Germany versus Turkey Part II

[sister_luck]

This article in The Guradian (I'm keeping the spelling mistake, even though it's not the traditional version) provides some background to the flag picture in yesterday's post.

Flagwaving used to be frowned upon when I was younger, but with the football world cup in 2006 this has changed. Germans are now quite unashamedly displaying the national flag everywhere - on their faces, their cars or hanging from their windows. But it's not a mass of German flags, as the immigrants from countries participating in the Euro show off their national flags as well and often they also add a German one. The Portuguese flags have disappeared along with the Dutch flag, but the Italians in the cafe at the corner have kept theirs on display.

Some people overdo it - like the Germans who covered their whole balcony with a huge flag or the Portuguese who had about ten big flags adorning the front of their restaurant.

Still, as long as the various flags can coexist, I'm happy.

There will be lots of honking of car horns tonight.

Comments

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

My newspaper had a tiny piece today about ARD displaying the wrong German flag: it was red-black-yellow instead of black-red-yellow.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

I missed most of this controversy - I only found out about it, because Bild was suitably outraged and managed to link to a youtube video of the incident that had been put up there by a neo-Nazi. His comments and other videos were a disgrace. Ooops - they (and other newspapers who had embedded links to the same video) changed the link after being alerted to their faux-pas. Here you can read all about it (http://www.bildblog.de/3039/bildde-verlinkt-neonazi).

So, yes, flags still cause controversies in Germany...

[kazzy-cee.livejournal.com]

My husband has just got back from Hanover and was just telling me about the flags for the football. Everyone was very excited! :)

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, it's a very special day - I'm sitting at the computer until the pre-match commentary is over because that is usually so awful that it spoils the fun of the actual game.

It's a shame that 'you lot', i.e. the English team didn't make it this time round.