Berlin Game

In 1987, Berlin had four sectors and was divided by The Wall into two countries. Each sector of Berlin had its own airport. Schoenefeld airport was in East Berlin’s Russian sector in East Germany. The other three, Gatow, Tempelhof, and Tegel were in the French, American, and British sectors respectively of West Berlin, an island of West German democracy behind the Iron Curtain. My plane from England arrived at Tegel Airport.

I stayed in the Charlottenburg area of West Berlin for a week, making two visits to East Germany, one on foot via the underground station at Friedrichstrasse and the other on a coach tour to Potsdam, to visit the Sanssouci Palace of Frederick the Great. The most amusing feature of this trip was seeing the East German traffic patrols in their Trabants and Polski Fiats not even trying to catch the West German businessmen in their sleek Mercedes as they flashed by at 240 kph, a good 160 kph over the speed limit.

Behind the Reichstag in West Berlin, The Wall didn’t reach down to the River Spree. Here, the riverbank was a web of barbed wire with a minefield on the East German side. I looked through the wire at the labourers digging the foundations for another ugly block of apartments, which would mock the closeness of freedom for its occupants by giving them a clear view of the Reichstag. The workmen and I exchanged a wave and never have I known such a feeling of being pleased to be where I was. Fifty metres can make so much difference, as was testified by the memorials I was standing by, dedicated to those people who had tried and failed to cover this distance without dying in their desire for democracy.

       Potsdamer Platz, Berlin‘s equivalent of Piccadilly Circus in London or Times Square in New York, lay between two separate sections of the Wall. This no man’s land had been created to stop people trying to visit Hitler’s Bunker, which was located under this part of the city. From the viewing-platform, only the rabbits that lived in this pocket of nowhereness could be seen hopping about on the roof of Adolf’s lair. Bunnies that got too heavy used to set off the landmines that were sprinkled about the area. This didn’t appear to perturb the lighter animals that seemed to be eating the remaining grass with a near suicidal intensity.   

The Olympic Stadium, built for the 1936 Summer Games, was close to where I was staying. I visited it a couple of times and on both occasions I appeared to have the whole place totally to myself. I could almost sense the ghosts of the Aryans as they watched the exploits of the black American sprinter Jesse Owens, unable to truly accept that their belief in their own supremacy was being destroyed by this one man, who could run faster and jump further than their athletes. I stood and marvelled at Owens’ exploits that were listed for all to see on the commemorative plaque at the stadium’s Marathon Gate. I thought then that it would be an amazing experience to see a sporting event at this arena, with its place in posterity already assured.

The FIFA World Cup of 2006 would provide me with this opportunity.  

In 2006, my wife Tania and I flew into Schoenefeld airport, which will soon become the only airport to serve Berlin, with the imminent closure of Tegel. Our flight from England arrived on time and we didn’t have to wait too long for our bags to appear on the carousel.

      We caught the S-Bahn (surface) train from the airport to the city centre. As we passed through the former East Berlin I had my face pressed against the glass of the carriage, craning my neck to recognize certain features I had see before such as Treptow Park and the immensely tall TV tower near Alexanderplatz. I was shocked by the amount of new construction that had taken place around Potsdamer Platz and the Reichstag. There were so many new buildings in a small area and it only really hit me then that I hadn’t appreciated how much Berlin had changed in the last 19 years. Behind the Reichstag, the communist apartments being built in 1987 had been knocked down and the place where I had waved to the labourers was exactly where there now stood a four-metre high representation of an aspirin, commemorating a “great German idea.”

The idea theme was continued in other parts of the city by an Audi car five times larger than normal size, soccer boots that were 10 metres long, and 15-metre high musical notes. This enlargement of everyday features seemed appropriate given the vast scale of building that had been undertaken since my previous visit. I thought that even a four-metre high aspirin wouldn’t ease the pain felt by the relatives of the people who failed to clear The Wall alive, who were commemorated by memorial crosses on the river bank. Tellingly, there was no memorial to The Wall in the area.    

We got off the train at Charlottenburg station and headed for our hotel, reflecting that the journey we had just undertaken would not have been possible in 1987. We still had around three hours before the match started and I was beginning to get excited about the game. After unloading our luggage and having a quick shower, I decided we should go to the Olympic Stadium. I didn’t want to miss anything. To get there, we had to take two trains on Berlin‘s efficient U-Bahn (underground) system, heading north for two stops and then west for five. The second part of our journey gave us our first indication of the popularity of the World Cup. The train was almost full of tall, blond Swedes wearing the yellow jersey of their national team, who were singing boisterously. We managed to scramble into one of the carriages. It was like being in a mobile sauna but with all your clothes still on. The train stopped a couple of times and with no through flow of air, we just sweated profusely in the company of a few hundred fairly noisy Swedes.

