Our plane dipped gently down over Bavaria, its ribbon strip farmers’ fields growing larger by the second. “Welcome to Munich” offered the flight attendant – words of promise and magnitude, because there is something so momentous, so substantial about that city’s name. At passport control, a security officer enquired as to the purpose of my trip with a sternness that suggested fanatical devotion to old-fashioned national stereotypes.
When I mentioned I was in Germany to watch some football matches, the mask slipped in a most delightful way. It was as if a cloud had departed and the sun had suddenly and fleetingly illuminated a dark corner. We talked now not in English, but in the international language of our shared sport, this Esperanto of the round ball.
“Oh Yes? Which games?” he brightly asked, before offering a recap of VfB Stuttgart’s recent form and an account of 1860 München’s woes. A waft of impatience from those queuing behind sailed over us. Then, the clunk of his passport stamp snapped us back to the humdrum real world .
“Enjoy your time,” he finished. PURCHASE THE 196 PAGE NUTMEG EUROS SPECIAL HERE Munich old town had the feel of a place waiting for something to happen. Locals nattered on corners, tourists idled and took too many photographs.
Beneath the gothic pomp of the town hall, Marienplatz was almost empty. I stood and imagined it in a few months’ time, colonised by men in kilts and reverberating with beery declarations of love for J.
