Opera Rat: The Blog

NEW COUNTRY, NEW CLUB, NEW PERSPECTIVE

I'm on the plane toward home, and leaving home. It's bittersweet as Luxembourgish chocolate, of which I've had my fill. "You must come back soon, monsieur," said the gentleman of the couple who run a head-spinning Luxembourg City gourmet shop, on my last day. "We have 100 percent coming in."

"One hundred percent cacao?" I said. "Is that even possible with chocolate?"

"No. But they do it." He lowered his voice to a near-whisper. "It is not too sharp, I promise you. Please come try."

Such was the welcome I received all over my sweet little second country and its vast German neighbor, with soccer and a new passport as my ins. As I departed the Hotel Grand Cravat, the elegant, excellent Albanian manager mentioned his immigration to the country, and how lucky I was that I didn't have to wait for naturalization. "Yes," I said, "but I'm not moving here, or coming to work. I'm retired."

"You will spend more and more time," he said. "It is my country now and it will be yours. Here you will be, as we say, doheem." I've learned enough Luxembourgish to know that means, at home. The passport is more than a novelty.

On the last day in the new-old country I meandered Luxembourg City with no itinerary, poking into shops and down side streets, trying to grasp that the world now considers me to be of this place. The line of the passport that gets me is "Nationalité: Luxembourgeoise." Mildly daunting too, as I've been cautioned that because of international law forbidding a nation from offering protection and aid to foreign citizens in their country, while I am within Luxembourg's borders the US authorities basically don't consider me American - I'm Luxembourg's responsibility. Not a big deal in a country as small and safe and wealthy as Luxembourg, but American dual citizens of other countries have had headaches with this.

I also have to do some unexpectedly complex passport-juggling from here on, as the airlines prefer to see the nationality where you're headed and immigration and security prefer to see the nationality where you are. For coming back to the US today I was advised in Luxembourg to show the US passport at exit because I had shown it on the way in. But the sudden existence of the extra nationality seemed to set off something records-wise at Frankfurt Airport, because I was "random" security-checked to the nines, albeit warmly - the new jacket of my new German soccer club lit up faces and drew exclamations from the small room full of German border security officials near my gate.

The final soccer match on Sunday in Mainz between Mainz 05 and Eintracht Frankfurt ended in a 1-1 draw on the field but was a rout in my heart. From the departure on the morning train I was reminded of all the reasons Mainz's city and club had grabbed me at the first match the weekend before, reasons the glamour of Eintracht at midweek had chased. The train carried me down the beautiful Rhine Gorge past Oberdiebach, a village near Mainz where multiple-great grandparents of mine lived for centuries. I was more of this place than of Frankfurt, which despite its proximity is on a different river in a different German state. Checking into my hotel room, as had happened the week before, I found alongside the Gideon Bible a Buddhist Dharma book, in German and English - Mainz, for reasons I have yet to discover, is thick with Buddhist centers, a delight for a Zen practitioner like me.

Leaving for the match, the stadium shuttles at the train station across from my hotel were mobbed with black-and-white-scarfed Eintracht fans. Having studied the transit system the weekend before I ran for a city tram instead, imagining Mainz fans would be drowned out in their own stadium by the big-city hordes. But despite their numbers - as a veteran of stadium reporting I would estimate at least one-fourth of the 33,000 spots were Eintracht territory, probably not one-third - there seemed to be little animosity between the sides and a lot of good-natured ribbing, a stark contrast to the profanities and middle fingers from Stuttgart fans I witnessed sitting for a half in the Hertha Berlin section. "Full, full, you have to walk!" shouted the Mainzers in my tram as Eintracht supporters tried to cram in. "Do you want to see the match in an empty stadium?" a Frankfurter shouted back, drawing laughter from all. In the stadium, the Eintracht fans made enough of a racket, but the Mainz fans and their wall of sound from the ultra section easily surpassed them. By halftime I was cheering reflexively and all-out for Mainz, and by the time I arrived at the post-match hangout I'd adopted the week before, a venerable bar called Zur Andau, I was clad in new Mainz gear.

