Superbowl Sunday/Monday

Just because you are in a foreign city with a 6-9 hour time difference to the United States does not by any means condemn you to missing the superbowl. Though I didn't really care about either team one way or another I wondered what it would be like at a bar in Berlin showing the game. Keep in mind the time difference so the game did not start here until 12:30am Monday morning.

In any case my roomate found a bar (Belushi's) that was showing the game only a few stops away in Mitte so we made the trek down at just before 11pm. My thinking was that no one here cares about American football so it wouldn't be very crowded especially on a Sunday night. One word. Wrong. Apparently there are more American tourists in Berlin than I thought and apparently they also wanted to watch the superbowl in what was apparently one of only a handful of places that was carrying the game. Needless to say the place was crowded. Oops. Well after standing at the bar for awhile scanning the room like chair vultures waiting for someone to get up we managed to grab some seats.

Once the game was in full swing you could definitely tell the Americans in the bar from everyone else (particularly the Steelers fans) what with all the shouting, arm waving, cursing, yells of "CRUSH HIM!!!", etc. Non-Americans mostly held blank stares, the likes of which I would probably have watching... cricket... or something... I did, however, find one German guy that liked American football after he spent time studying in the states.

Two things I missed about watching the game in Berlin vs in the US: #1 Snacks. It's one of the integral parts of any superbowl Sunday, a day second only to thanksgiving in overeating. No chicken wings this time. #2 Commercials. Okay who can say they don't look forward to seeing some of the commercials during the superbowl? Anyone? Anyone? What with talking investor babies, magic crystal balls and Richard Dean Anderson, the commercials always deliver some laughs. Our feed of the game was coming from Skynews (I think) so we didn't get any of the infamous commercials. Instead we were treated to repetative commercials about a bagel shop amoungst other things. And no it wasn't a good bagel shop commercial either. Not a single MacGruber.

Still there was beer, there was yelling and there was football. All in all it was a fun, loud slice of home. Cheers.