I hadn’t really thought about it being the 4th of July until when checking my email yesterday and noticed the date. Perhaps it was because it was Tuesday, and perhaps it was because I’m in Germany (I mean, seriously) it had totally slipped my mind.
Anyway, the Biergarten! I met at the Institut at 18 Uhr with Mary, one of the Americans from class. She graduated from University in May with a degree in International Business and Spanish, with a minor in German. Her German is fantastic, even if she’s rusty enough to have qualified for our meager class. Anyway, we started walking to catch the U-Bahn and I pulled out my laminated München map to show Mary the Englisher Garten and she remarked that it was handy that I’d brought it. I told her that I like bringing it everywhere, because chances are I’ll be the only one who has it. We all got on the U-Bahn to get from Sendlinger Tor to close to the north of Englischer Garten, an incredibly huge park not too far from the Altstadt, with multiple Biergartens in it. We walked the few blocks to get to the Garten from the station, passing cafés and shops in a rather old and quaint looking section of München I’d never before seen.
The entrance to the park (from this angle at least) seemed hidden, and as we emerged from the small path, a lake jutted out in front of us, stretching off to the south and west, and there on the opposite shore—the biergarten. It was huge, a long stretch of benches and people starting at the shore and wending off back past the tree line into the deep shade. I could visualize what it might look like come September for Oktoberfest (yes, it’s in September!) when everyone seems to come to München to drink beer. Hundreds of people could easily fit, and as it were there were probably nearly two hundred.
So for anyone who has never had the experience of a biergarten, at least in München, it seems to work like an American cafeteria might, in a strange way. In the old days of the start of things like Oktoberfest, people would drink their beer outside under trees at parks like this, and use the original and famous biersteins with their lids to keep flies away. But in today’s modern world of refrigeration, things were a bit different. The main building was an open-air salad and food bar, where you could take a tray along, pointing to different foods, and hot foods (like various kinds of wurst, chicken, and pastas) were dished out to you, and a cold salad bar (with everything from a Greek mozzarella and artichoke salad to couscous and cold pasta) where you served yourself. Next were desserts—more fantastic than a cafeteria, believe me!—and finally, the drink section, which stretched for half the building. Aside from the usual kaffee, tee, limo (softdrink), and wasser selections, there was bier. But of course! Five different kinds, including a kind of beer that was mixed with lemonade, served in either a half-liter or liter glass. The glass liter steins were much too large to lift comfortably when full, at least for me, and I saw men walking up and picking up three in each hand to bring back for their friends and families. Crazyiness! Then right by the “checkout” as it were, there were pretzels, the foot and a half wide kind, or the quaint six-inch kind, each with mustard available for liberal application. After paying for food (the beers were 4 and 6 € respectively) we all took our seats by the lakeside.
What became very apparent very quickly—something we had also noticed during the train ride—were the German colors, everywhere. People with painted faces in the black, red, and gold who wore the flag tied as a cape at their neck; girls in bikini tops with the flag tied as a sarong; whole families with armbands, jewelry, leis (the Hawaiian kind), and even wigs and Mohawks, dyed the colors of the flag. All because of the impending match against Italy, at 21 Uhr. We were all excited as well, and as we were all non-Germans, lamented our lack of the colors to join in the festivities. A few among us were bedecked in the white, red, and green of Italy, proudly hidden among the bigger German crowd. We all resolved to catch the match later on—because when else is the World Cup in Germany?
As the evening (and the sun! So bright!) wore on, the crowd began cheering more and more often, getting caught up in choruses of the national anthem and random Fußball cheers. At 20:45, Mary and I found a cluster of our friends from class (before we’d just been sitting with random Institut people) and because we all knew their names and other little facts about them from our exercises, we were thrilled to hang out with them. They ordered fresh food and we moved gradually back toward the trees, where, being pulled across, was a huge screen. So we didn’t have to go back to town for the game, after all! By then nearly three hundred people were squishing together to see the game, emerging with fresh beer only to be shoved back toward the queue because of the lack of space. The fevered intensity of the crowd grew when the German national team was introduced, and the entire crowd erupted in the anthem when it was sung. A few of us looked at each other—except for Mary and I, the six of us were each of completely different native languages and lands—and wished we could sing with them. It was more intense than New York when the Yankees are in the World Series—even if it’s against the Mets—even more than in Pittsburgh during the Superbowl. Not because of the sheer numbers, but because every face was fixed to a phone, a computer screen, or the large television with a fervent magnetism the like of which I’d never seen anywhere. This is what Fußball means to the Germans.
We stood, cramped and closely quartered, for the first half. After that, with the score 0-0, we were much too tired to keep standing, and congregated around a table farther off, where we saw some other Institut people and other non-Germans congregating. We waited for the cheers for goals—the crowd would swell with noise, then break off quickly in what was unmistakably a failed attempt each time—and a few of the people were panicked about how they would get home. Of course, I was the only one with a map. Pablo, the guy from Spain who sat next to me in class, started calling me the “girl with the map.” We broke into smaller groups depending on where everyone lived, and I was surprised to see almost everyone lived significantly farther away from the Institut than I did—something I hadn’t anticipated. I suppose I can deal with the annoying rules of the ladies at the dorm if I can live 2 blocks away!
I took the map and showed everyone where we are (a bunch of guesswork and assumptions, like assuming we were in the north part of the Garten because of the single lake on the map) and then took us through the dark paths back to the city. Once we got out of the park, the game was still on—it was overtime by that point—and the streets were abandoned. Everyone was apparently gathered around the cafés; about every fifty yards or so we could see clumps of people frozen in place around televisions. As we walked west to the U-Bahn, we passed street after street of frozen people, some restaurants displaying Italian colors (well, the Italian food ones anyway) but most showing off the red, gold, and black.
We made it to the U-Bahn and hopped on, getting off at Marienplatz and emerging into the bright lights of the inner city. Walking up the stairs, however, it became abundantly clear what had happened with the game during out 5 minute subway jaunt—the Germans lost. The faces! Overwhelmingly sad expressions, of defeat and exhaustion, surrounded us, most trudging to the U-Bahn or attempting to hail a taxi. We heard shouts ahead and passed a group of red, green, and white clothed teens jumping and riding the lion sculptures of Marienplatz with elated screams—to which the red, gold, and black clothed fans grumbled and muttered aggrieved curses. “I guess the Germans lost,” one of the girls with us said. We looked at her and simply nodded.
We divided up and I took the quick two blocks to my dorm, quietly letting myself in through the gate and settling down, all the while wishing the Germans had won. All in all, though they hadn’t won, it had been pretty exciting; it was my first Fourth of July abroad (and yes, haha, the Germans do have a Fourth of July, they just don’t celebrate it… unless the World Cup coincides, at any rate).
More about my day (today, July 5th) at some other point!