At Zur Andau I got a beer-soaked final send-off from an amalgam of Mainz and Eintracht fans. The question of whether I could support Eintracht as my "second club" sparked a hot debate. Older fans, being from an era when Mainz was a small club and rarely played Eintracht, seemed to think it was fine, that there was no longstanding rivalry between the two neighboring teams, which was how it had appeared at the stadium. This seemed to horrify younger fans, who complained that this was the problem with Mainz since becoming a bigger club: too friendly with everyone, no one's enemy. I ventured how impressed I was with Eintracht Frankfurt's wooded Waldstadion, and a young woman in a Mainz shirt yelled, "Don't go in that forest! They pee in there!"

Now it is time to be happily home with house and husband, who is next on the list for a Luxembourg passport, a couple of years from now, relieved I'm sure to have been without a travel permit for a 12-day trip with five soccer matches in it. One club should be enough from here on. And two countries.

 

 

THE CLIMACTIC BATTLE FOR MY HEART

I've seen a lot of soccer here in Europe, including four matches in four different cities in five nights early in the trip, which was a blast and as idiotic in practice as it was in theory. I inherited my devotion to soccer from my Italian mother. My earliest soccer memory is watching the 1970 World Cup final between Italy and Brazil when I was 10, on ABC's Wide World of Sports, wondering what Mom could be getting so upset about, though when Italy scored she was the happiest I'd ever seen her, dancing around the kitchen, so I figured it had to be worth some attention. 

Aside from my love of watching the games, sports became a belonging mechanism for a boy who didn't belong too well. By knowing more about it than the straight kids, I could fit in. Soccer became doubly important in my mother's family's small Italian hill town as a topic shield against having to make idle talk in the nightly passegiata about who I was dating, and when I would get married, and why I wasn't married, and my poor mother waiting for her grandchildren, why was I not thinking about her?

All the soccer matches on this trip are about more than soccer. Yes, retirement allows me to live this sort of fan's fantasy. But as a sudden citizen of a previously foreign country, I'm once again thrown into unfamiliar territory as an outsider, and looking for a way to fit in. When you enter a European pub on a weekend and soccer is on TV, all you need is for the badge of your favorite club to be visible, and interaction will occur, across any barrier of language, race, gender, sexuality or culture. You will find your place.

What I need is that favorite club, in or near my new country. And I need it extra badly at this moment, because my former favorite European soccer club has been transformed from a bunch of underdog street toughs into the richest and most detestable soccer club on earth. I tried to stick with Newcastle United, to rationalize away the source of their new success, but my heart just fell out of love. As a non-native of the city and country I wasn't bound to it. The wins were more numerous but less satisfying. And Brexit had taken me out of citizenship there to boot.

So I started researching Luxembourgish soccer and following the German Bundesliga, and I mean, hard. I've watched so much German soccer this year I'm dreaming in German and I don't even understand the words. When the passport trip to Luxembourg began to loom, I punched up a map and began plotting a way to get to the closest clubs by train in the week while my passport would be processing, and while my only somewhat sports-loving husband was left home waiting for a US green card and unable to travel internationally. It would be soccer speed-dating. I intended to wed one of those clubs as my Luxembourgish-European own.

I started with four candidates, all playing at home across five nights as games stack up ahead of the World Cup break. The five-night tour worked to eliminate two of the four clubs from consideration.

Racing-Union, the Luxembourg league club in central Luxembourg City, are fun to watch and deliver amazing hand-grilled mettwurst and Thüringer, but draw barely enough fans to fill a pub, much less serve as a social mechanism within one. I'll keep going back but as a casual fan.

VfB Stuttgart provided a large, welcoming crowd and a suitably stirring atmosphere in a surprisingly pretty city for an auto industry capital. But the stadium and organization are a visible mess, befitting the club's league standing near relegation down to the second division. A large portion of the stadium was under reconstruction, so I figured I was in the spare, depressing part next to come, but no, I was told I was in one of the parts already done. Women were placed in separate lines to get in, which I understand has been standard practice at some German stadiums - why, I have no idea, but the elder German couple in front of me was NOT HAPPY to be pulled apart. Lines for concessions were unsegregated but hair-raisingly slow; a beer server complained in front of me that the taps weren't pouring fast enough, which a Milwaukeean simply cannot abide. Through an accident of circumstance I held both home and guest tickets and sat one half in each place. At Stuttgart as is standard in Europe, visiting fans in recognizable gear are held in a fenced, protected area of the seats and concourse, because European soccer fans can get a little, shall we say, testy. The away section felt like a prison camp and I wish that were hyperbole. Successive hordes of away fans had trashed the place with stickers and graffiti and scuffs and scratches and there seemed to be no will to fix any of it. The restrooms were straight out of a post-apocalyptic novel. Thanks, but no.

