My first Fußball experience!

Today was spent resting and recovering from the last 3 days.  Thursday was anther public holiday, and we took Friday off, giving us an extended weekend.  Yesterday was the UEFA Champions League men’s finals here in Munich (I’ll leave that to Noah to write about), and the day before we took a train to Regensburg for the day.  But for now, I will backtrack to Thursday – my first European soccer, I mean football, experience.

I decided to make my first football game count – I waited to see a Champions League final game.  And I waited for free tickets.  You can say the latter was more the motivating factor… and you would be right.  Thursday was the UEFA Champions League WOmen’s finals at Olympic Stadium, and our friends, Eddie and Laura, won extra tickets to the game.  With 8 tickets, and only 2 of them, plus 2 tickets reserved as souvenirs, we were lucky we made the list.

The game was some German team (not Munich, so who cares) against some French team.  Here we are at the stadium before the game.

It started off with a pretty cool opening ceremony, with a bunch of girls/women in soccer gear running around the field with different parachute type banners.  And by parachute – I refer to those fun parachutes we played with as a kid in gymnastics, where you pop it up and everyone runs under it.  If you have no clue what I am talking about, I am sorry.  It was fun.

Once the game started, us gals ran off to grab food (the lines were now gone).  Returning with typical stadium fare – you know beer, sausages, and giant pretzels…. ok typical German stadium fare -  we made it back just in time to see Lyon (the French team) score a goal off a penalty kick.  Not looking good for Frankfurt (that German team that isn’t Munich).

Later they scored another, to win 2-0, zwei-null, two-zero, deux-zéro (they made every announcement in German, English and French).  Overall, I really enjoyed my first football experience - the weather was nice, the food was good, and I saw 2 goals – much better than a 0-0 game!

After the game, the four of us went to explore the Champions League festival, which was going on all weekend.  We went to a tent where you won prizes based on how many ‘goals’ you made with 3 shots.  It was basically a wall with 3 holes in it.  I was pretty nervous, as this was the first time I ever kicked a soccer ball at a goal (or at all, as far as I can remember).  Instead I made 1 in – beating our resident soccer player Eddie who didn’t make a single shot!  Noah made 1 too, so we each got a prize.  Poor Noah got punked – he picked a nice looking book called ’10 years of UEFA Champions League’.  Turns out he should have opened it and read the fine print – the 10 years refers to 1992-2002.  At least it looks cool.

I can’t rag on Eddie too much.  Later in the Ford tent he made 3 goals and had the best speed, and won 2 tickets to Saturday’s Men's Champions League Finals. I guess his skills are there when it counts.  But the rest of us got our photo taken and a lanyard.  It almost is like Noah got to go to the game too!

Auf Wiedersehen and Gute Heimfahrt!