German Lesson: Fußball Fieber

Herr J and I have definitely caught the football fever that sweeps Germany 3 out of every 4 years (World Cup, Women's World Cup, European Cup, then a sad, sad summer with no football). 

So we thought we'd put together some of the more important German terms that you need to know to follow football (men's or women's), along with some of our photos from Sweden-North Korea, Sweden-Australia, and Sweden-Japan games in Augsburg and Frankfurt. (No, it isn't that we are huge Sweden fans...the Quarterfinal  (Viertelfinale) and Semi-final (Halbfinale) matches just ended up that way).

Also known collectively as the Ampelkarte (Stoplight Cards):

Formally known as the Schiedsrichter(in), the Referee is commonly referred to as the Schiri. As unfortunately seems to happen more and more, when the refs make a questionable call you'll hear whistling by the crowd to show their displeasure or you'll hear the announcers on TV refer to the echt Wahnsinn (true madness).

Elfmeter = Penalty Kick. Though the obvious example would be some of Hope Solo's great work in the victory over Brazil, we'll go instead with Clint Dempsey's attempt earlier this year in a Fulham vs Chelsea game. Though his shot is blocked by goalie Petr Cech, we're pretty proud to have an American playing in the Premier League.

Why Elfmeter? Literally translated at 11 Meters, it's the distance (12 yards) from goal.

After the Verlängerung (Overtime), we have the Elfmeterschießen (Penalty Shootout) which brings the Goalie center stage:  

However, you definitely do NOT want to score an Eigentor, or Own Goal!

Traumtor = Dream Goal. There are a variety of examples to illustrate this one, but I'll go with something recent and something patriotic: Heather O'Reilly's goal against Colombia in the Group Stage. Also a great example of a Distanzschuss (Distance Shot):

And what is this whole thing called?? In Germany, you'll usually just hear "WM" (pronounced "vey-em", of course!). This also applies to any world championships....alpine skiing, rugby, etc.

 

Also known informally as "die Elf," ("the Eleven"), we have the teams themselves:

And Germany's beloved Jogi...one of the best in the world, but he often forgets about the cameras

 

Though we can play football anywhere with a flat surface and a ball, the big games are played in a Stadion (Stadium), like Frankfurt's Commerzbank Arena here. (In German, Stadium is a completely different word). A stadium full of Zuschauer (Fans/Spectators).

Schauspieler(in) des Jahres - Actor(actress) of the Year - This one we'll dedicate to Erika of Brazil, who puts even Cristiano Ronaldo and the Italian national team to shame:

In a game with so many Verletzungen (Injuries) - be they fake or real - we'll end up with a few minutes of Nachspielzeit (Extra Time / Injury Time).  It's in this extra time that both the US 2010 and 2011 National Teams made their fabled die pefekte Come-Back Gesichte (the perfect Comeback Story).

A Foul (Foul) often can lead to a free kick, against which the most common defensive strategy is mauern (to build a wall):

 

On the more technical side we have one that sounds almost the same but is spelled quite differently...

Not to be confused with Abschlag, where the goalie uses his/her hands to throw, punt, or drop-kick the ball (and must do so within 6 seconds), North Korea's goalie shows us her skills:

 

Despite rooting for Japan against Sweden last week, we'll be cheering for Team USA tonight.  Will American tenacity take us through to victory, or will Japan complete its fairy tale march to a first world championship?

Random Friday Musings

Cultural Misunderstanding Averted:   

On the walk back from buying groceries today, I noticed a woman shaking her closed fist in the face of a homeless man. My first reaction was shock. My second to realize that I was completely wrong and she was actually giving him encouragement and wishing him some luck by closing her fist around her thumb and making the German gesture for good luck.

(To wish someone luck in the native way, close your fist around your thumb, squeeze it and say Ich drücke dir die Daumen!)

Happy Surprises: 

It's been a long week and hard to keep up with everything. I finally got everything under control last night and was left with a manageable workload instead of a to do list longer at the end of each day. And after two days of travel, I was just tired. So, I skipped the whole getting up and getting dressed part of the morning and just stayed in bed for a couple of hours with my laptop and coffee. (I travel or work from home...it doesn't matter how I look on those days)

So when the doorbell rings at 10am, I'm suprised and not dressed to answer the door. I throw a robe on over my pajamas and quickly answer it to find a wonderful surprise - a "care package" from one of my best friends in the world (from Singapore, to be exact). We met in business school, bonded one night at dinner over a shared love of pink snakeskin, I joined her and a couple others for a trip to Paris, and that was that....we realized we were like sisters that the stork had been dropped off on other sides of the world.