That left the two German Bundesliga clubs within easiest reach of Luxembourg, Mainz 05 and Eintracht Frankfurt, 30 minutes from each other on a shared transit system, and each less than 20 minutes on the Deutsche Bahn from Frankfurt Airport, an 8-hour non-stop flight from Chicago and a short plane hop or beautiful train ride from there to Luxembourg.

I visited Mainz first and was so taken by the city and the stadium and the fans I nearly cancelled the rest of the soccer and went back to Luxembourg to relax, which my beaten body is still angry I didn't do. Being a town of only about 200,000, Mainz is a small city for a soccer club in a league as massive as the Bundesliga, much less a club that stood in the top half of the standings as I arrived. The club has risen to that level by shrewd management recognized throughout Germany. Eleven years ago Mainz 05 opened a sweet new stadium at the edge of town, without a lot of frills - German stadiums are more utilitarian than their US cousins - but comfortable, easily reachable by the typically excellent German transit, a breeze to navigate with roomy stands and concourses, and the best sight lines I've seen in any arena for any sport, period, with a single large deck on all sides tight to the pitch and a rake so steep I think it would violate US building codes. "Not a bad seat in the house" is a cliché but it applies at MEWA Arena. My seat was about three-fourths of the way to the top and it was as good a view as TV. The snappy, aggressively spicy feuerwurst I consumed in a concourse pub area with large-screen TV before the match would make Milwaukee restauranteurs weep with inadequacy, and with a half-liter of beer it cost less than $9 US. The fans were friendly, happy and loud - the chanting ultra fans filled one entire stand behind one goal and made a wall of sound and spectacle I imagine would be the most impressive in Germany if their club was as big as the traditional German powers.

Mainz, the city, is quaint and historic and compact, easily seen by foot or public tram, but also buzzy, a party town, a national capital of the annual carnival season - think Madison with Tudor architecture and schnitzel. For a Wisconsin kid, a Packer fan, this felt like an absolute natural, even though the club would be an obscure choice for an American. Mainz dominated play in the match but gave up goals on nearly all of the few chances they allowed, losing 3-0. Nonetheless I left MEWA Arena dripping with the club's Badger-red gear.

Then came Eintracht Frankfurt, on the last of the five nights. I had good fortune when a local urged me to take the S-Bahn, the superb subway/rail system, to the stadium rather than taxi or other forms of transit, because it would provide the best game experience. The S-Bahn was packed with Eintracht fans clad in black and white (like Newcastle), a contented and outwardly affluent bunch in this world center of finance, noticeable numbers of them gay in all senses of the word. The Stadium stop was in a wooded area with no stadium in sight. Fortunately I had a crowd to follow. They led me down a thickly forested path interrupted at intervals by food trucks and sausage stands and miniature pubs and sitting areas in clearings for leisurely and charming food and drink. We marched a fair distance down the path with no sign of a stadium or match even as the crowd became excited and began to chant and sing. Suddenly behind the trees the stadium loomed, lit in the accent red of Eintracht's colors, as if a vast spaceship had landed in this otherwise remote, unpopulated area. No wonder the stadium, sponsored as Deutsche Bank Park, was still known among fans by its historic name, the Waldstadion, the Forest Stadium. I would learn after the match that the stadium was located in the Stadtwald, the City Forest, a nature preserve and one of the world's most spectacular urban parks. It was as thrilling an entry to a sports event as I'd ever experienced. 

Unfortunately there was only one gate from path to stadium and it was understandably mobbed. Immediately I knew I hadn't arrived early enough to take this route into the stadium, and other inexperienced fans were exclaiming the same in various languages. I cleared security and ran for a souvenir stand to purchase a black-and-white scarf and hat; the seller, noting my American accent and apparent unfamiliarity with the place, inquired if I was new. I answered "ja" and she handed over the goods saying, in English, "Now you are one of us."

