Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

Two weekends ago I traveled with some German co-workers to Freiburg, a university town about two hours from Zürich, in order to be in Germany while the national team played the final and hopefully get to revel with other fans. I tried this last world cup, taking a spur of the moment trip to Amsterdam, which was a blast, but did not work out so well for the Dutch.

I had spoken with my friends about where in Züri to watch the game, but they decided that in the event that Germany won, the experience of celebrating in Switzerland would be sub-standard. So on Sunday morning I got an SMS saying to meet at the train station at 3 dressed in black, red and gold. This was slightly problematic because out of loyalty to the US team, I left my German jersey in the US and the only other yellow I own is ultimate clothes. I settled on a black tank top, red cardigan and gold necklace. I'm really glad I kept it toned down, because no one else really dressed up either (one guy did bring a flag and we asked strangers to borrow their face-paint).

Last time I was in Freiburg was about two years ago and the city hasn't changed much, although it seems like they are building a new tram line. We happened upon an outdoor electronic dance party, complete with a vegan kebab stand, and danced for a bit until heading to a bar to watch the match. There were some groups chanting cheers along the way. We tried to make "Tüütsch!" (too-ch), the Swiss-German pronunciation of the beginning of "Deutschland", into a cheer, by one person yelling this and the others echoing and also telling French people we met that it was a common German cheer. This was a little bit a response to thee trend of people cheering for " 'schland". Mostly this just garnered confused (and annoyed?) looks.

After watching the post-game awards, we took to the streets with the masses. There was cheering and chanting and shaking of cars. For the most common cheer, Humba Täterä, based off of a popular Karneval song, the leader tells everyone to sit down several times, essentially blocking traffic or the walking path, then asks them to (translated from the German) "Give me an H", "H!", "Give me a U", "U!", ... "Give me an A", "A!", "Give me an exclamation point", "Exclamation Point!", then everyone jumps up, dancing and singing, "We sing humba, humba, täterä, täterä, täterä..." (I have no idea what it means) followed by people picking up all of the wallets that fell out of pockets during the siting portion and returning them to their owners.

A ground cheerleader

The bus cheerleader

One guy even climbed on to of a bus that was stuck in traffic to lead the whole street in the cheer. He hopped off, like it was no big deal. Then a few other guys got on the bus and were pulled down by the cops. People were having a good time, but there was slight sense of unease due to displays of national pride and the chanting. (or maybe people just felt like there should have been)

The cheer in another city:


We then split into two groups, people who had to work in the morning and those who didn't. The ones who didn't went to an after-party and I haven't seen them sense (mostly because I worked funny hours last week). Those of us who did have to get back to Switzerland and the office couldn't do so until the first train back at 5 AM, so we found a bunch of people dancing around a rolling speaker (at the same square where the electro party was earlier - I wonder if there is always dancing there). We danced, marveled at a world cup replica a guy had made out of fruit: bananas for the base and a cantaloupe with a globe etched into it as the top part, laughed at malfunctioning signs, went and got kebabs in a line which must have included half the population of Freiburg, then went to the train station where some people napped and I prepped for my meeting at 10.

The fruit cup. Photo from Anca.

I slept on the train and in the napping room at the office, then went to my meeting which went great! Someone who used to work for us had already built a model that I thought I needed to build, but really didn't want to!

Hehe! City theater of Freiburg. Should say "Heart of the City"