Oooooooooooh wie ist das schön....
Germany won!!! 1:0 against Poland! Oh, it was so exciting! It was 0:0 for thrilling 90 minutes and then we finally got the well-deserved goal. This means Germany has qualified for the 1/8-finals (Update: Okay, I guess technically it's possible that Costa Rica wins against Ecuador and Poland, and if Ecuador then wins against Germany, Germany would only advance if their goal balance is better than Ecuador's or Costa Rica's or both. We will know more at around 16:50 today). Awesome. I watched it in the nearby Café Wolf since I didn't wanna watch it alone and Christina went to Malta with her work which means every single person I know in Bremen is there as well. Anyway, the goal was scored by Oliver Neuville who is part Swiss or something, after a sweet pass from David Odonkor whose dad is from Ghana (and who, as I just learned by coincidence, is from Bünde, a town close to my hometown Löhne, much like Arne Friedrich who I mentioned some time ago) and who were both put in the game during the second half. I think we should dedicate this goal to the NPD, who would like to keep the German national team 'purely German' and thus oppose such players being included in the team. Assheads.
Update:
Maybe I should elaborate on why I deemed it necessary to use the word "assheads" up there, because I don't usually cuss on here, mostly because Christina requested it but also because I need to sensitize myself to English cuss words more and use them only in appropriate settings. This is not easy when speaking a foreign language.
Anyway, one of the worst things, if not the worst thing, about present-day Germany are the Neo-Nazis. And of course they try to use the World Cup to further their agenda. By cheering for Iran because its president calls the Holocaust a made-up story for example. But also by questioning the 'Germanness' of certain players. Well, only of players that don't look German to them. Like Patrick Owomoyela who was born and raised in Germany and whose father is Nigerian. And David Odonkor. And of course Gerald Asamoah who came to Germany from Ghana at the age of 12 and has since become a German citizen. They don't really complain about guys like Neuville, Miroslav Klose or Lukas Podolski too much, even though they make them a little uncomfortable as well.
It's not hard to expose the racism underlying their sentiments and their utter incompetence at dealing with reality, so I won't bother with it now, but there are just a few other things I need to get off my chest. I was talking to a Chinese friend of mine who's living in Trier on MSN the other day and asked him if he would go and watch any public screenings of matches. He said No, because he's afraid something might happen to him. Apparently someone thought he was Korean at the last World Cup and made a handsign or something. Nothing big, but still stupid and together with the warnings given out to foreigners for the World Cup enough to make him wanna watch at home with friends. That kind of stuff ticks me off, when a foreigner is afraid to go wherever he dang well pleases, just because some ignoramuses/ignorami can't handle the fact that there are other countries in the world with people living in them and that these people go to different countries. A very popular slogan against racism and discrimination of foreigners in Germany is "Everyone's a foreigner, almost everywhere", which the NPD changed to "Everyone's a foreigner, except for where they belong" (both are my translations). After some recent frustrations with the German immigration laws, causing us to leave for New Zealand two weeks earlier than planned, this kind of thinking strikes me as the least thought out I have ever heard. Where they belong? Who are they to tell anyone where they can and cannot go and be happy? They are advocating a considerable limitation of personal freedom.
And even though it makes me sound like an old hippie, I'm with John Lennon when he asks us to "imagine there's no countries", because countries are just arbitrary lines on a piece of paper. Nothing more. The whole concept of having countries is entirely wrong. Yes, you heard me right. Countries are prisons. It is only because of special laws that I can go to different countries at all, or that people from different countries can come to Germany. Foreigners are considered as something that needs to be regulated by law. Every single one of them. Because really, you are not supposed to be outside of those lines you were born in at all. And you better have a good reason to be outside of them or else it's time to say goodbye. I find it mind-boggling to think about the implications of nationality and immigration and foreigner laws and how it all came about. Where's the freedom in that? I think that countries and nationalities are some of the biggest constraints on personal freedom in our world.
If I were a better writer, I would be able to smoothly come back to the Neo-Nazis, but instead this awkward sentence will have to do. Considering the arbitrariness of nationality, the NPD's stance on players in the national team becomes even more ludicrous. Do they mean to say that any child born to parents with different passports, and even if the parents grew up only 10km apart, as people close to the French-German or Spanish-Portuguese or any other dang border in the world do, is not allowed to ever play in any national team at all? What about my former roommate whose parents came to Germany via China and Vietnam, and who was born and raised here? Would he be allowed to play? What about his kids? What about adopted kids? Are they trying to tell me who I can and cannot fall in love with? Are they saying that marriages between people from different countries should be made illegal? Could it be that the only reason the Nazis are against these supposed foreign players is that in their little world all foreigners are lazy leeches that feed of the hard work of proper Germans, and that these successful 'foreigners' totally prove them wrong?
Discuss.