Last night we lived a cultural experience that I had not expected, Ice Hockey! We went to see Adler Mannheim (Mannheim Eagles) thrash Eisbären Berlin, 6:2. It started pretty amazing, with Adler Mannheim coming onto the ice to AC/DC's Thunderstruck and 12 000 people all chanting their names in unison. There was an amazing support crowd for the Adler, up in the second tier, singing and chanting, with one guy on a kettle drum, like the rhythm keeper on a rowboat, keeping time with the chants and speeding the chants up and down depending in the level of action. Everyone knew the songs, like English football songs, they were old pop songs with the words changed around so that the supported the Adler. Some songs were also sung and the word 'Berlin' was inserted. I didn't really understand the words, but I'm fairly sure that they weren't super polite. The commentator didn't commentate the whole game, but rather just came on like a 20/20 commentator. He announced the substitutions, reasons for stoppages in play, intermittently a statistic (i.e. foul on player x, that's 2 fouls for him) and goals, all in a 'Let's get ready tooo ruuuuummmmble!' kind of tone. What he also did was left off the last word in a sentence if the last word was obvious, say for example someone’s surname or the scoreline or whatever. This is where the crowd came in and shouted it all in unison. So the commentator would yell "Magnificent save by Chet ..." and the whole stadium would scream "Pickhard". What was funny was when the score was commentated it went like this: Commentator "Mannheim", Crowd "6"; Commentator "Berlin", Crowd "0". Every time, the crowd always got the Mannheim score correct and Berlin was always "NULL!". It was incredible, I have never seen anything so fast in my whole life. The puck could travel the 60 metres from one goal to the other, sometimes I would suggest a second, not much more. I also didn't know that ice hockey players can use any part of their body to play. So when the one guys hit the puck in the air, the next guy would catch it, throw it on the ice and start playing it again. Up against the wall they would use the blades of their skates to kick it out if they had to. Mannheim has an especially large following for a German ice hockey team. They have also been incredibly successful, often referred to as the Bayern Munich of ice hockey. They have an impressive array of stuff in their trophy cabinet including, but not limited to 4 titles in 5 years from 1997 – 2001. When the game started this time, Berlin scored fairly quickly and there was a sound like everyone in the stadium had been simultaneously punched in the breadbasket. Mannheim managed to come back at the end of the first third (ice hockey is played in 3 x 20 minute thirds) and tie 1:1. In the second part of the game, the Adlers came out and smacked it in the back of the net in under 9 seconds. It took the crowd a moment or two to realise what had happened and then they went beserk. Berlin scored again at some point to make it 2:2 and Mannheim put one in the net with 6.5 seconds on the clock. They came out in the last third with three unanswered goals and went home with a 6:2 win. Good job all round. Tip: - if you are in Mannheim and want go to the ice hockey, choose your seat carefully; you could end up a long way off the pitch as the stadium is huge. - the public transport to and from the game is included in your ticket, but it doesn’t say it anywhere. It’s just something you are meant to know. - To buy a ticket you need to go to the Quadrant Q6/Q7. There is a massive department store. Go to the first floor and look for a shop called ‘Whistle’. It is a shop dedicated to the Adler Mannheim and that is the only place you can buy tickets apart from online. But go there so the people can explain to you where you will be sitting, because it is not obvious from looking at the plans online, at least it wasn’t to me
0 Comments
|
Categories
All
ArchivesCategories
All
|