A stairway in Lisbon, Portugal (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It was the mother of all games for German football fans. For the first time in the history of football there were two German teams in the Champions League Final. FC Bayern München versus Borussia Dortmund, red and white versus black and yellow. The two strongest teams from the last two years in theBundesliga had risen to be the best two teams in Europe. For a German football fan it was the event of the year. The whole of Germany in ecstasy, and I was in Portugal.
More than 200 million people speak Portuguese and I wanted to do that too. When I booked my flight to Portugal, nobody could have guessed that the German teams would have been so good in the tournament. If I had known beforehand, I would have visited the Portuguese school in Lisbon before or after the final. But fretting about it wasn’t going to help. I was there and I had to make the best of it.
What was the game of the year for the Germans, was of no interest to the Portuguese. In Germany, the bars were bursting at the seams, in Portugal the bars were completely deserted. At that time the Portuguese had no interest in football. One week before the Champions League Final, Benfica Lisbon lost the Europa League Final very unlucky. So their abstinence was comprehensible. Unfortunately, because of that, there was no Champions League feeling in any of the bars or in anywhere in Portugal. But, the good thing was – that I didn’t have to rush to get a seat in a bar. This was important, because my sightseeing tour lasted longer than planned, inadvertent. I had missed my last hop on – hop off bus. But when you don’t miss the last bus, I can only recommend this mode of travel. You can easily and quickly get around to see the most important and most beautiful places in Lisbon. When you want, you can get off the bus and see the sights in more detail. If you don’t want to see a sight, you can just
- UEFA Champions League final 2013 [ AKA Gilyo])
continue on to the next one.
In the end, I watched the game with 2 other German guys in my hostel. Both supported FC Bayern and of course they were really happy about the final score. They turned the night into day, with Bayern- jerseys and leather trousers, they went out celebrating. Maybe because of this, one or- two Portuguese people remember that there was an all German Champions League Final.