I reached my section just in time for the opening spectacle of fans singing the Eintracht anthem and roaring the arrival of their team. The game had long been sold out but I'd scored a single ticket at not too far over face value from an online broker. It was available for a reason. The section had apparently been converted from standing to sitting without expansion of the ledges, leaving almost no room to walk in front of the seats into my spot at the center of a long row. I nearly tumbled over into the forward row several times, with fans in the section catching me and pulling me back with hardly a break in their conversation or beer sipping - it seemed to be standard procedure in this area. I collapsed into my seat with a measure of exhaustion, next to a group of enthusiastic young fans several of whom had more than fan-ship in common with me, if you know what I mean.

Eintracht scored twice in the opening minutes and the fans in our cramped section were literally falling over each other in euphoria. It was amazing but also daunting for this old claustrophobe. At halftime with Eintracht in control of the match I retreated to the concourse, grabbed a beer and pretzel, and alighted at a standing counter with a view down the tunnel at the goal where Eintracht would be shooting in the second half, intending to wait out the rest of the match there and try a different area of the stadium next time. A couple of minutes into the second half a steward noticed and graciously beckoned me to a standing ledge inside the section entrance where I could view the entire pitch along with various other claustrophobes with whom I became friendly. It turned out to be a great vantage point with the bonus of immediate concession and restroom access - if I return alone I may buy another cheap single and stand there again.

Celebrating the victory on the S-Bahn out of the woods and back to the city I knew I'd toured myself into a quandary. I was in love with two teams: the sweet, fun small-town maiden, and the beautiful, glamorous doyenne with a mansion in the woods. What's more, they live close to one another, and don't like each other, at all. There would be no way for me to sneak around on one without the other finding out.

Now the soccer tour was over and I was headed back to Luxembourg to pick up my new passport and become a European for real, more confused about choosing a team than when I started. I awoke the next morning in my Frankfurt hotel without more clarity. In the recap of the match online, though, there was a revelation: Eintracht's next match was Sunday at Mainz. The two were about to have it out for my affections on the pitch. With 10,000 Eintracht fans rumored to be headed to Mainz's new and optimistically oversized stadium. I would still be in Europe.

I'm headed to Mainz right now on the train, ticket in pocket, clad in a neutral Luxembourg national team shirt, hoping one more match will make the decision. More to come.

WHY LUXEMBOURG MATTERS (TO ME)

Years ago I used this blog platform to vent about opera; it still gets some traffic even though the last opera post is a decade old. Later I used it briefly as an Italian vacation blog. Now I'm in Europe again and reviving the blog to talk a little about my unexpected new nationality as a citizen of Luxembourg, a citizen who got his Luxembourg passport yesterday.

I'm not prone to fits of emotion, but I had one when the passport dropped into my hands. I'd dreamed for years about becoming an Italian citizen in the legacy of my mother. But in the post-war time of her immigration to the US, she had to renounce her birth citizenship to become American. As far as Italy was concerned, that renunciation was permanent and unforgivable, and I was not born to an Italian at all. That made acquisition of Italian citizenship impossible without some years of living in Italy, or, as some in Italy suggested, faking a residence there and "getting to know” ($$$) the right people, which I wasn't keen on.

Ironic, then, that I would discover later in life that my father unknowingly had been a European citizen all along. Mom was the American, Dad was the European! I can hear the two of them cackling about it somewhere. I've been telling people Luxembourg has liberalized its laws temporarily to repatriate descendants of its emigrants to America, which is true. But I was reminded at the passport agency that the temporary law doesn't apply to me. Like my father and his brother and my cousins, I have always been a Luxembourg citizen, by and since birth, because Luxembourg nationality is transferred from father to child regardless of where and when it happens, and the definitive ancestors of my Luxembourg lineage, including the one who came to the US and the one I was born to, are fathers, i.e., male. (Send your sexism complaints to the Luxembourg parliament.) In Luxembourg I'm considered not a naturalized but a native citizen. What happened yesterday was acquisition of the final documents to prove the citizenship and accrue its benefits.

What benefits, you ask? Many of you, family and friends, have been asking. 

