A country in times of football invasion

We are in the second week of the Football World Cup now and everybody´s glad about the fantastic atmosphere among the fans from all over the world that came to celebrate with the German people. At the moment it seems that some fears did not get reality: also the German team was playing really bad through the last years, Jürgen Klinsmann seem to have found a way to get the team together - and so they played well against Costa Rica and Poland. In almost any places people come together in a good and peaceful mood and Hooligan fights could have been prevented. The fans are waving German flags and show a picture that you could not take for granted in the past. Also the owners of Turkish food-stores hang the black, red and gold flag in their windows. This cheerful and multicultural celebration of the German team blames the nationalists and neo-nazis (they are hissing the Iranian flag now..).

But we should not forget that in the weeks before the World Cup several brutal attacks of neonazistic Skinheads against innocent people who did not look "German" enough in their eyes hit the news. There was the talking of certain "No-go areas" around Berlin for example, which people with a darker skin were not recommended to visit. Then the whole debate unfortunately went politically in the way that some politicians (for example the leading ministers of Brandenburg) saw their area insulted by the bad news and the focus was changed from the victims. Of course the whole thing is more complicated. It is the whole German society that has to reflect and act against racism and neo-nazism and it is wrong to hide and delegate the problems to some politicians and the police in certain areas. Somehow we have to overcome this plague. Also in this perspective the colourful multicultural parties on the streets are a good thing.

Some bad things about the World Cup: the whole commercialization and advertisement (we have to go through this) and the prices of the tickets which are nearly impossible to get.

Back to sports: the question remains open who will win the final this time? Brazil, Argentina or even Germany - and what about Ghana?