Olaf and I went to the football game in Cologne tonight. We took Gustav with us, but Pauline stayed home with Esther because she's sick and had a fever. That's actually part of why we had Gustav, was so that Esther could take care of Pauline and not have to worry about him. He was so proud and felt so important because he got to go to the stadium. Before we left he was telling Pauline "I get to go to the stadium, but not you, because you're too small." He was all excited to be there at the game. Then, about 10 minutes after it started, he started asking, "Papa, when is it over?" He got bored really fast, but he was really well behaved the entire time. I think more than anything he was interested in the people and the cheering.

Unfortunately Cologne lost the game, but we easily could've won. When Olaf bought the tickets he picked a game where the score was likely to end up 0-0 because Cologne's offense sucks and Dortmund's defense is their strength, so it kind of evened out in the sense that we didn't have a strong offense to worry about. Anyway, the final score was 2-3, and the last 2 of Dortmund's goals were scored during the stoppage time. Most of the action and excitement happened in the last 10 minutes or so of the game. We were losing 0-2 by that time, and then in the 83rd minute we scored a goal off of a set play that was headed in by one of the defenders. Our second goal was also scored by one of the defenders (because defense is cool like that) who made a run up the field 6 minutes later. It was kind of exciting because all of the scoring (except Dortmund's last goal) was done on the side of the field we were on. Olaf got us seats as close to the hardcore fan section as possible, so we were way down at on end of the field. Unfortunately, Dortmund scored again during the first minute of stoppage time, and there wasn't enough time to recover (although there were some decent attempts). All in all I thought it was pretty exciting and I had a great time. I forgot how much I missed playing soccer.

After the game we saw some chick try to pick a fight with an old man. We don't know how it started, but he hadn't even left our seats yet and were trying to make our way to the end of the row when this woman starts yelling and pushing this old man. She pushed him down into a seat, and then some guy (maybe 2 guys) that were with her were yelling at him and she was trying to call him out into the aisle to start something with him. It was really classy. I guess situations like that, and the fact that they can escalate really quickly when high class folk have had too much cheap beer, are the reason that the stadium is surrounded by riot police on game nights.

There was another classy move by somebody while we were trying to get on the tram to go home. It was packed full because everybody walked out of the stadium and tried to get on the tram and go home right away. Olaf was holding Gustav and they were able to get on okay, but I had been sort of pushed to the outside. The doors stayed open for a little while longer than usual to allow people to make themselves fit, and when it started beeping to signal that the doors were going to be closing I squeezed in so that I was just barely out of the way of the door. Then some A-hole next to me reached his arm in front of me, grabbed the rail to my left, and scooted himself over to push me out of the door just as it closed. Olaf and Gustav had to wait about 5-10 minutes for me when they got to the station because I had to wait for the next train. At least they were running every few minutes to help clear out the stadium, so they didn't have to wait too long.