A nice enough day (brisk! almost sunny!) and a hankering for the insanely addictive Nuremberger (3 im Weckla-- 3 in a bun) sausage sandwiches brought us downtown this afternoon where we were greeted with a roaming motley crew of goth-y, punky ruffian types drinking beer and singing fight songs. Ah yes, soccer Saturdays in Germany-- the opposing team's fans were fueling up in the city center before heading down to the game. This time it was the notorious fans of the German Soccer Federation's most unique team, FC Saint Pauli of Hamburg. St. Pauli supporters are known as "Kult" fans, because they are more interested in being part of the fan group than necessarily what's going on the soccer pitch, and despite their rough appearance, St. Pauli fans are anti-Nazi, anti-hooligan, and anti sexist straight-edgers. Which is odd, because they are ready, willing, able-and quite happy to fight anybody who disagree with their views. That means that wherever the team plays (the German Bundesliga is an 18-team league with a 34-game regular schedule, and thousands of fans typically travel with their team to away games), security is beefed up. This photo shows a small staging area of police vans loaded with cops and riot gear-- there were several more staging areas and a lot more vans than this, trust me. Nuremberg played probably its most complete game of the season and handily beat St. Pauli today 5-0, and no trouble was reported. As an extra bonus, here's a piece of trivia: St. Pauli is the rough part of Hamburg, and where the red light district is located-- St. Pauli girl beer is not a celebration of some fine German lass in a dirndl; it's a lady of the evening!
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Ever been to the Reeperbahn district of the St. Pauli neighborhood in Hamburg?
At last year's WEBMU a few of us photo nuts set out after dinner to go explore and look for good night shots among all the neon. Pal Scott and I were accompanied by our female photo nut compatriots, so the...ahem...ladies of the night left us completely alone. But unaccompanied dudes traveling on foot best prepare for persistent solicitation in that area.
Oh, and we got some serious stink-eye followed by insistent confrontation from the...let's call them "brokers"...as we were setting up tripods and scoping out good corners to shoot from. At the time, I thought "What's the big deal? They're not doing anything illegal, and everyone knows what goes on in this part of town at this hour." Only later did I come upon the realization that we might inadvertently be driving their walk-by traffic away, since I guess there was a risk that a client might be recognized in my snapshots on flickr.
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