World Cup Fever

I’ve never watched a single game of the World Cup…...ever. It’s just never appealed to me. Grown men running up and down a field occasionally rolling around claiming their opponent just caused them to break their ankle/knee/leg only to get up and walk away as soon as they get the call they want – this is just silly. Not to mention the whole shebang can end in a tie. Ridiculous. Ooh! AND what about the fact that if you touch the ball with any part of your arm/hand twice, EVEN if it’s an accident, you’re out for the entire next match? Absurd.

HOWEVER…

Things have changed. The Bingham’s have been sucked in to the madness. Sure it was exciting in the beginning that the US was doing well but let’s be honest – soccer in the US will never have the following that it does pretty much everywhere else in the world. Germans love them some fußball! And living here, you just can’t help but get wrapped up in it, too. Driving around you’ll see German flags flying from every car and every house, every day. Picture being in a college town on game day in the fall except that this is an everyday thing since day one of the World Cup.

Saturday was a big day for Deutschland as they were playing Argentina in the quarter finals. Sporting our cool new German fußball jerseys (I will no longer be using the word “soccer” for fear that I’ll be kicked out of the country) we met a group of friends in Frankfurt at Waxy’s Irish Pub. The city was just buzzing; 28,000 people showed up for the big public viewing in the main square. Absolute madness!

Fortunately, our group had a big table reserved AND Waxy’s is air-conditioned…..on every other day but this one. I think I forgot to mention that it was a humid 96 degrees outside which made it, I don’t know, 105 degrees inside? Maybe not – but it was ridiculously hot and there was zero breeze. Basically we had a boat load of people filling this bar, sweating like crazy.

And it was AWESOME!

Germany scored their first goal in the 1st two minutes of the match. They went on to win 4 – 0. And this is when the bar/town/country erupted.

Next match is tomorrow, Wednesday, July 7th at 8:30 pm. That’s 1:30 pm for all of my CST friends. So find something black, red and yellow and root for Germany, folks. I’m sure it’ll be an exciting match…especially if you’re lucky enough to be surrounded by thousands of diehard fans while watching it.

DEUTSCHLAND! DEUTSCHLAND! DEUTSCHLAND!