Westward for the weekend - part 2

Back in November we bought tickets to see Bruce Springsteen in Cologne, along with our Hamburg friends Tom and Sonja. Shortly after that I found out that our Hannover friends Kaska and Thorsten were planning to go too (How did we get this social life? I fully expected about 10 months of Brian and I staring at each other after we moved here, and all of a sudden we are popular). The concert happened to be during a long weekend, which also happened to be the weekend that Tom had to scout at a baseball tournament in Bonn, which is near Cologne. Kaska and Thorsten have good friends in Cologne, who invited us to stay at their house too. It all fell into place.

I won't give you the hour by hour account of our weekend, but I will tell you about two parts:

It was a sunny Saturday in May and I was spending the afternoon at the ballpark watching high school boys play while their parents cheered, little kids ran around, and dogs sniffed each other. It was so familiar... except I was in Germany. There were three kinds of people at the under 20 German baseball tournament: German kids and their parents who spoke baseball English, as in " germanwords germanwords germanwords double play germanwords germanwords germanwords fast ball." There were also Americans, and possibly some Canadians, but they weren't wearing any maple leaf patches or Roots sweatshirts so it was hard to tell.  We even saw a family with a bottle of Mountain Dew and a package of mini donuts. Either they were serious junk food smugglers or they had just shopped at the store on a military base. And then there were the Latin Americans - mostly Cubans I think, but I can't be entirely sure because my skill at picking out Spanish speakers' accent has gotten pretty rusty since we moved. The dad sitting near us was a perfect stereotype - Cuban national baseball hat, mesh tank top, pencil thin chinstrap beard, and a big cigar hanging out of his mouth, speaking German with his Caribbean accent. That was one I could definitely pick out.

At the concert on Sunday we had to be on the defensive. We arrived 3 hours before show time to stake out a place in the stadium and had to use all of our elbows, knees, and other bony parts to keep away the invaders. We joined forces with a huge Dutch man next to use and a couple of our other neighbors in an effort to defend the territory. Eventually Sonja and Kaska and I retreated and went further back where we could move and actually could see a lot better. Brian joined us eventually, even though the team needed him as a defender.

I'd heard that Bruce Springsteen puts on the best show in music. I am no expert, but it was a pretty fantastic concert. Bruch played for three hours straight, with no opening band, which is pretty impressive for an old dude, and he even spoke a little German. Everyone in the stadium, about 30,000 of us, was having a great time but the people having the most fun were the ones on stage. Can they really do this night after night? Can they really be sincerely having a blast every time? I think so. Or if was an act, I was entirely convinced.

It took about two days for Brian and I to recover from the weekend, but we had a great weekend in Cologne. Loss of sleep is a small price to pay for seeing Cuban-German baseball fans and Bruce Springsteen live in one weekend. We are glad to have a few days to stare at each other in silence now. We've earned it.