11 July 2011 - Eurovision meets Weldmeistershaft (aka World Cup)

["Schland o Schland" by Uwu Lena]

So, on the heels of Eurovision and its national pride comes World Cup 2010 or, in Germany, WM 2010 (WM standing for Weldmeistershcaft which is something close to world masters).


As background, Germans, given the country's unfortunate history, have been somewhat hesitant to display much national pride or flag waving. The 2006 World Cup was held in various venues in Germany and was really the first time when Germans started actually displaying the flag with some degree of pride. I was in Düsseldorf on business during part of that World Cup and got to see this first hand. It was also my first real exposure to World Cup soccer because, as a typical American, I didn't follow soccer. At all.


So fast forward to 2010. I am much more aware of soccer (or fußball/football) though I probably still couldn't tell you how a team from the Bundesliga gets elevated to the Champions League. What's clear, though, is how many great soccer players there are from all over the world who populate these teams throughout Europe. Which brings us to WM 2010.


Germany, as indicated in my Eurovision blog, was full of national pride with the win of Germany's 19-year-old, Lena, in the final competition. So I suppose it was only natural that with the WM 2010 starting only about a month later that someone would find a way to link the national pride involved in both events. The result, for better or worse, is the viral video, "Schland o Schland" by Uwu Lena, which should be easy to find with a quick search on YouTube. Essentially, a German guy dons a wig of long, black hair and dresses up in a black dress not unlike what Lena wore in the Eurovision performance. Surrounded by crazy German soccer fans, he proceeds to sing "Schland o Schland," a song set to the tune of Lena's "Satellite," complete with footage of vuvuzelas. "Schland" standing for Deutschland. It is patriotic kitsch at its best. I highly recommend viewing it.

While I am not sure whether Schland o Schland had anything to do with it, Germany did quite well in the World Cup this year. Alas, it came to an end for us last night. The first stage was a group stage or something of a round robin with eight groups of three teams each. (There were pre-qualifying games that I will not go into, but not every country gets to even this round. I was delighted that both the US and Germany made it to this round, particularly since some countries that have much more interest in soccer than the US were eliminated in prior rounds.) Both Germany and the US advanced to the Group of 16 with the following results.

UNITED STATES:
England 1:1 US
Slovenia 2:2 US
US 1:0 Algeria

GERMANY:
Germany 4:0 Australia
Germany 0:1 Serbia
Ghana 0:1 Germany

Unfortunately, the US lost in the Group of 16 in a 1:2 loss to Ghana. Germany, however, advanced with a decisive 4:1 win over England. Now, throughout, there were a lot of German flags flown on cars and such (another favorite is black, red and gold striped covers that go over the mirrors of your car). But these demonstrations got even more pronounced as Germany continued to win. My aunt and uncle were here in Germany and we were able to experience one of the public viewings during the Ghana game. By the time of the game with England, the public viewing area in Frankfurt was packed and closed around two hours before the game even started. There were also huge crowds in the Commerzbank Arena.

Germany also won in the quarterfinals with a 4:0 win over highly-hyped Argentina. There was another great song around this time that set the "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" lyrics to German with some humorous references to Miradona (coach of Argentina), though I have not been able to find this online for your/my listening pleasure.

And finally, there were the semi-finals this past Wednesday. Alas, we lost to Spain, 0:1. Very sad, very sad. Things were not quite over, though, as there was a match for the losers in the semi-finals to play for third place. I don't really like the idea of that. But nevertheless, Germany played that game last night and defeated Uruguay, 3:2.

All in all, it was just an interesting experience. I gained a greater appreciation for soccer, but for me this was less about the game itself than the national pride and the bigger ideas the game brings. The World Cup only comes around every four years, like the Olympics, but is in many ways bigger than the Olympics. It is just one game, so easier to follow (though I will not try to explain here how a tie in the group round counts), and it is really accessible to all countries with good players. I loved the number of African and Latin American countries that have very few resources, commerce or other things going for them but that excel at soccer. I mean, there's something fascinating about Ghana being able to eliminate the US, right? Now, in the end, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd places will go to European countries (the final between Spain and the Netherlands is tonight), but still, it was a great world competition. And I can't wait until 2014!

30 May 2010 - Eurovision 2010

["Satellite" by Lena, obviously. Alas, it doesn't seem to be available on iTunes in the US as it is here in Germany, but you can see a replay on Eurovision's site]

A year or so ago, I heard through a US podcast (Rachel Maddow Show) about some crazy European singing contest. I had not head about it over here, so I figured it was some one-off thing. Au contraire. The Eurovision Song Contest is a big deal and has been going on for over 50 years! It has featured (spawned?) such acts as ABBA, Celine Dion (one must assume for France?) and Julio Iglesias. And this year I was invited to a viewing party at my neighbor's place last night. Awesome.

This year's contest was held in Oslo. It apparently started with 39 countries, but there were only 25 artists/acts remaining in the finals that were shown last night. One of which was, naturally, Germany. "Our" contestant from Germany is a girl named Lena. She just turned 19 and is in the midst of completing her finals in high school. Apparently she had limited experience with music and no formal vocal lessons, though she had taken dance lessons. And even before the finals, her song was one of the top downloads in Germany. I had heard it several times on the radio, but didn't realize the history behind it all.

The way the show progresses is each of the final acts performs in a pre-determined order and with no commercial breaks. There was slight variation last night because while Spain was performing, a spectator apparently got up on stage during their song, so they got to do a do-over at the end (without the spectator). Anyway, as each act performs, their number is flashed on the screen and viewers can then send text messages to vote for their favorite candidate. At the same time, there are professional judges in each o the 39 participating countries who also vote.

After all acts are done, there is a live report-in from each of the 39 countries in which they give 12, 10 and 8 points for, respectively, their first, second and third place picks. This is apparently a combination of both the popular vote and the votes of the professional judges. The countries cannot, however, give any points to their own country's act, if applicable. It was interesting to see some of te political dimension, though, with neighboring countries tending to vote for each other, the countries from the former Soviet Union tending to stick together, et cetera.

Some of the acts were pretty good, but some were seriously awful. It was fun watching them with a group of about 15 Germans to see how/whether my perceptions aligned with theirs. (For example, we all agreed that the dresses of the act from Iceland were wretched and, in particular, the red hue clashed quite horridly with the hair color of their singer.) As the countries started reporting in, I got this big sense of national pride each time a country assigned points to Germany. And what was particularly charming was someone at the party had brought a kind of grease pencil with the three colors of the German flag combined and she applied the German flag my face just like everyone else. I was honored.

In the end, Germany won!! We had 246 points, followed by Turkey with 170 and Romania with 162. I thought Spain might get higher ratings since they played twice, but they came in 15th with 68 points. See www.eurovision.tv for full results and more coverage. I thought Lena did a really great job of representing Germany and was very humble and normal in her comments both before and after winning. Though I admit I was a bit horrified that she let the German flag touch the ground, but apparently there are different flag-handling rules here than in the U.S.!

Great and fun experience. And a great warm-up to World Cup Soccer!!