Berlin Story: Pack Up Your Flags, Fuckers

Fussball season is upon us, the absolute worst time to be in Germany, when even a city as progressive and bohemian as Berlin transforms into a wasteland of drunken, braying idiots. It is not worth leaving the apartment on a game night. Every restaurant and outdoor cafe has wheeled out a mammoth flat-screen TV to lure in the crowds, who spill out onto the streets, their deafening roars of victory sounding like the blood-lust of ancient Romans watching the lions tear apart some unfortunate Christian. You can’t even comfortably sit at home with your windows open on a game night.

Admittedly, I don’t like sports. Growing up in the USA, this was not such an unusual position to take. For a person who did well in art class, in fact, it seemed almost de rigueur. But Germany has a different culture when it comes to relaxation activities: as with drinking beer, soccer fandom is not optional here, rather it is a deeply ingrained part of the national identity, and you’ll find even your most leftie, anarcho friends giving you the evil eye if you dare spoil their juvenile fun by mentioning that it revolves around empty calories and a simulacrum of war. German leftists have their own bars, their own beers (whose advertising campaigns make fun of cops and rich people), but everyone watches the same game, roots for the same team, and aversion to this tradition is not treated as a defensible ideological stance. “You don’t watch Fussball?” says the girl with the pink mohawk, eyeing me pityingly, as if I’m confessing to a congenital defect, or a wheat gluten allergy: something not quite healthy, something you wouldn’t want your kids to catch.

Thursday night’s game was a particularly tense leisure event, as it was Germany vs. Italy in the deciding game for advancement to the championship round. Germany has never beaten Italy in a major soccer tournament, despite the fact that Germans are legendary for their organizational and strategic efficiency, whereas Italians are always three hours late for everything, still live with their moms, and start drinking red wine around eleven in the morning most days. Yet their performance on the field puts the lie to these stereotypes. The Italian team is a well-oiled, disciplined machine, graceful and relentless, like fascist ballerinas. How can they be so good? What’s their secret?

In the interests of investigative journalism I’ve decided not to hide under a blanket with earplugs tonight, and instead have ventured outdoors to actually view the match. The crowd at the cafe near to my apartment is dense, the atmosphere expectant but jovial. Hopes are high for the so-far indomitable German team.

Every German citizen can tell you that it was in 2006, during that year's World Cup, when it became acceptable for the first time since World War II to publicly and proudly display a German flag—strictly for the purpose of supporting the team of course. The 2006 spontaneous amnesty on knee-jerk nationalism still evokes nostalgic memories: it is widely understood as a watershed moment of cultural catharsis. This is hard for Americans to understand, conditioned as we are to seeing the red, white, and blue flapping proudly over every Burger King. Since acclimating myself to living in a flagless, neurotically self-conscious nation, my return visits to the USA are always startling. Flags everywhere, unthinking displays of mindless patriotism on every corner. Germans, when there is no game on, recognize this kind of symbolism for what it is. Even post-2006, flying a German flag from your apartment window or the antenna of your SUV outside of the strict parameters of soccer season is considered an expression of right-wing affiliation. A country that eschews nationalistic dogma and constantly questions its own construction of identity is, in my mind, at least attempting to be sane. But then it’s Fussballtime, and the moment the first ball gets kicked the entire citizenry goes on a rampage. Red, black and gold everywhere, people painting their faces and running berserk through the streets, the headlines of the tabloids reporting how “our boys DESTROYED the Greeks” just talking about the game, of course, just good sportsmanship, healthy competition, gentlemanly fun. Nationalism is fun. It feels good to win. It feels good to be on the side that is kicking ass.

Tonight, however, the crowd’s bravado is quickly shaken. The Italians’ star player, the miniature-mohawk-sporting Mario Balotelli, scores two goals within the first thirty minutes. The game sits at a mood-killing 0-2 for the next hour. I linger towards the back of the crowd, trying hard to contain my glee, unobtrusively nursing a hefty dose of Schadenfreude.

The minutes tick anxiously by. The streets are somber and silent, as if we are watching a televised funeral. In the last two minutes, Germany manages to score a goal, causing a ripple of hope to swell through the audience—but no, it is not enough. Time runs out. Game over. Germany is defeated once again, ass handed to it. Hallelujah. Maybe now things will get back to normal in my neighborhood. The hardest lessons of history must be learned again and again: nationalistic fervor is a hollow construct, enough to stir up hatreds, enough to fill malleable minds with false pride and hubris, but in the end, it is not enough to ensure victory. For that, you need something more: love. Mario Balotelli is quoted the next morning in the New York Times, revealing to reporters the true secret of Italian indomitability: “At the end of the game I went to my mother. That was the best moment. I told her these goals were for her.”

Al Burian, born 1971, grew up in North Carolina (state motto: "to be rather than to seem") and lives in Berlin. He is the author of numerous books: Burn Collector, Natural Disaster, and Things Are Meaning Less. He was a founding member of the punk/hardcore band Milemarker.