Random Comments from an Argentine during World Cup Sunday in Berlin

Here are my World Cup Saturday Night pictures on Flickr. And here are my World Cup Sunday photos on Flickr. I don´t have time to comment on each photos but here are some random comments.

My wife is French. She is mad. There must be a conspiracy going on here as all the World Cup shops sell T Shirts flags of all countries BUT France. At first I did not believe it but then I went into 4 shops with her and she´s right. She thinks people around here hate France. I think that business people about here never thought France would make it to the final, now it did and the few French T shirts they had ran out. Interestingly we found a French man who had driven from France with many T shirts and selling them from his car. While all World Cup T Shirts are for sale for 5 to 8 euros the French T Shirt cost us 30 euros. But now she´s happy.

The Germans are amazing hosts, everything extremely well organized, they are all nice to foreigners, but somehow even though the Italians beat the Germans there seems to be a great deal of favoritism around here for Italy over France. Maybe there are many Italian Germans. My wife being French is upset about that too (we all know that the French are in frequent reason to be upset!)

I went to visit the memorial of the holocaust. That was very sad and being Jewish I will never totally get over the fact that this city was once ruled by a disgusting dictator who killed a third of the global Jewish populations. Nevertheless I give tremendous credit for the Germans on all of what they have done to accept the past and overcome it. Most Germans alive now have nothing to do with the holocaust and maybe because they tasted Nazism they are especially democratic now. Berlin seems to be one of the most progressive cities of Europe. Especially Mitte.

I know very little about football but I am a fan as well. I am very sorry that Argentina did not make it to the final. But as I walked around this morning and saw hundreds of thousands of people I was surprised not to see a SINGLE Argentine. And I mean, not one. I was sorry about that and I was proud walking around with my Argentine t shirt. I was trying to speculate why there weren´t any compatriots here and so many in the game against Germany. I see Dutch dressed in orange, and they lost, I see Brazilians dressed in yellow and green and they lost, I see English, I see Mexicans. Where are the Argentines?

I am here thanks to Alois Rejas-Tresch. Frankly I know Alois very little but I am VERY grateful to him. Alois was a student at St Gallen University when I spoke there in 2000 and he says he found my speech very motivational, I guess so much so that many years later when he had become a successful entrepreneur and had tickets to invite people to the final he thought of me. Thank you Alois!