Weltmeisterschaft 2006:

The air is thick with pollen, yet most eyes are on the screens. A woman wipes a baby’s bottom by a recently constructed sandbox. Youth bounces on a trampoline. 20-somethings drink beer. A Dutch striker strikes a football just wide of the Serbian right goalpost, allegiances among the onlookers not readily determinable. In this host country, the home team is not playing, nor in the same group as either of the teams which are. And yet, in the visible range of these pixelated outdoor players, light-drawn through the pollen-filled air from newly purchased projectors, on a Sunday, seating capacities are reached.


Prinz Lauerberg is at its parks and flea markets, but mostly - it is watching football. You see a stranger on the street and want to say something. Sage brush brushes past you as you pass, wordless. You do not speak German. Makeshift beergardens are thrown up in empty lots. Those well-established gather makeshift German lines outside their walls, the ones already inside hanging over, looking for their friends. Men wear flags around their necks like capes. Women paint national colors on their cheeks. Waiting to get into the beergardens, people drink bottled beer, the bottles piling up in mounds like post-war rubble affording the city its minimal topographical variance.


In German-accented English two record producers speak of violence, of German adolescents (or Belgian ones) shooting up their schools, of a boy running into a crowd at the opening of the long-awaited Hauptbahnhof with a knife, stabbing. An American recording artist sits quietly, listening. Almost overnight the lavender explodes into color.


My mind empty with the churchbells' ringing, the sun glows down as if just risen, though it is already afternoon. A thin yellow-haired-shaggy dog lies resting, half in shade, while the bells continue without sign of letting up. Two women talk, and drink tall beers in tall skirts, with their legs crossed. They smoke cigarettes, and wear sun glasses. The dog looks up at me, its muzzle browned, its presumptive master reading, sandals off, legs propped. She puts down her book, momentarily gathers the air in a smell, and drifts back to her lines. The bridge passes its walkers, and below, the rumblings of a ring train, as I return to the unidentifiable yard to sit for an unidentifiable anthem.