Germany vs. Turkey

Hey all, we just made it to our dorm in Copenhagen after getting off the bus from Hamburg. You may or may not know that the Euro Cup 2008 soccer tournament is going on and is a very big deal. Both Turkey and Germany made it to the semi-finals round and that game was played last night, while we were in Hamburg, Germany. Needless to say, it was quite the experience. Not only did we get to watch it in Germany, but the Turkish population in Hamburg is pretty large. Yesterday, we walked around checking out Hamburg and then started scouting a good place to watch the game. We found a few little bars that might be cool. Then, while walking through a large park, we came across a huge fenced off area with hundreds of people going in. There was also a massive stage with a massive screen for watching the game. We went to get food and beer and planned on coming back in after that. Once we got back we found out that the game started an hour earlier than we thought and was about to start. The problem was that they closed the gates after a certain amount of people came in so we were out of luck. We scrambled to the next best thing which was a large flat screen TV in a little courtyard area, outside a bar. The game turned out to be a great one with Germany winning. At this point the city went crazy, hundreds of police were already mobilized in riot gear and people were pouring into the streets. We followed the crowd and the police sirens to Hamburg's red light district where people seemed to be massing. It seemed like we were following the mass of people and chanting for hours. At times the crowd would stop and kneel to do certain cheers with random people leading them. There were huge flags, fireworks going off, and crazy things happening everywhere. This seemed like the perfect way to end the pretrip for my summer travels.

Here one of the many videos I took:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLfww_nSp_g