Among other wonderful goodies (pineapple tarts!!!) was a book that will inspire some serious exploration.   Living in Germany and in close proximity to Vienna and Italy makes trying many of these things very possible!

An Ettiquette Dilemma:  

So what's the ettiquette on how to drink wine on a train? Drinking beer out of the bottle is quite common on German trains, and it seems like a tall boy (or two) is in order for many of the men commuting home at night on the LIRR. But how does one drink wine?

I typically take the train to Frankfurt once a week - sometimes there and back on the same day, making it a very long day.  Lately I've been tired but can't sleep, and too bored/tired to read or play games on my Kindle. (Herr J thinks I need a PlayStation portable or something...he might be right).

So I decided a glass of red wine might be a good way to relax, and if I were lucky, perhaps to induce a nap. They do sell little bottles in the train station, but they don't have plastic cups. I felt a little weird drinking it out of the bottle. OK, I felt a LOT weird - enough that last week I didn't get wine because it seemed weird.  This week, I decided I didn't care what people thought and went for it.  I felt good about that decision when I realized that the girl in the seat next to me didn't seem to care about not having showered in a few days!

Crazy Penalty Kicks

There were some strange penalty kicks in the USA vs Brazil quarterfinal match of the Women's World Cup.  Twice a penalty was taken and saved by the keeper, only to have the referee say it must be retaken.  Each time, the second kick was successful (although in Brazil's case, by a different player!).

In the first one, a USA player was called for "encroachment" (entering into the penalty box before the Brazilian player strikes the ball).  Technically illegal, but it is usually never called!  Here is the moment of infamy:

Christiane, who took the first penalty, was replaced by Marta who made the second.

Then in the penalty shootout -- the very first kick -- Shannon Boxx's effort is denied but the referee cited the Brazilian keeper for coming off the line before the ball was struck.  A keeper may move along the goal line before contact, but not towards the player.  Here is the snapshot in time:

 

These were strange, but YouTube is a wealth of more strangeness!  Let's look at a few.

PK #1:  This video comes from a Moroccan league.  The player hits a low, slow shot to the keeper's left.  It's so soft and low that it bounces just before the keeper hits it away.  Tennis players know that this creates backspin...

PK #2:  This is from one of the lower leagues (Italian, I think).  The player hits a hard shot high and middle, flying off the crossbar up into the air and outside the frame of camera.  It bounces back down, with backspin...

Strange, that in the comments there is an update that the goal was later disallowed and should have been called dead as soon as the ball hit the ground.  Hmmm.

PK #3:  Similar to #2, it's a hard shot off the crossbar, but this one doesn't waste any time getting back into the goal.

PK #4:  This is from a U19 (under 19 years old) game, Spain vs Italy.  Pretty tricky.  I'll let you see for yourself.

PK #5:  From a Swiss lower league game.  This is pure showing-off.  Pretty athletic though.  Watch the player, not the ball.

PK #6:  This is from a training session in the Italian top league ("Totti" played for Rome).  Anything you can do, I can do backwards...

PK #7:  Before you ask - yes, this is legal.  In a penalty kick during the game (but not a shootout, of course) the other players may enter the box as soon as the kicker hits the ball.  Could go badly with a great goalie, though.

PK #8:  This is not pro, semi-pro, or interesting in any other way than schadenfreude.  Keep your eye on the ball, goalie.  (but that doesn't mean to NOT put your hands up)

Soccer and Technology

Frau A and I went to our second Women's World Cup game in Augsburg, this one a quarterfinal matchup between Sweden and Australia (Sweden won, 3-1).  On the train back to Munich, mobile phones kept us up-to-date on the first half of USA vs Brazil.  We rushed home to catch the second half on television (and extra time, and penalty shots...).

What a game.

Of course, I was starved for ways to re-live the experience, and found some interesting web sites with more than just video replays.

ESPN.com has "Gamecast", which provides real-time (and archived) commentary, statistics, and neat graphical depictions of what happened.  For example...

Their timeline shows key events in the game, such as goals, yellow/red cards, and substitutions:

 USA vs Brazil (First Half)

USA vs Brazil (Second Half)

USA vs Brazil (extra time)

It was a real fight -- three yellow cards in the last 8 minutes of extra time.  And I love seeing that US goal at the very end...

