Day 222: The Day We Went to See Dynamo

Yesterday we went to a football match: Dresden’s team, Dynamo Dresden, was playing against the most important team from Saarland, FC Saarbrücken. In the old days, Dynamo was the best team in the GDR. They won the league 8 times and the cup 7 times (back then the GDR cup was called the FDGB-Pokal — Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, meaning the Free German Trade Union Federation Cup). They even played in the UEFA Cup (reaching the semifinals in 1989) and the European Cup (89 matches).

But after reunification, they ran into financial troubles and only managed to stay in the Bundesliga for four seasons before dropping down to the Regionalliga Nord (a kind of Spanish “Segunda B”). Two years ago, they were promoted back to the 2. Bundesliga, and now they are fighting to stay up, as they are currently in the relegation zone.

This team, with so much history, also has — according to the police — the most dangerous fanbase in Germany. Because of this, whenever there’s a match, the Germans (who spare no expense when it comes to safety) deploy an enormous security operation: over 2,000 police officers, armored vehicles with water cannons, a field hospital, floodlights, riot-control trucks, and even a helicopter. And that’s just for a “quiet” game — when there’s a high-risk match, security multiplies.

One example: in the high-risk Dynamo Dresden vs. Hansa Rostock match (the East German derby), there were so many police officers that they created a security corridor for the Rostock fans between the stadium and the train station (about 2 km apart) made of one line of massive police officers standing shoulder to shoulder, and a second line of officers spaced two meters apart.

We got to the stadium at one in the afternoon. It was absolutely pouring, and hardly anyone was there yet. We picked up our tickets (only €8 with a student discount) and went to the residence on Günstraße, which is next to the football ground, to Héctor’s room, to watch Fernando Alonso’s start at the Imola Grand Prix.

Then we went back to the stadium. Half an hour before kickoff, the stands and entrances were already packed with people, the police were everywhere, the rain had stopped, and we were trying to find two Japanese friends who were supposedly somewhere in the crowd. We didn’t find them and went inside.

Our tickets were for one of the ends, and we had to stand (at the Rudolf-Harbig-Stadion hardly anyone sits down). The stadium was packed; the only empty areas were the safety zones separating Dynamo fans from the Saarbrücken fans, guarded by a row of police officers wearing helmets and carrying wooden batons.

The match began, and we threw ourselves into it like proper Dresdeners. The team wasn’t very good, but in the end they won 2–0. I celebrated the goals (Tor in German) hugging the hooligans around me (“toooooooooooooooor!!!!!!”) and ended up learning and singing all their chants (same tunes as in Spain, but with “Dynamo” shouted over and over).

During the match, the sun was blazing, and I was worried about getting sunburnt (being red-haired and very pale) because I hadn’t put on sunscreen. The good thing was that Germans are even paler than I am, so I could use them as indicators — I watched them turning red like lobsters and used that to estimate how my own skin was doing. I didn’t get burned, probably because my skin is used to the stronger, harsher sun in Spain.

Afterward, with all the security still in place, getting out of the stadium was an odyssey. I had to go through the park next to the stadium (the Großer Garten) and cross it diagonally, wading through streams and embankments, to find some means of transport not blocked off by the security operation.

A fun fact: there were 7 of us Spaniards at the match, and the official attendance was 20,007 — meaning 20,000 Germans… and us.

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