To start with the practical stuff, I can now go through the usually less-swamped EU citizen line at European airport checkpoints. (Piss off, Britain.) In Europe I can stay as long as I like, rather than a maximum of 90 out of every 180 days. In nearly all other countries I can enter visa-free, because Luxembourg threatens no one, making its passport rated tops in the world for easy travel. If I'm offered employment in Europe, such as a temporary teaching appointment, I can take it without need of a work permit. I could even move to Europe, where I could more easily and affordably access public services like health care through national systems or cheaper private insurance. 

As with many things in life, though, the more important benefits are the less tangible and less immediate.

With a course in the Luxembourgish language and a few months in Luxembourg, this citizenship could be passed on to my husband, who is 30 years from retirement and would have more direct use of it. Already speaking English and a major European language and being a citizen of two of the three major North American countries as well as all of Europe, his opportunity would be vast. Luxembourg may be the most valuable inheritance I could leave him.

I'm proud to be an American despite all the problems the country faces. I think many of us in the United States lose perspective about the wealth and opportunity our nation enjoys. Spending time in Latin America has helped me maintain that perspective; among my friends in Mexico are refugees from places with real troubles, who see Mexico as a haven and the United States as a glittering dream. Still, a second citizenship in a country without deep political division and entrenched racial and sexual hatred is a source of comfort. It pains me when Americans who have given up on America tell me "now you have a place to flee." But to say a similar thought isn't anywhere in my mind would be a lie. January 6 gave us all a new and frightening idea of what's possible in this land. The people who ran riot in our Capitol would like to outlaw my sexuality and my marriage and my way of life, and if that flag ever falls to them…I’d still be American, but I’d be gone.

On a brighter note, there’s a thrill in the way my lost Luxembourgish heritage has been brought to life in ways I hadn’t imagined. When my cousin and I first visited Luxembourg in May to file our ancestral records, we were surprised at how we recognized the culture, the food, the wine, the faces, the voices, even though our family had lost its conscious knowledge of this birthplace. Locals in Luxembourg City will speak to me in French or Luxembourgish not realizing I’m from the US and still primarily a tourist, which is a remarkable experience for an American in Europe; somehow my dumbass siren does not go off here. A sprinkle of halting Luxembourgish from my mouth in a traditional Luxembourgish restaurant drew cheers from strangers on this trip, and when in Germany for the number fifteen I erringly used the Luxembourgish “fofzeng” instead of the German “fünfzehn,” the barkeep said, “Ah, Luxembourg?”

It helps in all this that Luxembourg has a rather un-European appreciation for America, derived in part from the Battle of the Bulge having been fought on Luxembourg soil, and from American support post-war for preservation of Luxembourg and aid via the Marshall Plan. General Patton asked to be buried here with his fallen Bulge troops, in what is now an American military cemetery with land use granted tax-free in perpetuity by the Luxembourg government. Luxembourgers know Wisconsin, too, because so many like my great-great-grandfather fled to its similar landscape and climate when poverty struck Luxembourg two centuries ago. A restaurant owner this trip told me she would like to see the Wisconsin villages called Luxemburg and Belgium someday. A bar on the central plaza of the University of Luxembourg’s flagship city of Esch is named Little Madison. The American ambassador is the former Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett, a once-colleague of mine in the Wisconsin State Legislature whom my cousin and I sat with for coffee in an embassy reception room replete with Battle of the Bulge artifacts.

I’m already becoming a Luxembourg nationalist when visiting neighboring countries, which happens a lot, because in Luxembourg you’re never more than 18 miles from an international border. Iron ore was struck here in the late 1800s, transforming Luxembourg from an obscure agricultural country into one of the world’s several wealthiest nations. The iron has been exhausted and the steel mills are closed, but the service industries that flocked in the wake of the iron strike, especially finance, have kept the economy hot and brought incredible perks to the citizens. I’m irritable in Germany and France about their lack of Luxembourg-style luxuries like free public transit and free public restrooms and retrofitted elevators and escalators everywhere. I insanely overpacked for this trip and the many steps and stairs of old Germany nearly broke me on my little soccer tour this past week. In my Frankfurt hotel I was directed up a flight of stairs, over a footbridge and down another flight of stairs to get to a tiny elevator that landed me a half-flight of stairs above my room. Get me back to my country!

Now with passport and ID in hand it’s nearly time to go home to my original country, after one more soccer match tomorrow in Mainz, a short train hop from my departure airport in Frankfurt. Mom, I got your citizenship back. Wish you were here to celebrate it.