Gamecast also has a running feed of information throughout the game.  If you're stuck at work without a live video stream, this is the next best thing (you end up waiting impatiently for each refresh, not knowing what to expect):

Statistics for the team and individual players are also updated in real time:

USA vs Brazil - team statistics

It's interesting that even being down to 10 players for the last 56 minutes of the game, the US still managed 51% possession.  Other than the US advantage in corner kicks, things look pretty even.

Here are the player stats...

USA vs Brazil - individual statistics

Wow - Carli Lloyd is a magnet for fouls, with 5 drawn and 5 committed!  Wambach gets hammered (5 fouls against vs 1 committed) whereas Boxx must be our 'enforcer' (just the opposite).

Gamecast gets even better when you click on "Shots" and it shows a map of the location of every shot from the two teams.  The US clearly favored the right side (or just had more success getting open there) while Brazil mapped more strongly to their left:

USA vs Brazil - Gamecast shot map

Then, if you click on a shot (for example, the solid blue Abby Wambach goal on the left of course!) it will show you an animation of how that play develped!  This one goes from Ali Krieger taking the ball from the Brazillian attacker, pass to Carli Lloyd at midfield, pass to Megan Rapinoe on the left wing, then her cross to Abby Wambach, and the shot:

USA vs Brazil - development of game tying goal at 122'

In contrast, Marta's goal early in additional time was set up by 5 forward passes, 4 backward passes, and a cross, many in tight quarters:

USA vs Brazil - development of Marta goal at 92'

In addition to raw statistics, you can see the "average" position of the players for each team.  In this case, look how spread out the US defenders had to play (#6, #3, #19, and #11), whereas the Brazilian defenders stayed much more in the middle of the backfield (#3, #4, #5, and #13):

USA vs Brazil - average position USA

USA vs Brazil - average position Brazil

Gamecast also provides even more "where-they-were-most-active" detail info for individual players, called a "Heat Map".  We can compare Abby Wombach with Marta because they both play the Center Forward - Left position.  Wombach spends little time in the defensive end, whereas Marta ventures deeper (and obviously more often) into her own end.  And look at how disciplined/consistent Abby seems to be lining up above the box - definitely not the organic Brazilian style!

 USA vs Brazil - Heat Map for Abby Wombach

USA vs Brazil - Heat Map for MartaRapinoe spent her time almost exclusively on the left side, and because she took most of the corner kicks gets mapping there too: 

 USA vs Brazil - Heat Map for Megan Rapinoe

Even more interesting is the comparison of the goalies.  Clearly Hope Solo has a much more aggressive style, coming further out and mirrors the left-weighted shot map of Brazil.  (Obviously, the effectiveness of the Brazilian attack has a role in her positioning too):

USA vs Brazil - Heat Map for Hope Solo

USA vs Brazil - Heat Map for Andreia

Of course there are many other web sites with similar features.  Adidas Match Tracker looks very in-depth, probably designed for the hard-core fan:

VisualSport keeps and displays data over an entire season and league, so performance changes over time might be trackable but it looks a little cartoon-ish: 

Finally, of course, there are iPad and iPhone apps too!  TotalFootball looks sharp:

An iPad option is the World Cup Visualizer.  The engineer in me likes these things, because it allows you to look at the sport in a different way.  I think statistics will continue to get more use by soccer clubs themselves and perhaps have the same impact that sabremetrics has had on baseball in the U.S.. 

Munich Day Trip - Hiking to Breitenstein (Bavarian Alps)

Last summer we joined a hike organized by the Munich chapter of Internations. This one was a short trip from Munich, to Breiteinstein in the Bavarian Alps. The drive took only an hour to reach the parking lot at the trailhead (in the village of Birkenstein, near Fischbachau).

You'll see in the Google Map below that Fischbachau lies east of Schliersee, near the Austrian border.

This is a good hike, with a mix of steep and easier stretches, as well as mixing meadows, forest, and rocky trails. 

The hike up takes around 2 1/2 hours and less than 2 hours down, depending on your stops. The trail begins around 850m elevation at Birkenstein, ascends to a hut at 1,585m, and finally to the peak at 1,622m (for a total rise of 1,170m).

You can see our destination below - we'll go all the way up to the small cross at the summit. 

 

The hike starts off with a steep walk up shady trails through the forest, before opening up into rolling meadows dotted with evergreens.  Not too bad, but definitely a challenge.

There are quite a few benches along the way to stop, rest, and enjoy the view. The wide trail then snakes through the meadows, with a steady (but not steep) climb upwards.

