Africa and a team who are a burden to the competition. Maybe Tunisia is too far north, too close to Europe. The valiant performance of Jaidi, a Tunisian centre-back, in the 3-1 defeat by Spain hopefully convinced some fans to abandon this prejudice.

I sat next to an unresponsive Ghanaian who lives in Berlin. He did at least offer me a take on Italy: “the Vatican, the Mafia and Corruption.” However in Italy such cattiveria is regarded as an essential asset to a football team and so it proved here, Italy winning 2-0. This ruined the subsequent African-style concert that was intended to celebrate a Ghanaian upset. Perhaps this set the tone for the Kulturforum, for eventually it was forced to cancel all of its concerts as spectators dwindled.

(Croatia vs Brazil)

Tuesday was my first full World Cup day in Berlin. The group stages offered three games a day. I wanted to watch each game in a new venue, and was thus propelled into three entirely different scenarios in the space of eight hours. I only had one hour in between matches to find my new watch-spot. Today, in particular, the intensity of the arenas seemed to increase. It felt as if I was doing a lot more than travelling around Berlin. In the afternoon South Korea against Togo at the Ethnological Museum in West Berlin. Along with Trinidad & Tobago, Togo are Africa’s most unlikely team. Formerly well placed in the city, the museum was marginalized by the fall of the wall in 1989. Now it lies in an anonymous student area. It was disappointing inside. A handful of spectators, a bizarre half-time presentation by four Africans who provided an obscure analysis on the game, and an inevitable recovery by South Korea to win the game 2-1.

I turned up late for Switzerland against France at the Swiss Nola Restaurant. It has tables inside and outside. Between Swiss enthusiasts I was squeezed on the margins of in and out, always undecided about which screen to watch, and for how long I could stand the sun in my eyes, or the stalemate football that stung just as much. It was a true 0-0. At least the restaurant was bulging.

This was only an introduction to some Croatian intimacy later that night. The Columbia Halle to the south of the city was drawing Croatians for the match against Brazil. Several thousands of them. Exiting the U-Bahn I was very lucky to meet perhaps the most accessible Croat of the thousands. He had a very kind face, unlike many of the hardened looks of the other fans, many of whom might have been Baltic pirates who had only sought land for the World Cup. My friend had flown to Berlin with three of his companions for this one, a very special game. Of the three he was the only one who was without a ticket for the city’s Olympic Stadium. This left him rather sorrowful, and happy that someone, me, had rapidly sought his company. Though perhaps not as happy as I. A swarm of Croatians going to watch their football team, every single one clad in red and white chequers, are not bent to receiving an outsider. But I had found the only one who was. He was as unlikely to me as I was to him. Row after row of Croats were seated as we entered from the front of the square. We shuffled past the fans which blocked the aisles, and joined the standing section at the back, just in front of a pond. Only now could we see the screen erected on the stage thirty metres in front of us. This of course was no theatre. I asked my friend to translate the Croatian chants that were heaving from the red and white huddle. His face was utter bafflement. Never had he thought he would have to translate such things into English. All he could do was offer me something about Croatian heart and its regional divisions. The game was bad. My clearest memory is of the deep and scratched voice of the commentator live on Croatian TV. Brazil went one-up just before half time and the score never looked like changing. Fifteen minutes left and the fans were unsure as to what could hold the feverish mood. Then Croatian TV showed its fans singing wildly in the Olympic Stadium and setting off sparking red lights. Everything changed at the Columbia Halle. Starved of a Croatian goal, the fans had found their source of inspiration. Chants boomed as before and a red light was lit in reply to the one we had witnessed on the screen. The final whistle was barely noticed, and the fans hung around in the square to celebrate.

Every night of the World Cup parts of Berlin would be subjected to the ceremony of beeping cars. Germany’s triumphs meant uninterrupted hooting for hours. Tonight it should have been the Brazilians. But every time I looked up at the beeping cars I saw red and white chequered flags. Defeat had never been so glorious.

