Sunday, March 20, 2016

Soccer Fan Riot

It won't make page one news in Germany, but it'll be talked about by folks in Koln (Cologne).  Yesterday, there was a soccer game played between 1. FC Kaiserslautern against Fortuna Dusseldorf.  For the record, you should note that these are in the first league.....they are actually at the second level.  Typically, folks don't get too charged up about soccer games at the second level.....these are typically games where 10,000 to 15,000 people show up and it barely gets mentioned in the news.

In this episode yesterday.....Fortuna Dusseldorf won.  Sadly, the Kaiserslautern fans.....all 400 of them who made the trip up to Dusseldorf.....were a bit hostile and frustrated.

Things kinda went out of control on the train, as they headed south....toward Kaiserslautern.

Somehow, the fans broke into the engineer's area, and had started playing some of their preferred songs over the train's speaker system.

As they pulled in Koln....cops had been called out.  This turned into a riot of some type....where disruption was triggered over most of the tracks and trains halted throughout the whole area for a while.

Cops also spoke of vandalism going on within the train station itself.

It is a reminder of how you need to review your safety situation when you travel in Germany, and expect the unexpected on occasion.

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