We then reach the bottom of a large grassy hill where cows graze, and gently wind around the hill into the forest on the right.

After passing through more shaded forest, we reach the Hubertushütte, a little hut serving drinks and snacks in a small valley below the peak of Breitenstein.  We stopped here for a snack before the final push up a rock-studded grassy hill up to the cross at Breitenstein. It's only another 10-15 minutes up to the peak.

Despite the not so steep-looking grassy meadow, the mountain drops off on the other side. At the top there is space to sit and look out over the villages in the valley, as this couple does. 

We ate lunch at the top, before heading down. Instead of the same route down, we passed along the ridge through a flat meadow where the cows grazed.

We pause to enjoy the view before descending.

 

Then back down the grassy hills. Herr J greets another one of our huge bovine friends. The cows were definitely one of my favorite parts of the day. 

 

Once again we had nice weather, friendly hiking companions, and great scenery (with animals!) -- this is why hiking in the Alps is so much fun.

Not your ordinary German beer...

I always enjoy seeing what they have in new grocery stores. (Herr J can attest to how long I can spend in a store in a foreign country, amazed by the different products). In Germany, I like to check out the beer section in different regions, to see if there are some new beers to try.

They've started carrying Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew, and Antarctica's Guarana soda in some of the stores in Munich.

However, my most recent discovery is really rather shocking.

No, your eyes are not decieving you...They really ARE selling The Beast and Busch here, in the Galleria store at Frankfurt Hauptwache!

Of all the American beers they could be selling here......

Munich Zoo - Large Carnivores

Lions, tigers, and bears.  The stuff of classic movies and some of the main attractions at every zoo.  Munich is no different, especially with their new Polar Bear exhibit.  We posted photos of the new baby elephant recently, but we also captured shots that day of some even wilder things.

Lions are funny, because we know they can be ferocious but usually find them sleeping.  All day.  Fortunately, the zoo lists feeding times for the lions & other animals, so this is the chance to see them actually move.  We found the lioness initially lying down, but when she heard the keeper's keys jingling she raised her head in interest.  Barely.

 

She then yawned a half-dozen times, stretched, groomed, yawned again, and THEN made her way to the food.  Still looking half asleep and completely oblivious to the people crowded around watching.  I have heard that their house-cat cousins are much the same...

 

After dining, she paced around for a few minutes.  It's the easiest wildlife photography we'll ever do -- an animal moving slowly about the same circular path, over and over and over.  Then she was back napping.

 

The Polar bears have a new exhibit, and it's great (for us and them, it's claimed).  The pen is long and relatively narrow, giving the bears room to roam but always in sight of the visitors.  This overview from the Zoo web site:

The bears have lots of toys, as usual - here is one of the two hanging out in the water, chomping on a plastic drum.

 
There are two of them - male and female.  Honestly, I'm not sure who this is playing.

The highlight was when one of the bears climbed out of the water and up on the "rocks", then dove into the water!  Frau A was quick with the camera and caught it in photos!  A real crowd pleaser - hugh splash but not nearly wide enough to get over the "panzer glass" lining the pen.

 

Frau A also got a great photo of the bear shaking off water after the dive.  There was a lot of activity from the bears, so a large crowd amassed and stayed around the exhibit.  We had to pull ourselves away to see other animals.

Lions... bears...... but no tigers in this post.  Sorry.  We didn't make it to the tiger part of the zoo this time.  How about European Wolves, key figures in German fairy tales (Little Red Riding Hood...)? 

 

The wolves were also quite active, in a dog-like way.  They would circle their large area constantly, taking occasional breaks to lie down or socialize.  They weren't running, but moving pretty fast though, and the light was somewhat dim -- so we learned then how difficult "wildlife" photography must be.  It took a lot of failed attempts before we captured good shots of the jogging wolves, especially when they're coming at you (continuous focus is easier when something moves across the frame, equidistant from you -- rather than toward or away from you).

 

When they paused to kiss, Frau A captured the moment.  In this "wildlife" photography we really learned the advantage the professional cameras like her Nikon D700 bring, vs. my nice-but-clearly-amateur Olympus Pen (and for sports too).  She could focus faster, maintain focus, and get off more shots per second.

This one stopped and ventured right to the edge of their area (before the "moat" and fence that keeps them from escaping).  He looked up briefly to check us out, then went back to jogging and playing.  European wolves are smaller than their North American relatives, but just as beautiful.

 

Coming in a future post - sea lions!