Not Prague, Part 12: Return to Berlin

No stadium that I've been to has a more significant place in sports history than Berlin's Olympic Stadium. Completed by 2,600 workers for 500 companies and designed to be the stage where the Nazis would flaunt their Aryan might in the 1936 Olympics, American Jesse Owens stole the show by winning four gold medals.

(As a sidenote, the story about Hitler refusing to shake Owens' hand is true, but out of context. Hitler wanted to only shake the hands of German winners at the Games, and when he was told to congratulate all the winners or none of them, he chose the latter. In other words, he was a twat to everybody. But it's not as if Owens was treated much better in his own country, where Owens was honored with a reception in the Waldorf-Astoria but had to ride the freight elevator to get there. Jesse, we love how you represented our country and stuck it to Adolf, now get away from our white people. Here, have a sip of our blacks-only champagne.)

So, anyway, the reason The Professor, He Who Still Cannot Beat Me At FIFA12 and I traveled to Berlin two weekends ago was to check out historic sights such as the Olympic Park, the UNESCO-endorsed Museum Island and the path where the Wall stood. And, you know, since we were heading that way anyway, we might as well have caught our first Bundesliga match, featuring local bumblers Hertha Berlin and defending champions Borussia Dortmund.

The atmosphere was, as my beloved English friends like to say, cracking (the Bundesliga keeps their prices low; season tickets cost roughly 10 euro per match and our tickets were 20). The Dortmund fans packed into the S Bahn trains more than three hours before the game. One fan sported a vest covered with patches, one of which featured a cartooon figure urinating on VfB Stuttgart's logo. Another fan had a depiction of The Beatles' Abbey Road cover, complete with "Paul" wearing yellow socks but no shoes. They sung but were generally peaceful, not surprising considering Hertha is barely worth the ridicule.

Here's your brief Hertha Berlin primer. Last season, Die Blau-Weissen held the distinction of being the only club from a capital city not to play in a European country's top league played in the second division, leaving Germany as the only European country without a team from its capital in the top league. They earned promotion and were in mid-table form this season until the coach and the general manager got into a pissing match over a contract extension, so the coach left. Berlin scored one goal in its next five matches and fired the replacement. That was followed by a 1-0 loss, the hiring of legendary 73-year-old coach Otto Rehhagel to save the season, and another loss (this one 3-0) that has sent the team into the bottom three. 

We were on hand to watch the 1-0 loss, not an embarrassing result given the circumstances. The stadium was in full buzz before the match, and suffice it to say that these fans were a lot more competent at their roles than Berlin's attacking players were at theirs:

And then they sang their club song, which is to the tune of this.

As mentioned earlier, the trip was not all about football and/or soccer, so here's some more stuff:

• It's a bird ... it's a plane ... it's Ampelmann! The biggest celebrity we saw hung above many a street corner. In 1961, Karl Peglau designed a traffic light figure that would be both recognizable and cute. And Ampelmann was born. When the Wall fell, Ampelmann was scheduled to disappear along with it, until a campaign convinced the Germans that the popular figure was a part of East German culture worth keeping. Today, Ampelmann shops sell the figures on bags, T-shirts, sweatshirts, diaries, coffee mugs -- and as pasta and gummi bears.

Don't walk ... run to my store and buy my products!

• Speaking of the Wall, there are sections of Berlin where a path of stones mark where it used to stand. Actual remnants of the Wall where they were are rare -- but we passed one near Potsdamer Platz. Click here to see where parts of the Wall are now (including next to a church in Eureka Springs, Arkansas).
• The bar scene is the most unpretentious I've been to in any big city. We went to a Goth place where someone was dressed as a vampire. We went to another spot where the bartender played Bill Withers and a customer walked behind the bar, cleaned his own glass, filled it with water and gave it to his date. Last summer I went to a club wearing shorts and a retro Hungary football jersey. It's who you are, not what you wear. Refreshing.
• Our hostel was themed after The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, offers full refunds if you don't like the place, and posted this sign in the main lounge: "No sex on the pool table."

For a photo album of the trip, click here.

To read about my previous trip to Berlin, click here.

To watch Frank Lampard's shot not go in, click here.