Unsurprisingly, the train emptied at the underground station serving the Olympic Stadium and people started running along the platform to the exits. Even now, you could hear people singing in the arena about a kilometer away. Safety barriers had been set up about half a kilometer away from the ground and all spectators were being frisked. There were no queues, just noisy masses of yellow shirts, crowding around the thirty security guards who were searching fans. Our feet started crunching on empty glass bottles of German beer that had been discarded, for just one type of beer, brewed by a World Cup sponsor, could be consumed around the stadium and only then in plastic cups. All other alcoholic drinks had to be left outside the security perimeter. We managed to find a small huddle of people and waited patiently for our turn to be frisked. My wife got searched by a female security guard who was otherwise underemployed.

Once inside the secure area, there was some breathing space and we were able to take in the scene. There was a feeling of expectation in the air as everyone began to talk about the game, me included. Yellow was the order of the day, though there were a few Paraguayans draped in their red-, white-, and blue-striped national flags, who were being continually photographed by their Swedish counterparts, anxious for a souvenir picture of the occasion. English-speaking performers were entertaining the crowd with loud songs and jokes about people from Scandinavian countries other than Sweden. The spicy smell of currywursts drifted across from some of the sausage fast-food stalls that were doing a great trade, as were the kiosks serving the beer. The singing inside the stadium was increasing as the nine o’clock kick-off approached. After savouring the atmosphere for a while, we decided to find our seats. We looked at our tickets and followed the colour-coded directions to the correct section of the ground, where we climbed four flights of 70-year old steps to our places, which were on the upper-level of the stadium. Our view over the playing surface was unrestricted and we had our backs to some concrete supports, so no-one was sitting behind us.

Certain parts of the ground were totally yellow, evidence that a whole town’s worth of Swedes, roughly 50,000, were at the game. Flags festooned the running-track around the pitch, hung from every means of support, such as stanchions and pillars, and were draped continuously along the edge of the upper-tier of the stands. Fans were bellowing songs and dancing in their seats. One or two Vikings were blowing horns and drinking beer at alternate moments. When the teams came on to the pitch, the sound made by the fans made the hairs on my neck stand on end, it was so emotional and heartfelt. 72,000 people screaming in unison in support of their teams was an unforgettable sound. As the national anthems were about to be played, it became evident that there were more Paraguayan fans at the game than we had first appreciated. They set off some flares and sang their hearts out, as most of the crowd was respectfully quiet for the playing of their anthem. There were perhaps two thousand of them present; under the floodlights their small clouds of red smoke stood out in the golden glow of a Swedish sunset.  My heart was beating wildly, caught up in the emotion of the occasion and I was overjoyed that the old stadium I had seen 19 years earlier had been transformed into this modern cauldron full of passionate soccer fans from across the globe.

The roof of the stadium is not complete, as an opening has been left on purpose by the Marathon Gate where I had stood in 1987, so from our seats, we had a great view of the sun as it headed towards the red- and purple-hued horizon. After 20 minutes of the game the Swedes at the Eastern end of the stadium started a Mexican wave, which wasn’t enthusiastically embraced by the fans at the Western end, who were then roundly booed by everyone else. So the wave was started again; more booing followed. The wave started again and this time made its way around the ground to much general applause. The wave went around the ground half-a-dozen times, before the distraction of Sweden almost scoring a goal stopped the wave in its tracks. It is apparently essential in a Mexican wave started by Swedes to undulate your arms in the air three times before jumping out of your seat to be part of the wave as it passes over you.

Sweden won the game in the last minute with a headed goal by Freddie Ljungberg, which pole axed the Paraguayans, who had played well without ever threatening the Swedish goal. Everyone around me leapt out of their seats with delight as we had seen a goal at last. It had been a long time coming. The victory meant that the Swedes qualified for the knockout phases of the World Cup and most of the Swedish town stayed in the stadium to help celebrate this fact with the players. The atmosphere at the game had been superb and as I left with a broad smile on my face, I patted some of the old columns. The Olympic Stadium had done me proud. In a sense, this stadium is a microcosm of Berlin; a grand old edifice, redolent with tradition, that has received a modern facelift without ever losing its sense of significance. The World Cup just added another layer of history to this magnificent stadium and city. Berlin will become the city in the world to visit, taking over the mantle from London when their summer Olympics are over in six years time. I was just thankful to be a small part of the World Cup experience and yet I reflected that if I hadn’t come here in 1987, I wouldn’t have felt like this. It was so good to have returned at last, I thought, as I travelled back on the mercifully cool U-Bahn to our hotel. I won’t wait another nineteen years to pay my next visit.