Going to the match - Hertha BSC

When we visited Geneva in February, Noah and I went to the local professional soccer team – AC Seville. AC Seville plays in a very nice, new stadium that seats about 35,000, but the day we were there the announced crowd was about 2,900. Just by chance I noticed that the Berlin team in the Bundesliga – Hertha BSC – played on the Sunday that we were here in Berlin. So I decided that we would go and continue the new tradition. It was quite a different experience from Geneva. Hertha BSC plays in Olympic Stadium – the same stadium where Jesse Owens humiliated Adolph Hitler in the 1936 Games. We stopped by the stadium on Sunday afternoon just to make sure we could find it, and as long as we were there we decided to try the ticket office. They were open and there were only a few seats left, so we bought a couple (I don’t force Kathy to attend these games, and Noah doesn’t encourage her to attend anyway). There must have been 80,000 fans at this game, and we were in the absolute last row of the upper deck. Unfortunately, Hertha lost a man to a red card in the 36th minute, so they played most of the game shorthanded. They fell behind 3-0 and were able to salvage a single goal, before going down to a 4-1 defeat. It was a great time, and it was certainly cool to be in a stadium with such history (compared to, say, the Metrodome).