Every weekend thus far while in Berlin I have gone out and seen at least one game. Last week was Hertha, Union before that and so on. The problem with this is that these games are always in the middle of the day and can essentially consume a whole days worth of time. Over the last month or so I have been searching for places to play football. Anywhere. At first I limited my search to more competitive atmospheres, clubs and what not, but that proved unsuccessful, especially considering the method in which I approached this. I do plan on trying to attend/ train with some clubs, but I will need to email coaches and get their approval to do so first. In the time it took me to realize this, I had shifted my focus from playing with clubs to just pick up ball. This lead me to a couple outlets, both of which were through the CIEE, the Monday and Friday sessions. Aside from these two, I had asked around and visited various fields on weekdays, but this revealed two problems. First of all, almost all fields are in use throughout the week by various youth and adult clubs, for practice, and they won’t be sharing the fields anytime soon. Second of all, anyone who wants to play, that isn’t on a club, usually confines their pick up/playing times to weekends, where their work lives won’t be getting in the way. With this discovery, I intended to finally use this latest weekend as an opportunity to go searching for games, and forgo seeing any.

Saturday:

My first day of searching lead me to three different locations. I will start off saying that I had been aware the last couple weeks of pick up games that had occurred at Friedrich-Ludwig-Jahn Sportpark, I had even seen it occurring before and snapped some pictures (I would have played, but I had just seen a game nearby and had none of my gear and was wearing jeans). So I had heard the FLJ might have some people showing up at around 4pm, so I decided to check out some other places first in the meanwhile. The first stop was a complex (these are good bets considering they all have multiple fields and not only one) called Friedenau. It was only a couple stops away via S Bahn so I got there at around 11am. I brought my bike with me for this day trip as well, intending to waste as little time as possible traveling between locations. When I finally arrived at Friedenau, after getting lost briefly, it was a pleasure to see three full size fields, one grass, two turf. As I went farther into the complex, I found two more fields, but they were occupied by youths and their parents. This is another discovery, complexes are hotspots for people to hang out at, they have food and entertainment galore at each of them. Out of all the fields, there were probably eight or so I total, half of them were unused. This would be a great place to playi thought, if only we could get good numbers to show up. Alas, there were only kids playing here, at the home of FC Schoneberg, so it was time to move on to plan B.

The next stop was a complex to the west, not too far, about five or six S Bahn stops. I couldn’t figure out what the complex was called, but I could see that there was a stadium called Horst-Dolm Eisstadion, which actually is an ice skating rink, but I google earthed it and saw that there were good number of other fields around it. So upon arrival, this ice rink was the first thing I saw, but when I moved past it I came across a fields occupied by youth teams playing a game. What I found next, though, was interesting if not noteworthy. The large grass stadium that was nearby was being prepped for American Football. There were bus loads of kids standing outside the gates chatting and holding their pads. This was the first instance of American Football I had actually seen in Germany. I didn’t know if the game had just ended or was going to happen soon, either way,there was no pick up to be had. However, when I went a little bit farther Ito the complex, at this point the opposite edge from which I had entered, I found what I was looking for. A field, with two games going on, each with one half of the field playing the usual sideways method I had grown accustomed to seeing.

I arrived at around noon and hopped in with them. These games consisted of mostly college students who played for local different local clubs that were just scrimmaging each other for practice. One guy said that they usually had games on Sunday, but had a bye the following day, I asked if this meant they wouldn’t be playing next week and he said no, they still usually play on Saturdays. Huzzah! This was a good find, I hopped in and played some good competitive ball until about 2, then every one started leaving. This gave me 2 hours to get to FLJ, but I had brought everything I needed with me, including lunch,and it would take at least a hour to get there, so I just decided to headstraight there.

FLJ is a large, famous, very popular complex up in Prenzlauer Berg, it is a bit of a trek,  but well worth it. When I arrived an older men’s game, probably fourty year old league was happening so I decided to eat my lunch and watch. They were really quite good, their touches weren’t the best, but they all seemed incredibly fit and able. As the game was coming to its end, the score was tied 1-1, and things were getting heated. One player had an excellent opportunity as he dribbled past the defender in the corner, his pass was deflected though and ended up being shanked for a goal kick. The defender who he had dribbled by, was on the ground, though, I’m guessing he must have been hit by a stray elbow. He ended up staying down, and the game was paused. His team gathered, people with ice packs were tending to him, it was hard to see exactly what was going on. Anyway, he must have had a concussion because not one but two ambulances showed up and carried him away. The game did not continue and the two teams vacated the field, now it was our turn.

