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At three o’clock it was time for us to leave the beer tents and make our way to the Bayern Munich football (soccer) game. We were pretty sad to have to leave Oktoberfest, but I was very excited to see a real European football match.

The Allianz Arena was quite a stadium to behold. It has a sleek, futuristic exterior styling that looks metallic by day and glows red by night. It really is quite a sight to see in the evening. The inside was nice, yet simple. There were bathrooms, food, and beer stands as expected but it didn’t seem near as busy as the American baseball and football stadiums I’ve been in.

The match was awesome and certainly lived up to my expectations. FC Bayern soundly defeated FC Nürnberg (three to nil) with a generous show of offensive skill. While the match was enjoyable, the environment even better. American sports fans are no match for European football fans. Pure enthusiasm, singing, and shouting for 45 minutes. Then a break to prepare for another 45 minutes of… pure enthusiasm, singing, and shouting. There were no vendors, no beer runs, and rarely any bathroom runs visits. This is how sports should be experienced (and no, the standard “Let’s go Red Sox” cheer sung in an awkward round around Fenway doesn’t hold a candle to the entire-stadium-in-unison songs I heard in Munich).

I almost forgot the best part (thanks for the reminder Cindy). When Bayern scores a goal the stadium goes nuts (of course), but when things quiet down, the announcer starts the post-goal cheer/ritual by proclaiming the first name of the goal scorer. Then the crowd yells the last name back in unison. Again the announcer says the first name, and the crowd chants back the last name. After repeating that process once more the announcer says “number” and the crowd yells back the goal scorer’s number. To top it of the announcer finishes with “Danke” (thank you) and the crown crescendos for the final response, “Bitte” (you’re welcome). You’ll never hear a more guttural, aggressive, and yet jovial usage of “you’re welcome”. It may sound cheesy but that cheer was awesome… especially when you are ready to put your gut into it the second time around :).

So I left Munich with a huge smile on my face, already thinking of when I could visit once again. Unfortunately that high didn’t last for long, since we had a long car ride ahead of us (which started out with a sobriety check the minute we got onto the highway). We ended up back in Vienna at 2:00am making a total of 40 hours with just a couple hours of sleep. I don’t regret a single minute (…. well maybe we could have done without the 20 minutes of parking trouble when we got back).

So now I can finally say that I’ve traveled in Europe. I had actually been to Europe before, but going to Germany when you are 16 years old and caring only about the soccer tournament you are playing in doesn’t really count.

(Did I mention that only paying for 2 hotels for 10 nights in Europe is awesome! Thanks again Ogi)

I’m glad that I’ve started to open up to want to see more of the world, it actually deserves more credit than I initially gave it :)

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