By Jeffrey Marcus
The Associated Press
LEIPZIG, Germany —; Almost anywhere you go in Germany these days, it’s all World Cup, all the time. Fans pack town squares; cafes and bars are decked out in national colors. People blow whistles and air horns until your ears bleed, whether or not a game is actually under way.
But here in Leipzig, the only former East German city to host World Cup games, the mood is a bit more subdued.
Hours before Germany was to play Ecuador in its final group match, and a day before Iran was scheduled to face Angola at the Zentralstadion here, the city center was peaceful and quiet. Where were the flags? What happened to the manic, face-painted fans I saw in Hamburg and Hanover and Cologne?
To look for answers, I went to Leipzig’s market square, once a major trade center of central Europe. A few late-morning diners enjoyed cappuccino at the Zum Arabischen Coffee Baum, a cafe and museum that is the oldest, continually functioning coffee trader in all of Europe.
Robert Richter, 20, is a waiter there. He told me crowds turned out during games featuring Spain, France and England. The upcoming match between Iran and Angola wasn’t very popular, he guessed.
A CITY’S ETHOS
Leipzig was chosen to host the World Cup because it maintains a special place in the identity of unified Germany.
“We want to show the world that the World Cup 2006 is taking place in a different country from the one in 1974, when the World Cup was hosted in the western part of a split Germany,” Franz Beckenbauer, German soccer legend and World Cup chairman, has said in touting Leipzig and the tournament.
The German national soccer federation was founded here in 1900. Johann Sebastian Bach made his home and music in Leipzig. Johann Wolfgang Goethe attended university here. But perhaps most importantly, Leipzig was the birthplace of the protests that helped lead to the end of the communist German Democratic Republic in 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Every Monday beginning in the early 1980s, residents would gather at St. Nicholas church in the city center to pray for peace, denounce human rights violations around the world and protest the spread of nuclear arms. Eventually, these demonstrations morphed into anti-communist protests and spread throughout East Germany, culminating in Berlin in November 1989 with the tearing down of the Berlin wall.
To this day, activists gather every Monday at St. Nicholas to protest the cause du jour, even during the World Cup.
SUBDUED FANFARE
More than 100,000 foreign fans have visited Leipzig during the first 10 days of the tournament, and the city’s host committee estimates a total of 391,000 have turned out at the stadium and for public viewings.
But many of the cafes and restaurants in the city center were only a quarter or a half full. And I had no trouble finding an inexpensive hotel room. In other cities, I had to fight for a seat or make a reservation well in advance.
I went down to the Fan Fest public viewing area to watch Germany play in the afternoon. Unlike other cities where fans began the party almost half a day before kickoff, Leipzig residents didn’t turn out until an hour or two before the game. But the public square filled up quickly.
It was a hot day and there was no shade. Maybe that explains the crowd’s less-than-enthusiastic pre-game atmosphere. The Fan Fest master of ceremonies had to practically beg for responses to his prefab cheers. But when the German team took the field, fans livened up.
Still, it’s the only place not teeming with fans on the verge of cataclysmic eruption. And to a traveler weary of fighting crowds at every turn, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
The Associated Press
LEIPZIG, Germany —; Almost anywhere you go in Germany these days, it’s all World Cup, all the time. Fans pack town squares; cafes and bars are decked out in national colors. People blow whistles and air horns until your ears bleed, whether or not a game is actually under way.
But here in Leipzig, the only former East German city to host World Cup games, the mood is a bit more subdued.
Hours before Germany was to play Ecuador in its final group match, and a day before Iran was scheduled to face Angola at the Zentralstadion here, the city center was peaceful and quiet. Where were the flags? What happened to the manic, face-painted fans I saw in Hamburg and Hanover and Cologne?
To look for answers, I went to Leipzig’s market square, once a major trade center of central Europe. A few late-morning diners enjoyed cappuccino at the Zum Arabischen Coffee Baum, a cafe and museum that is the oldest, continually functioning coffee trader in all of Europe.
Robert Richter, 20, is a waiter there. He told me crowds turned out during games featuring Spain, France and England. The upcoming match between Iran and Angola wasn’t very popular, he guessed.
A CITY’S ETHOS
Leipzig was chosen to host the World Cup because it maintains a special place in the identity of unified Germany.
“We want to show the world that the World Cup 2006 is taking place in a different country from the one in 1974, when the World Cup was hosted in the western part of a split Germany,” Franz Beckenbauer, German soccer legend and World Cup chairman, has said in touting Leipzig and the tournament.
The German national soccer federation was founded here in 1900. Johann Sebastian Bach made his home and music in Leipzig. Johann Wolfgang Goethe attended university here. But perhaps most importantly, Leipzig was the birthplace of the protests that helped lead to the end of the communist German Democratic Republic in 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Every Monday beginning in the early 1980s, residents would gather at St. Nicholas church in the city center to pray for peace, denounce human rights violations around the world and protest the spread of nuclear arms. Eventually, these demonstrations morphed into anti-communist protests and spread throughout East Germany, culminating in Berlin in November 1989 with the tearing down of the Berlin wall.
To this day, activists gather every Monday at St. Nicholas to protest the cause du jour, even during the World Cup.
SUBDUED FANFARE
More than 100,000 foreign fans have visited Leipzig during the first 10 days of the tournament, and the city’s host committee estimates a total of 391,000 have turned out at the stadium and for public viewings.
But many of the cafes and restaurants in the city center were only a quarter or a half full. And I had no trouble finding an inexpensive hotel room. In other cities, I had to fight for a seat or make a reservation well in advance.
I went down to the Fan Fest public viewing area to watch Germany play in the afternoon. Unlike other cities where fans began the party almost half a day before kickoff, Leipzig residents didn’t turn out until an hour or two before the game. But the public square filled up quickly.
It was a hot day and there was no shade. Maybe that explains the crowd’s less-than-enthusiastic pre-game atmosphere. The Fan Fest master of ceremonies had to practically beg for responses to his prefab cheers. But when the German team took the field, fans livened up.
Still, it’s the only place not teeming with fans on the verge of cataclysmic eruption. And to a traveler weary of fighting crowds at every turn, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
