Weltmeister der Herzen

On Tuesday Germany lost to Italy in the semifinal and won’t be playing in the finale tonight. It was 0 to 0 into the second over time. There was only about 2min left and everyone expected it to go to a penalty shootout when Italy scored a miraculous goal. Everyone was stunned, including the players as Italy managed to score a second goal in the last ten seconds. Everyone was in complete shock. It was all over so fast. But there are still many reasons for Germany to be proud of its team. They did when third place by beating Portugal last night, and for a team that had been so harshly criticized before the WM, a team that nobody expected would go very far in the tournament, that’s a pretty good finish. I think the WM really changed Germany in many ways. For one it was nice to see Germans proudly waving the german flag. And german flags are everywhere now. When I was in Freiburg in 2001 I don’t think I saw a single german flag the whole time, and patriotism was practically a four letter word. But in the build up to the WM everything seemed to change. It was nice to see the german people finally allowing themselves to be proud of their country. It’s just a sporting event of course but still I think hosting it was enough to effect this long overdue change, especially as Germany advanced in the tournament despite low expectations. Personally I think Germany is a better team than both France and Italy but I guess that doesn’t really matter now. Also Europe as a whole should be proud. For the first time in I don’t know how long, the final four were all European teams. As I predicted, Brazil went down. All the talent in the world means nothing if you don’t have any heart. Anyway, tonight’s Finale should be a good game. I’ll be pulling for Italy.

In non-WM news, the other night my floor had a grilling party on the roof of our building. I didn’t even realize there was a deck on the top of our building and had never been up there. But it was really nice with an amazing view of Mainz and the university. Here’s a few pictures:

You can see the Mainzer Dome in the distance:






1 und 2 und 3 und 54, 74, 90, 2010!
ja so stimmen wir alle ein.
Mit dem Herz in der Hand und der Leidenschaft im Bein
werden wir Weltmeister sein!