(Spain vs Ukraine)
The World Cup watch-spots were often memorable for their sheer ghastliness. On a very hot Wednesday afternoon I went to Potsdamer Platz, the sky scraping capital of Berlin, for Spain against the Ukraine. Here next to the Kulturforum was a very bizarre mini-circus arena posing as a World Cup cinema. It had a Russian feel to it. Inside the dark arena I found a Ukrainian family who were positioned so as to give the divine yet short-tempered son, a young man with a twisted cap, the centre. All were focused however on the projector screen ahead. I sat nearby, always distracted by the seemingly evolving physical scenario around me. Were the strange pictures of pale female faces really there when I first entered? And in any case, had they always had such an evil grin? Why was there a man sitting all alone right in the corner of this…place? What was I doing in a dark circus in mid afternoon? 2-0 at half time to Spain, and the referee ruined the match at the start of the second half by wrongfully sending off a Ukrainian and awarding Spain a penalty. The son got angry, the place became depressed, and the pale faces kept grinning. I left thirty minutes before the end.

The Italian Football Bar (Erasmus Prize Essay)

This was the dull, dim, plastic-looking Italian bar I had been looking for in Pisa. Passing the fruit machines on my left, I quickly moved through to a tall, square smoky room crowded with the frowning faces of old men. Each was different: one with a sagging frame and a fierce expression; another huge but with tiny little eyes; another lean with slick gray hair and an icy glare. They were dotted around on white plastic seats in an arrangement that lent its focus to the big screen showing football against the wall. Apart from these decorations the room was, unlike the old men’s’ faces, featureless, cold indeed with its hard surfaces and tall ceiling. My appearance distracted the watchers. I had suddenly stolen the old men’s attention from the green screen. Without daring to squeak a word in Italian, I found a plastic chair and scrambled awkwardly through the men to a squashed spot by the wall. Still the wrinkled, frowning faces were bent on me, awaiting it seemed some utterance that would restore their concentration back onto the green screen. I shuffled, murmured something, lit-up a cigarette even. But I didn’t utter. Until: “Ragazzino, chi e` la tua squadra?” – “little boy, who is your team?” Of all questions, the huge man with the little eyes had posed the easiest. “Liverpool” I replied.

What I hadn’t realized was how significant this little autumn episode had been. This first word was the platform upon which I found the ability for self-expression in Italian. Although the hoarse voices of the old men were hard to interpret (and altogether intimidating), I managed to squeal out some Italian as my visits to the bar in Pisa became increasingly regular. And the more I talked to these gruff but kind-hearted men – even hurling outrage at the green screen from time to time; “Dio Boia!” – the more my fear of Italian-speaking was banished. I was eking out ways of self-expression. It was encouraging; if I could make conversation with old-men, who made no attempt to soften their rushed, slurry accents on my behalf, then any substantial linguistic concerns of my own would seem to have no grounds. The football bar became therefore a vehicle that drove me towards not just a greater confidence in my own language speaking, but also to an improved capacity to embrace all that the Erasmus year in Pisa offered – people, culture and study.

But what a brutal repression a foreign student can suffer in the first few months! Communication with other people has, hitherto, been taken for granted. To this end little is said before the Erasmus year, no warnings about the solitude which may be forthcoming. The inability to express oneself comes about from both a lack of courage and, quite simply, of vocabulary. Put into literary terms, this was the uncomfortable cold, useless feeling I had upon first entering the football bar.

Even when a reasonable grasp of the language is established, you can feel trapped in a sort of linguistic claustrophobia. Initially there is a simple lack of vocabulary to explain yourself, but its just as cruel when you cannot choose the right words, rendering your speech bland and short of poignancy. It is often too much of an ordeal to find the suitable words to express a fleeting thought, and when you’re finally ready the moment has passed. This all amounts to the suffocation of your personality that condemns you into a state of apathetic loneliness. This squeeze upon self-expression can strangle the aspirations of an Erasmus student, personal and academic. Certainly in my opening months in Pisa I showed little desire to involve myself in university life, the city itself or even with my flat mates. Instead I was lonely and apathetic, which while an evident failing of my own might also be one which some Erasmus students can sympathize with.

