Our group of Americans and a group of Iranians take a picture together on the Königstraße, the main street in Stuttgart’s business district. I'm the fourth person from the right. (Click on photos for larger images.)

A Time to Make Friends
The World Cup Begins

Ever since I arrived here I’ve been waiting for the World Cup to begin, and now that it has I certainly haven’t been let down by the city wide party here. Everything here is World Cup related; there isn’t a single store that isn’t trying to capitalize on the “Fußballfieber.” It’s been a crazy long weekend of soccer and sun in the Schlossplatz, Stuttgart’s famous square. The Stuttgart FIFA Fan Fest is held there, three gigantic screens worth of soccer can be seen from anywhere in the Schlossplatz.

Friday night was the opening game of World Cup, Germany versus Costa Rica, and it seemed as though the entire city had descended upon the Königstraße and the Schlossplatz to watch the match. German flags were everywhere and the atmosphere was incredible. But German flags weren’t the only ones flying in the streets; every nation in the World Cup was represented by someone carrying a flag of their country. After we saw someone carrying an American flag we chased him down and asked him where he bought it. Fifteen minutes later, we too had an American flag and were waving it proudly through the sea of other flags.

The Mexicans celebrate a goal during their match with Iran.

We then decided to head down to the Schlossplatz and waited for the game to begin. The German fans were chanting and singing nonstop. Naturally, we wanted to learn the songs as well, so we headed into the crowd of Germans with our American flag. Much to our surprise chants of USA, USA sprung from a group of German fans. We headed over to them and introduced ourselves and watched the game with them. They taught us the German chants and we joined them in cheering on Germany. When Germany scored the first goal of the match the Schlossplatz went insane. Everyone with a plastic cup in their hands threw their hands in the air, which resulted in a shower for everyone around. So much for staying clean…

This is the big screen in the Schlossplatz, We were watching the Germany match.

The game ended in a 4-2 win for the Germans and with the victory the entire city just went crazy. The German guys we were hanging out with invited us to go out with them, but we had to take a train to reach our destination. So we started walking to the Hauptbahnhof, which is normally a ten-minute walk. It took us an hour to get there through the massive amount of people in the street. At one point I was pushed into a group of fans chanting because there was no American flag in the group, but many others were represented. After about five minutes of jumping up and down and chanting “Umpa, Umpa, Umpa” I tried to move on, but only made it a little way down the street.

This time it was a group of Iranians carrying the red, white, and green of Iran. They wanted to take pictures together and show us that despite the differences between our countries, we can still come together peacefully. From one of them the chant “We are friends” started and there we were chanting and waving our two countries’ flags together. I’ve never had my picture taken by so many people as everyone that walked by us took a picture. We exchanged phone numbers and then continued on our way towards the train station and continued the celebration on into the night.

After the German game the celebration spilled out into the streets, with traffic deadlocked and flags everywhere.

Tschüüüüs!