Hannover vs. Braunschweig = pig on the loose

There were a lot of two kinds of people in town yesterday:
1. Groups of men, young and old, in black jackets and blue pants, drinking beer.
2. Police. Lots of them. Police on horses, police in vans, police on foot, police in cars.

The reason? The Hannover 96 vs. Eintracht Braunschweig soccer game. Hannover and Braunschweig (the English call it Brunswick) have a rivalry that goes back to the middle ages. It's a long time to hold a grudge. Several hundred years ago, Braunschweig was a prosperous city, a member of the Hanseatic League, and a center for culture and commerce. And then came Hannover. Braunschweig's importance went downhill and Hannover took over as the region's capital. I am a little fuzzy on the details, but somewhere in there, Germans started playing soccer and took out their medieval frustrations on each other.

Fast forward to 2013, when Hannover and Braunschweig play against each other for the first time since 1975. In the U.S., you hear about crazy soccer fans in Europe and Latin America and wonder just how much harm could some fanatics in scarves really do. Apparently they could do a lot. Some friends of ours were in a bar near the stadium a while back when Braunschweig fans came in and started throwing the tables. And Braunschweig wasn't even playing. So the police were ready yesterday. They had even divided the central city into two fan zones. Trains from Braunschweig bypassed the main station and stopped instead at a smaller terminal near the stadium. The idea was to keep the fans segregated so there would be less chance of them starting fights.

Here's a map of the city divided by fan zones

The fan zones did not, however, protect the Hannover 96 pig. Apparently she is a big 96 fan that was captured and tatooed by the Braunschweig fans, then set loose to run around the city. She definitely ventured outside the appropriate fan zone, got really scared, and almost got hit by a car. She's now recovering in a shelter for fanatic farm animals.

And with all this uproar, all the riot gear, all the singing scarf-wearing hordes... the game ended in a tie of 0-0. The pig was disappointed.