Trying to enjoy soccer

Finally. The European Championships have started. Switzerland was "instructed" by all available media to be extremely excited. This is the event. We will show the word what a terrific host country we are and, geeeeehh!, how are we looking forward to all those fans. They were depicted as well dressed, multi-cultural, good looking, young, non-alcoholic tourists which paint flags on their cheeks, consume whatever beer the main sponsor tells them and besides that boost our economy to a degree that it will pay all the extra army and police forces that will roam our cities. That's the story so far.

And now they arrived. They looked slightly different than in the TV ads, but hey... And so it began. Saturday evening, "Fanzone" it's called. Which is a fenced off part of the city where you only get over-priced food, one brand of beer and large screens to watch the game.

I was really looking forward to having a barbequed sausage, a fresh beer (you always get it on tap) and a nice spot where I will see the whole screen. I am not asking for a lot here...

Beer was no problem. Just outside the fanzone was an outlet of a local microbrewery (called "Unser Bier", which means "Our Beer") and theirs is much better than the official one. The security even allowed us to bring it in into the zone. Proceed to step 2, the sausage. The queue was long. Their were about 15 frantic women behind the counter, trying the get a sausage from the single (!) BBQ they had fired up. It was a disaster. In Switzerland, you ALWAYS eat a sausage on such an occasion. No sandwich, no pizza slice and heaven forbid no such things like muffins or doughnuts (which they tried to sell for about 5 NZD a piece). Those things do not fit. They don't. But it seems that one of the organizers got it wrong and thought that those well-dressed, good-mannered, multi-cultural, we-are-one-happy-family people would ask for them. Well they didn't. For the simple reason that they did not show up. Those that showed up were the normal-looking, sausage-eating soccer fans.

Many of them though that wearing over-sized fleece hats in cheerful colors would enhance the performance of their team which played about 5 kilometers elsewhere. Which required hats with quite paranormal properties. They did not care. And kept them on. In front of us. The one guy that placed himself in front of Esther was, in addition to his tremendous hat, also quite tall, drunk, slightly aggressive and when Esther told him that it would be cool if he could take the hat off, he became quite enraged and insisted that it was not his fault that the hat was that tall and Esther that short. We left it at that. Not only because a peaceful night was threatened but also because he became involed in another argument that included three slick guys with lots of brillantine in their hair.

After 45 minutes we fled. We found a better place. Had the official beer and fries (Beer = 9 bucks, Fries = 7.50) and enjoyed watching part two of the Swiss being dismantled by the Czechs. I love soccer!

Addendum: Tonight we sit at home. I can drink when and what I want. No people with hats and a cosy sofa just for us. But somehow I miss the hats...