I woke up this morning with a craving for getting some touches in. I had spent so much time trying to find other people to play with that I had not made time for myself. So I ate some breakfast and hopped on a bike and rode to the closest field I knew of, Lichterfelde. On a bike it is maybe ten minutes away. When I got there, there were relatively few people. Most of them were little kids with their parents. So I rode up to one of the goals, put my ball on the field and started lacing up my boots. As I did so, though, a group of kids ran onto the field I had ‘claimed’ and started playing around. My heart sank, I knew it, these kids had a game this morning and I wasn’t going to get to play at all. As I pondered what to do next, a man came up behind me. He immediately unloaded on me with a flurry of German, all I understood was ‘nichts’ and ‘fahrad’. I asked him if he spoke English and he said that I was not allowed to bring my bike on to the field, but also that I could still play there because the kids were going to move over on to the other side of the field. Oh thank god.

While I was warming up getting ready to get some touches in I took notice of the situation around me. On the other side of the field, the kids started doing shooting drills on their goal keeper, while they did this another group of kids who had playing on the other field came over and joined them on that’s idol the field, doing drill with their goalie as well. They were to be opponents in the coming match. The field they were playing on was half the size of a normal field and the played horizontally along it with the goals on the sidelines. Seeing as how they were probably only ten years old, this made sense. But then on the other field were the second group of kids had come from, there were two teams of men, probably between fourty and fifty years old, setting up another field the same way. This intrigued me. These men were well past their prime and playing on a full field would probably have been asking too much of them. So fields this size made sense. It was either 7v7 or 6v6 with goalies. I personally love playing on fields that size, as drills or practice maybe. Smaller fields means more shots.

So I admired the scenery and started playing. After maybe twenty or so minutes, a little kid came over with his small, soft, flat ball and started mimicking me. I thought great, there goes my chance for getting some shots in, now this kid’s in the way. At first I tried sort of maneuvering around him, but the entire time he seemed to be watching me. Eventually he started getting my ball for me after I shot it and kicking it back to me. This kid was younger than the others, maybe only 8 or so, so he really wasn’t very good, yet I still thought it was kind of entertaining to see him fetch the ball for me. As things played out, we started interacting more and more, nothing was said, we just played. He tried playing goalie and blocking my shots, I played goalie and tried blocking his shots,often letting them go in intentionally. He seemed to find everything I did very funny and entertaining. Sometimes I would pretend to dive for the ball and intentionally miss it and he would burst out laughing. Gee what a confidence booster, this guy thinks I’m hilarious. I may have been disappointed that I wasn’tgetting the touches in that I wanted, yet somehow I didn’t seem to mind. We kept this up for probably close to half an hour before I had had enough. I pointed to my watch and motioned to him that I had to leave. He immediately looked quite sad, yet I could tell he was also trying to hide it. He turned to pick up his ball and started walking away. In that moment I remembered what had happened at the bar a couple nights ago. I called to him and motioned him over. “Wie heissen Sie?” I asked. “Nieltz” he replied. “Ein photo?” He nodded. I took this picture, thanked him and we went our separate ways.