We intended to play a game using the goals, but they were all chained up! This was completely unexpected and very disappointing. We ended up using the goals backwards as they were chained up, and they were both very lopsided and not even with each other. There weren’t as many people there that usually show said Sebastian, a Columbian who was the first person I met. On top of that the level of play was not that good either, but all of that was made up for with the heart that was put into it. We ended playing for 3 hours! People slowly left one at a time, but we ended up just going until no one could walk anymore. Afterwards one of the guys playing said that every Sunday at 11am, some guys would show up and play at Hasenheide park. He said there may not be as many people because it would be May Day, but that I could still count on having some kind of play there. It’s the place with the camels, he said.

Sunday:

The park that this place was at is very close to CIEE. Hermanplatz is two stops away from

Geneisenaustrasse. I had been told that it wasn’t a field and that the surface was like that of the track found around a field, but this still didn’t inform me of the dimensions. I had seen a regular sized field with this type of surface, or this could be one of the cages that I had yet to play in. When I got to the park I was surprised at how big it was, nonetheless I ventured in. Eventually I saw a big caged area, and as I got closer there was a wooden fence around it, and in this little enclosure were two camels.

There were two groups when I got there, one was a group of five skilled Frenchmen, the other was a group of a couple elder, out of shape men, a little boy and his older brother who was more my age. These teams would have to be divided. When I first showed up I didn’t know how this was going to be done, so I just grabbed my ball and started juggling. But things are organized here as I alluded to earlier, when everyone seemed ready, three more guys showed up and we were divided into teams. We played for an hour and a half before the French guys had to leave. The three guys that showed up remained behind and we kicked the ball around for another hour or so. I hadoriginally intended to go to the flea market after playing with these guys, but one of the mentioned that there would be more playing going on at Templehof, which wasn’t that far away. They asked if I was coming, at first I said no,  but as they were walking away, I thought that I shouldn’t pass on this and ran to catch up with them. One of the three had to bail but I walked with the other two and managed to speak a little bit. John and Sufien were their names, and they were both great ball players as well as cool dudes. They both barely spoke English, but Sufien was a little more capable and I chatted with him as we walked. He was from Palastine, born I the Gazastrip. He said that he had to move to the Westbank before coming to Germany, I’m not sure exactly what he said when referring to the Westbank but I think he said something like ‘The Fuckers’. He was studying sociology at Humboldt and was in the process of getting his masters there. To me this was really amazing because he was also such a great ball player. You could tell he was of the street variety, though, he could do lots of cool juggling moves, but I doubt he had ever played for a club before though. Made in the cage is my term for him.

Templehof is huge. I had walked near it one time along the outside,  but once you are on the inside you can see that it is gigantic. I thought we were going to one of the turf fields along the edge of the park, but no, we walked pretty much straight to the middle and there in the distance I could see that there was a dirt field in the middle of all the grass.

After all the years of people playing on it, the dirt had turned into a soft almost sandlike quality. The two goals helped carve out this barrier in the grass. When the game started I was hoping that we would be able to play just in the dirt area, and that the grass  would be out of bounds, but that wasn’t the case. So unfortunate steely, there were a lot of occasions were the ball would go way outside and things would get hectic and sloppy because of all the space out there. When this happened I usually preferred to stay in the middle area. The dirt was fun to play on, there was quite little traction, so I kept sliding around and losing my balance. It was a beautiful day, but that sun was reigning down on me and I had also been playing for a while before that, so I had to call it quits after two hours there. My shoes and legs were covered in dust, I loved it. I wish I could have stayed and played longer, there were a couple other quite skilled players, but I was just dragging myself around and probably just getting in the way. So I decided to head out and try and catch the end of the flea market only a couple stops away. I said goodbye to Sufien and John, hoping I would see them again. When I got to the flea market and was browsing some wares my classmate Ross came up behind me. He said he was with another classmate Jules, and I sat and chatted with them for a little while. I didn’t stay long because I was hungry and tired, so I soon headed back to Steglitz.