Initially my life in Pisa was orientated around the bar, university and my apartment - three theatres of Italian-speaking. My flat was very close to the river Arno that comes from Florence and winds its way through the town. This was a good central position – the river is the focal point of the city, rather than the tower which lies hopelessly sidelined on the outskirts. In the apartment I had German flat mates, three girls, and in the course of my first month in Pisa they had multiplied – new German girls kept appearing at such a rate they may as well have been asexually reproducing. Across the Ponte di Mezzo was the History Department of the University, tucked away down a narrow street off Piazza Dante, a student haven and one of the city’s biggest squares with a huge library. To get to the football bar I would head along the river towards the Apuan Alps looming in the background.

My state of linguistic paralysis – it seems no exaggeration to call it so –was keenly felt in all three theatres. The kitchen could be a frightening place – multiplying German girls were chattering freely in their mother tongue. Even when the conversation turned to Italian I was hardly more enthusiastic about talking, reserving my breath for short, uncomplicated lines. The classroom was equally uncomfortable. It seemed very unlikely that I could draw much from lessons on early modern Russian history in Italian. To participate in class discussion was certainly out my range given the difficult vocabulary and my stammering, blundering grammatical formations – in summary the great linguistic fear. At least here I could conceal myself amongst the students.

The bar was a daunting place too, littered with rough-edged Italian men as it was. But it was different to the apartment or University for this was a place where I could express myself through the game I loved, football, with people who shared my passion. Throughout the Erasmus year I was known to the old men as ‘Liverpool’. I caught their notice mostly for bouncing off the bar’s walls after my team had won. This admittedly did not constitute verbal expression, but my paralysis was about to break. Very soon I was engaging in full-blooded football debate, armed with a broad range of terminology from Italy’s most popular newspaper, the ‘Gazzetta Dello Sport’, forty pink pictures of sports news every day. Now I was discussing the politics of Italian football, and why the coach of the national team needed to introduce a greater continuity regarding team selection. The effect on the rest of my life was knock-on. Back in the kitchen I started to walk in and out of conversations with ease, even making the German girls, who had at last ceased to multiply, giggle with a bit of dry, Italian-translated English humour. At university I was an active member of the class, arguing that although ‘Pietro Il Grande’ showed a progressive, modernistic attitude with regard to Russian foreign policy he fell woefully short on the domestic front.

The whole Pisa world seemed to open up for me as a result of my new-found linguistic confidence. The city itself I embraced with a growing affection. I spent many hours in a particular spot beside the Arno, began friendly discussions with my regular newspaperman, and with the whole staff at my favourite café. On Wednesday evenings we went to a live jazz bar oddly concealed behind black doors by a massive water pump. On a friend’s birthday we went to the Teatro Verdi to see a curious dance interpretation of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s paintings. All these developments came about because of my broken paralysis. That is the increasing ease with which I spoke Italian, or more accurately the decreasing fear I felt towards speaking it. The ultimate reward came in the final few months when I became close friends with an Italian student.

On June 16th I helped the Italians celebrate the patron saint of Pisa, San Ranieri. Along the Arno all artificial lights were extinguished, replaced instead by tens of thousands of candles held in small canisters. The effect was a brilliant flickering of an orange-yellow glow across the surface of the river. It’s called ‘La Luminara’ – ‘The Lighting’. Thousands of people invaded the streets to see it. At midnight there was climatic boom of fireworks, and thereafter each of Pisa’s main squares became swamped by a carnival atmosphere. Late in the night we were perched along the Ponte di Mezzo, looking down the river, and I suddenly became aware of the sagging frame of a man standing next to me. It was indeed the character from the football bar. Given the masses on the streets this really was unlikely. I turned to him and we made football chat for a while. In that moment, coming as it did just one month before I left Pisa, it seemed a circle was being drawn around my Erasmus Year. He was groaning about how AC Milan should have beaten Liverpool, but he might have been saying: “Ok, here we are now in summertime, you are having fun with your friends and speaking Italian very well. But don’t forget where it all began in autumn in a football bar with a bunch of oldies like me”. I have not forgotten.