Watching the World Cup in Düsseldorf

The 2010 World Cup is taking over South Africa, but I am not there. Instead, I am navigating a labyrinth of cobblestone streets in Düsseldorf’s old town area to watch the games.

The tourney is only at the group stage, with a much-hyped match between England and USA coming up. So far, the first few matches are characterized by the ubiquity of vuvuzelas in the crowds—deafening horns that emit loud nasally drones at every match. No television broadcast can manage to wipe out the audio racket caused by these instruments, somewhere between a mass-induced ground hum and a symphony of air-raid sirens. Fans watching on television either love the vuvuzelas or despise them with a passion.

To me, the vuvuzelas are not just a collective drone in a literal sense or an audio sense. As phenomena, they become a metaphor underlying my whole trip. Everything else I experience while traveling in Düsseldorf—the sites, the history, the people, and the way in which childhood memories come spiraling back to the current moment—begins to feel like a grand set of resonances harmonizing the underlying phenomenon of the vuvuzelas.

Known for over 200 bars, restaurants and cafes, the old town of  Düsseldorf, Altstadt, is officially deemed “The Longest Bar in the World.” Narrow pathways twist off in every direction but the neighborhood is not that large. The glorious Rhine River Promenade flanks the eastern side of the area. The Heinrich-Heine-Allee subway station, named after the legendary poet, denotes the western edge.

As the World Cup unfolds, all 200 of those bars seem to have a TV jammed into an outdoor patio in addition to whatever they offer inside. It is impossible to get lost. All I have to do is spill out from any U-Bahn station and veer toward the river, then listen for the vuvuzelas emanating from all the TV broadcasts.

Throughout Germany, football is religion, especially during the World Cup, when everyone participates, no matter what nationality or identity one is stuck with. In Düsseldorf, I can see the German colors—black, red and gold—hanging from buildings everywhere. Flags, clothing, posters and advertisements are ubiquitous as I traverse the cobblestone.

The presence of German colors is even extra fun because it didn’t use to be this way. Germany hosted the previous World Cup in 2006 and during that tournament, an unprecedented cultural shift took place across the entire country. A fun and peaceful new brand of German flag-toting patriotism enveloped the nation. During previous decades, the German people almost always felt discouraged to display national flags for any reason whatsoever. They felt conditioned to refrain from openly expressing pride in their own country. They didn’t want to behave in any sort of fashion that could be interpreted as nationalistic, due to the country’s sinister past.

The 2006 World Cup changed all of that. Gone was the stereotypical wooden, humorless German. Flags, colors and paraphernalia exploded everywhere. People painted their faces in that same black, red and gold. The nation was in a much better mood. This is a perfect example of why the World Cup is the greatest show on earth. According to every single German who spoke to me, no other event would possibly have caused that to happen.

In Düsseldorf, as this year’s World Cup begins, I can party with Irish, English, Germans, Italians, Africans, Middle-Easterners and many others milling about all over Altstadt. A Brazilian samba procession snakes its way down the cobblestone path, with the same people waving both Brazilian and German flags. An oompah band pounds out tunes around the corner. I see national team shirts from at least a dozen countries.

When any particular game is on, the monotonous omnipresent whine of the vuvuzelas seems to be here, in person, even though it’s actually coming from all the televisions. The nasally tone of the horns only adds to the sonic mélange taking over the atmosphere. The distance between us and South Africa collapses while everyone drinks beer in the street. And I mean everyone.

With such multisensory dynamics unfolding, I am triggered to recall a chunk of childhood, when I grew up watching German soccer on PBS back in California. As a child in the late ’70s, I became enamored with a now-legendary show called Soccer Made in Germany. Each hour-long broadcast reprised news, games and highlights from the German Bundesliga. Many of us learned how to play soccer by watching that show.

The announcer, a colorful Brit named Toby Charles, was sort of like our teacher and our uncle at the same time. With him as our guide, we first learned about teams like Bayern Münich, Hamburg SV, Eintracht Frankfurt, and, the most exotic-sounding one: Borussia Mönchengladbach. As a kid, I had no idea what those two words meant, but they were so fun to say. Borussia Mönchengladbach.

In the San Francisco Bay area, Soccer Made in Germany was on Channel 9. By the age of eight I was familiar with the town of Düsseldorf and its hometown club, Fortuna, because of that show. When I was a kid, Düsseldorf was also just a fun word to say.

Now, as I stand in the corner, smashed up against the back wall of McLaughlin’s Irish Pub on Kurzestrasse, right smack in the middle of Altstadt, England plays the US on multiple televisions. The place is jammed.

Bob Bradley is coaching the US team, which features Landon Donovan, who I watched for a few years from press boxes back home in San Jose, when Donovan’s career first began. The league back home, MLS, is a joke, a single entity farce, a closed system that prevents the sport from evolving and maturing in any sort of authentic fashion. Yet here we are on the World Stage, playing against Rooney, Lampard and the rest of them. And here I am in Germany watching it on TV. I can’t complain. Plus, the German fans, all of whom hate England, are rooting for the Americans, so I am welcome in this bar, even if the tattooed server looks at me weird for only drinking sparkling water. I have to bug her several times.

