"American Football" in Deutschland

It is a little after midnight here and we just put the kids to bed after a very fun evening. Our friends who have season tickets to "American football" which is NFL Europe, were feeling sick tonight, so they offered us their tickets for the evening. I was really excited to go and take the boys, and I am so glad we did. We got there via train, which is something we rarely do, and almost ever time we do use the train we get off at the wrong place. Of course that happened tonight, which allowed us to eat McDonald's for dinner instead of Bratwurst at the pre-game party, but we were OK with that. Then we got to the game about 45 minutes late, and we were OK with that too. I would have liked to hear them sing the USA National Anthem and the German National Anthem, but getting there late allowed us to get through the gate and find our seats with very few people around. Dragging the boys through crowds can be a bit of a headache.

This is where the boys ended up after running around and chasing each other right near the train tracks. They were told to keep their back against the wall until we were ready to go.

So, we got to the game finally and were so excited to see how much like a American football game it really was. They were playing the same type of music, they did the wave a few times, the crowd was all dressed in the team colors, they had cheerleaders, etc. It was really cool. Our seats were in the perfect spot and there was nobody to the left of us, so when the boys got bored after an hour or so they had some room to roam around. That helped a ton, and made the night that much more enjoyable.
My favorite part of the evening was the fact that we were in public and I didn't have to tell the boys to be quiet because the stadium was so loud, it didn't matter how loud they were being. There were no people very close to us, so I didn't have to keep them still the whole time, and when they cried or whined for something, I could barely hear them because of the noise of the crowd, so I was really able to enjoy myself. :)

{I brought earplugs for the boys so their eardrums would survive the evening, but they kept taking them out and then wanting them back in. This stadium seemed extremely noisy to me, especially for only being half full. I can't decide if the fact that it had a roof had anything to do with it. }

We all had a really good time and we are grateful to Dave and Dolly for thinking of us.