Today was a big day for Germany, the semi final game of the World Cup. Germany vs. Spain. To commemorate the game, I went with a group of friends to the infamous Fanmeile (Fan Mile) to watch.
Since the game wasn't going to start until 8:45, so we met up at around 7 at the Bellevue s-bahn station in Tiergarten, about a 10 minute walk from the Fanmeile itself.
A few people ended up running late, but we were all there by about 7:30 or so. The group this time consisted of Sam, Pina, Nathalie,three friends of Nathalie (didn't catch their names), and their friend from school Mark. Now, language-wise, we had to decide what language to use as a group, as everyone had a different background. Nathalie is half indian, half french, and speaks french at home (and also german, growing up in berlin). Two of her friends are native to french, and speak german ok. No english. The third friend is from the UK, so speaks english and decent german. Sam is best with Chinese and English, and speaks decent german as well (not fluent, but she understands a lot). Pina is from South Africa, and speaks a language from there (that I can't remember the name of - all I know is that it is not a click language, but incorporates a few clicks into itself through borrowed words from click languages) as well as Afrikaans, Dutch, German, English, and some Spanish. Mark is from Switzerland, and speaks Swiss German (which is very different from the official dialect of german in Germany), English, and Hochdeutsch (the official dialect of Germany). So we decided that german was the common factor and stuck to a mix of that and english throughout the night. Or at least that was the plan. I ended up mixing all three (english, german, and some french from time to time) depending on who I talked to.
We got to the Fanmeile about an hour before the game started, so we found a good spot in front of one of the displays and watched the pregame entertainment (a few live singing acts, among other stuff).
There was a lot of people there - I heard they were expecting about 300,000.
The game itself was ok, germany didn't play as well as in prior games, and ended up losing. After the game, there were a couple of fights, but nothing dangerous. Just funny to see people get so worked up over a game...
After everything was done, we just headed our separate ways.
