A Short Few Days in Hannover, World Cup City

Hannover, Germany
We spent the last few days on a brief visit to my home town of Hannover, via a brief detour through Berlin and the Hurricane music festival at Scheeßel, to see Australian sensation Wolfmother. (Luckily, the storms which led to the cancellation of the later days of the festival only hit after we'd already left again.) This is the first time in six years I've been back to Hannover, and only the second since I left Germany for Australia in 1994. Strangely, I'm finding myself in a position of seeing Hannover (and Germany more generally) through the eyes of a tourist rather than those of a native, which is somewhat disconcerting - albeit a tourist with better local knowledge than many of the football fans and other travellers currently traversing the country.

And having been away so long also gives me a better appreciation of the cultural changes which have occurred over this time, I think - the greater international focus and European economic and cultural exchange which finally appear to have somewhat softened German national culture, but also the new sense of national identity in a global context which may be a product of the World Cup in particular, but is probably also driven by the long-in-coming separation of German from U.S. interests in the wake of unification and the opposition of 'old Europe' to the Iraq invasion which was led in good part by France's president Chirac and Germany's chancellor Schröder.

The presence of German flags everywhere was also striking to me. Flags and other national symbols were never prominent in national culture, for very obvious reasons, and they have appeared only in the lead-up to the World Cup, but are now on many windows and balconies as well as attached to almost every other car you see in the streets - it will be interesting to see if they disappear again after the end of the Cup, or if they will remain as a more common feature beyond this (this may also depend on whether the German team can win the competition, of course). In the context of so many other fans throughout German cities large and small, at any rate, they point to rekindled fandom rather than a return to nationalism.

And finally, of course we went to the pub to support the Socceroos in their second-round match against Italy. Even though the Café Übü in Linden where we watched the match turned out to be run by Italians, there was considerable support for Australia - Germans like to support the underdog as much as anyone, I guess. Like us, they were disgusted with the completely unjustified penalty which ended the Socceroos' campaign - and even the Azzurri supporters who waved their flags in the streets after the game must know what a lucky victory their team was gifted - and should prepare themselves for a loss against Germany, if not against Ukraine in the quarterfinals.

Technorati : Germany, Hannover, Soccerroos, World Cup
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