As most of you already know, I went to a Werder Bremen (pronounced: v-air-dah brehmen) soccer game last Thursday with Jonathan, Rieke and Orion. It was quite a fun experience. All of us met at around 4 pm here at Hermann Ehlers Haus since both Orion and Jonathan now live here as well and caught the bus to the train station. Then we rode to Bremen which takes about 40-50 minutes. The train was relatively crowded as would be expected. When we got to Bremen, we walked out of the train station and we saw and enormous amount of police everywhere. There were probably 30 police cars parked outside the main station as well as several policemen wandering around either on foot or on horseback. There were also a lot of loud and rowdy Scottish guys wandering around since Werder Bremen was playing the Glasgow Rangers.
Since the game didn’t start until 8:30, we decided to go find something to eat. We headed towards the station and it took about 15 minutes to walk to the correct local train. Once we got there though, there was a huge crowd of Scottish fans kicking around a soccer ball, drinking, singing loudly and just celebrating in general. Jonathan eventually wandered off to go get pictures of it and as Orion, Rieke and I stood around waiting for him, a Scottish guy came up to us and started talking with us since he heard us speaking English and he could tell from our accents that we were American (except for Rieke, who’s German). He talked for a while and eventually Orion and him traded scarves (Orion was wearing a Werder Bremen scarf and he was wearing a Rangers scarf). The passing Germans looked quite confused since German soccer fans are not nearly as rowdy as British soccer fans are. A German guy came up to me while we were standing there and asked me if I had any idea what was going on, so I explained it as best as I could. Another German guy who was passing said in loud German to us “The Scots have captured the market place!”. It was quite entertaining.
After that adventure, we finally got something to eat after finding a McDonald’s then we walked back to the station (which was clear now) and caught the train. The train was of course extremely full and we were surrounded by Scottish fans. I have no idea where all of the German fans where, but there didn’t seem to be many. The Scottish fans were busy singing and jumping up and down on the train the entire trip to the stadium. The song they were singing was a song for the Rangers and was kind of funny. It went something like this:
If you cannot do the bouncy, you’re a tim.
If you cannot do the bouncy, you’re a tim.
If you cannot do the bouncy
If you cannot do the bouncy
If you cannot do the bouncy, you’re a tim.
Bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, bouncy
Bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, bouncy
I don’t know what a tim is, but that’s what they were singing. They would jump up and down as they sang “bouncy”. When we arrived at the station, we quickly got in and found our seats. We had really good seats in the 8th row up behind one of the goals. Because of the violence sometimes associated with soccer fans (hooligans fighting each other), they separate the away fans from the home fans and have extra security around the away fans. In this case, the Scottish fans where in the away section which was sealed off with a huge metal fence in front and large walls on either side. We were near the away section. Home fans just have a small fence between them and the field.
The game itself was really good and Werder Bremen won the game, however they lost the actual match. They were playing in what is called the UEFA cup and how matches between teams works is like this: they play 2 games per match, one at home and one away. Then the scores between the 2 games are compiled and whoever had the most goals wins the match. The previous week Werder Bremen had played in Glasgow against the Rangers and lost 0-2. Thursday they played in Bremen and won 1-0, but since the Rangers had scored 2 goals in the last game, it means that Werder Bremen lost the match by 1 goal. The final score between the 2 games for the match was 1-2 with Werder Bremen losing.
After the game, we headed back home. The away fans (in this case, the Scottish fans) had to wait 20 minutes or so before they could leave after the home fans had already left for safety purposes. The trip home was very uneventful. Since the local trains were so crowded, we ended up walking back to the main train station. There we had an hour to kill before we could catch the next train back to Oldenburg, so we got something to eat. Then we headed back. Rieke’s roommate later told us that at one point she had seen us on TV when they showed a close up of Werder Bremen’s keeper (we were sitting right behind the goal).
It was a lot of fun and I hope we get to go again. I’m going to another soccer game while in England with Orion, Jonathan and Rieke and I’m really excited about that. The game is going to be Everton vs West Ham United in Liverpool.
