Last night I went out to find somewhere I could watch the champions league football matches. I had missed the games the previous night, I was not going to make that mistake again. I have found that it is rather hard to find places where matches will be on tv. Sports bars are always a good bet, but those are few and far between. Most places to eat in Berlin are either fancy, high end restaurants or small, locally owned hole I the wall joints, neither of which would one expect to find a tv. However, I have come to realize that there are specific places I can always count on to have a game on, Irish pubs. I know what you are thinking, pubs in Germany? Let me assure you, almost everyone was German, the host was Irish but  spoke Deutsch. Before I get to that, I’ll start from the beginning. After googling, I found that there were two Irish pubs near my place. A hotel stood between me and both of them, though. Somewhere I had read that hotel receptionists were good people to ask about finding things locally. So I got to the hotel and asked the lady where games where available to be seen. At first she couldn’t think of anything, but then she made a phone call. I overheard the word ‘Finnegan’s’ and this was the confirmation I needed. One of the pubs was called Finnegan’s, the other ‘Cottage Cheese’, (which I will check out next time). I thanked the lady and set out on my way. It was only a ten minute or so walk. I didn’t know what to expect, if this place turned out to be a bust, I would go to the next one. But as I alluded to earlier, this was no bust.

I walked into Finnegan’s feeling nervous as usual. I will keep feeling this way until my German gets much better. But this feeling quickly disappeared, I looked up and there they were. Tv’s, glorious tv’s. Football players were shown warming up, coaches were being interviewed and I had got my groove back. I walked past the first layer of tables farther into the back, looking for somewhere to sit with a good view. There sat a small table with six stools around it and only one of them filled. I went up to the man sitting there and asked if he spoke English, he smiled and said yes in a peculiar accent I had not heard before and then that’s where the fun began.

After conversing with my tablemate for a little, trying out my German, the game began, Wolfsburg against Real Madrid. Wolfsburg has been having a dream run in the champions league so far, they are a small team compared to the rest of the seven other powerhouses left in the tournament. Needless to say they were heavy, HEAVY underdogs in this match, even though they were playing at home. The man I was sitting with did not know who was playing, but once he realized Wolfsburg, a German team, would be playing, he said “Wolfsburg is playing? Should be a good atmosphere.” This made me realize, Germans are fiercely loyal to their countries clubs, even if it isn’t their favorite local team, which he said was Hertha BSC. The game started as I would have expected, Madrid was running the field, all of their players looked fluid and comfortable and Wolfsburg was hardly seeing any of the ball. Things looked grim for the home team, but then the man said, “All it takes is one stupid mistake.” How true those words are.

Five minutes later, Schurrle is fouled in the box and Ricardo Rodriguez scores on the penalty kick! Wolfsburg 1- Madrid 0. Unexpected but surely there would be a response. 15 minutes later, Wolfsburg scores again! The place is going nuts, I’m going nuts, everyone is going nuts. How could Madrid, coming off one of their greatest victories in recent memory over arch nemesis Barcelona, be losing?

Haltime comes around and the two gents sitting at the table next to us move over and now we are four. I use the break to my advantage to interrogate them. Turns out neither of them were the biggest fans of football and they didn’t usually stay out and watch games like this. I asked them about local play and the looked at each other puzzled. Clubs, they said, were the only real way to go around here. Another blow to my search for pick up games. However another lead gained. “Try Stern” they said. FC Stern 1900 is one of the teams I have been researching as a possible club to meet up with.

As the second half began, I had a completely different experience. I’ll go ahead and spoil the game now, Wolfsburg won 2-0, even though this is one of the biggest upsets of the year and really was a great match, but this is besides the point, interesting things were happening elsewhere as well. Now that there were more Germans at the table, my original table mate had people to talk to in his native tongue and be more ‘expressive’ with. These men, who all said they were not that big of fans of football, all knew the game very, very well. The small little details of the game did not go unappreciated. For instance the went absolutely ape shit over one-touch, almost always, even when nothing of significance would happen. Maybe there is a message here, more one-touch perhaps? This makes the game faster, but less rhythmic in a way. Regardless, good one-touch is rarely a bad thing. One of the most hilarious aspects to watching the game with this certain crowd was that everyone laughed at the players when they dived. European football has a bad reputation for diving and theatrics. These guys were enjoying the flops. They laugh and whine, awwww, they would say, then mercilessly mock the player at fault, which ever team he belonged to. They also used fabulous vocabulary when describing great plays. “Das ist frisch” was easily my favorite.

Fresh. Wasn’t this a slang term young kids used to describe their clothes or something? Or a way to describe good food? Whats going on here? Maybe I need to go deeper, past my sloppy English translation. Fresh, new? Tasty? Original? Different? Raw? The average allusion of these words accumulates into some along the lines of Something Never Seen Before. Ah yes, the creative flair. Sure there really is no room for showboating and excessiveness, but what is the point of playing the game like a bunch of robots and not letting your inner self take co troll of your bodily expression? After all football is an art. Although this concept is not new to me, it will certainly warrant much more thought. Fresh…

I am ashamed to say that I walked out of the bar that night without knowing any of their names, I won’t make that mistake again. I did get a picture with them however, and I am thankful for that because this was an extremely enjoyable and memorable experience.