The game ends in a draw, a fantastic result for the Americans and a total embarrassment for the English, thanks to keeper Robert Green who botches a simple shot and lets it slip past him. Otherwise, England would have won.

The Germans inside McLaughlin’s continue to drink what seems like endless amounts of Alt beer—the standard in Düsseldorf. The Anglos are hammered on Guinness, Harp or cans of something else from the liquor store down the street.

By the time midnight comes around, I find my way back toward Heinrich-Heine-Allee Station, where many fans, beers in hand, pile into the trains. The matches are over for the night, but I can still hear the vuvuzelas.

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Benrath Palace photo by By Uwe Barghaan

At Benrath Palace the next morning, soccer talk becomes much easier, thanks to Nadine Odenthal, my tour guide through a fairy-tale castle and 60-hectacre park out in the countryside. With huge slippers on my feet so as not to disturb the priceless flooring inside the palace, I spend about an hour with Odenthal, as she shows me around. I can’t imagine anyone knowing more than her about the famous late-Baroque mansion. With impeccable English, she explains the sordid details about each and every room we explore. The slippers are awkward to put on and take off, but each visitor is required to wear them.

As the story goes, Benrath Palace’s original intended owner, Karl Theodor, built it for his wife, who never actually used it. From outside, the palace looks like it has two stories, but it actually has four. There’s also a hunting lodge, a separate restaurant, extensive gardens and three separate museums. In a postcard sight, the 450-meter pond outside reflects the main building. The architect Nicolas de Pigage designed both the palace and the grounds as a total work of art.

After numerous wars, remodels and phases of redevelopment, today the property attracts visitors primarily for the park, which tips the scales at 612,000 square meters. The elaborate garden combines formal European and Eastern designs. In front of the palace, kids often play with radio-controlled toy sailboats in the water. Joggers use the park for their daily runs. Swans often show up to pass the time away.

I write down everything Nadine says, but somehow extract the fact that she’s a huge soccer fan, so we immediately engage in fruitful banter about Germany’s defeat of the US in the 2002 World Cup quarterfinals. Ballack scored the goal for Germany, she remembers.

I tell her that particular tournament was the USA’s best ever. Never before had the US reached the quarterfinals. When I explain that Landon Donovan was our player at that time—for my team back home in San Jose—she already knows the story. Donovan came to San Jose on loan from Bayer Leverkusen, a team in the German Bundesliga. At the time, everyone in Germany knew who he was. In fact, more people in Germany knew Donovan than did people in San Jose, even though he helped San Jose win two MLS championships.

My hands waving in the air with excitement, I then explain to Nadine why that quarterfinal match in 2002 was so significant for us, as San Jose fans.

The 2002 World Cup took place in Japan and Korea. The game between the US and Germany was in Ulsan, Korea. In a totally unprecedented maneuver, I tell her, immediately following the U.S. team’s exit from the World Cup, Donovan flew right back to California and actually came onto the field for San Jose the very next night, in our league match against Colorado. He came on as a sub, less than forty-eight hours after he had walked off the pitch in Korea. No one in the history of American soccer had ever done that.

She laughs. I think there’s a ‘wow’ in there somewhere, but I’m only listening to myself at this point.

I then mention my youth watching German soccer highlights on PBS as a kid in the 1970s. Together we rattle off German heroes from those days: Toni Schumacher, Sepp Maier, Gerd Müller, Uli Hoeness, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and the list goes on. I can’t tell if I’m impressing her.

I’m here in a professional capacity taking notes for a story I’m supposed to pitch to some magazine, somewhere, so I can’t be hitting on the tour guide, unfortunately, but Nadine and I are enjoying the conversation. She tells me she didn’t realize Americans cared about European football.

People all over the continent have told me similar things. I get into this exchange every time I come to Europe, no matter the country. After Nadine’s tour of Palace Benrath, I realize that anywhere in Europe, I feel much more at home because soccer is the universal language.

After a few days’ worth of touring Düsseldorf, no better celebration exists than to watch the home country on gigantic televisions, all along the Rhine River embankment promenade while hundreds and hundreds of locals drink ungodly amounts of beer in various cafes and restaurants. Germany’s first match of the tournament is against the Australians, who don’t stand a chance, or so I’m told by everyone.

Turns out the locals are right. Germany destroys Australia in the game, 4-0. The Rhine promenade erupts. The beer flows, and I’m thinking about those childhood days with Toby Charles, grateful for all that he, and life, have given me.

I grew up in California watching Soccer Made in Germany. Now I am in Germany watching soccer made in America. And Düsseldorf is still a fun word to say.

Pieces of this story were originally published at GoNomad.com and Metro Silicon Valley