I took a train up to Bremen Wed. night with Kevin to catch a UEFA Champion’s League football (I try to avoid the term ‘soccer’) match.  Werder Bremen, the current top team in the German Bundesliga, was playing Udinese Calcio, the weakest of the Italian teams in the Champion’s League.  Werder is notorious for the high rate of goals they both score and allow, so I had anticipated a high-scoring match. 

When emerging from the Hauptbanhof in Bremen the city was quite slick and was drizzling a little bit.  We followed the crowd of hooligans, *ahem* supporters, to the S-bahn (Straßenbahn) which we took the stadium.  A good number of fans were hitting the Beck’s pretty hard the whole way there, and some were donning the empty boxes as headwear.  I would have joined in but I had a rather large presentation the next morning so I declined.  Oh, and as a clarification there’s no public drinking or intoxication laws anywhere in Germany, so you can just roam around and drink your beer as you please.  Quite convenient. 

We reached the stadium right on time with an enormous crowd of hooligans, *ahem* fans.  I decided to buy a beer at the stadium, but realized all they were selling were non-alcoholic varieties, which kinda ticked me off.  However I did understand the motivations behind it, especially in wake of all the incidents plaguing recent Champion’s League matches (players getting injured by flung coins, flares, fire hydrants, etc.)  So Kevin picked up the requisite bratwurst and we took our seats, fairly good ones in the lower tier at one corner of the stadium.  The Italian fans happened to be sitting right across from us, separated by huge barriers, where they chanted and exchanged obscene gestures with us hooligans, err fans, on the other side.

And the whistle blew.  Immediately I was ecstatic to be watching my first world-class football match here in Europe, and was quickly rewarded by a header goal within the first 10 minutes by Werder.  The crowd went wild and sang, errr chanted the Werder theme song.  A few minutes after that we scored on a loose ball in the box and we went into another frenzy.  Pretty much the entire game was like this, and it was awesome.

Somehow in the second half we were up 3-nil until, a flurry of "Sheiße!"s later, Udinese tied the game within about 5 minutes.  I couldn’t believe my eyes as the unmarked Calcio forwards pranced around the box and scored easily, again and again.  Luckily Bremen scored the go-ahead goal at around the 70th minute to eventually seal the victory.  It was really an up-and-down game emotionally for the fans, and was really interesting how our temperaments varied through out the match.  One thing was quite evident, though, and that is the passion the Europeans share for their beautiful game.  I had never experienced it before (however I’ve never been to a playoff MLB game either) and it was truly amazing.

Match highlights/recap/Champion’s League info can be found here.