Deutscher Meister

While everyone back home is celebrating Cinco de Mayo, we celebrated a huge victory here in Germany; and by celebrate, I mean CELEBRATE! Deutscher Meister can be translated (as far as I know) into the German National. The soccer team is from Dortmund where I am staying, so I'm sure you can imagine the excitement in the air before, during, and especially after the game!

We started off with a little shopping and walking around! Even though Dortmund is usually busy with people coming and going, today was an extreme exception!

We had to stop the traffic in order to get a picture in front of the street vendors, ferris wheel, and old church.

Smelling all of the delicious smells made me hungry for some sweets! I got some roasted almonds with some kind of goodness on top, and a cookie of some sorts.

If you can not tell, this is the city square; located around its perimeter are shopping centers, restaurants, and plenty of bars!  In the middle of this picture is a boy on top of the oldest fountain in Dortmund. The rest of the people are around its base cheering and enjoying themselves. Usually this would be frowned upon considering the history and the worth of this antique fountain, but Oma explained that Dortmund understands the excitement in the air and pretty much doesn't care (as long as no one gets hurt) how people act after games; they actually appreciate it in a way.

The girl in the middle, Catherine, recognized Tante Anneliesse from a store she likes to shop in. Once we took this picture, she introduced me and explained that I was visiting from America, after that word spread, I had quickly made several more new friends!

And then after that they kept coming!

If you'd notice the girl on the left with the cup in her hand...that is actually grass from the field on top of her cup. People who go to the game come back with souvenirs of all sorts. Fans all over town had grass pieces big and small. After a win they tear up the field and bring it all home!!

I tried to take a picture OF these guys...

and then they insisted I take one WITH them.

Rain or shine, the fans will be there! We tried to go into a near by restaurant, but we couldn't even open the door so many people were inside! 

Our scarves are compliments of Karlheinz, when he picked us up from the airport, he said we would be needing these; anyone who rides in his car must be a fan!

All in all our first three days here have been lots of fun! Oma and I could not sleep at all last night though. We decided it was from either left over jet lag or tea we had right before bed last night; so today we avoided caffeine altogether! Tomorrow we are going to relatives house to visit and have lunch!