‘Mini’ World Cup in Cologne

Thursday was devoted entirely to soccer and we all had a blast.

Let me explain: Germany’s international student exchange office thought it would be cool to have a ‘mini world cup’, only with all international students studying in Germany this semester. So a lot of teams were formed with a certain nationality and they all met in Cologne on Thursday to play in the tournament. University of Trier sponsored the Georgian team and all the international students from Trier were invited to make the road trip and support them. I didn’t have any classes that day, I enjoy watching soccer, and who needs a reason to take a road trip to Cologne? So I thought…why not?

Well, it was mainly other Georgian international students and a tricklesome of others such as myself, 2 other Americans, my Italian friend-Maria Grazi, a Polish guy-Gregor, and some students from Romania. There were three games total throughout the day and sadly our Georgian team lost all three. But, they sure had the most supportive and loud fans!

Although, there was a few disappointments (ex: I thought the tournament was going to be held in the actual ‘Rhein Energie Stadion’ in Cologne where some of the world cup games are actually going to be held at, but we were on the fields NEXT to the stadium.) Also, there weren’t a ton of other fans there, so our flags and face paint were quite the talk. Reporters from Deutsche Welle were quite intrigued and they even took quite a few pics of us cheering on the team!

It was a really fun day…in between the games, we had our own soccer matches. It was good to run around because it actually turned out to be a pretty cold day.

We made it back about 9 p.m. (it took a little over 2 hours to get there by bus.) I also learned how to say “Georgia” in their native language…The spelling is wrong, but this is how it is pronounced…

“SO-CAH-TEL-UH”!!!!