The DFB team is back and everyone wants to see them: Almost half a million people squeeze onto the Berlin Fan Mile to welcome the national team. The players join in the spectacle – some of them shine with their comedic talent.

What is home? Home is where the sausages are. That’s why it’s a nice touch that after their five-week trip to Brazil, the players of the German national team are first taken to the Brandenburg Gate on Pariser Platz for a standing snack of local sausage specialties. Welcome home! After a short autograph session with the Golden Book of the City of Berlin, it’s time to head out into the crowd.

Around 400,000 people are waiting there. When Joachim Löw and his coaching team took to the stage at 1 p.m., the most die-hard Germany fans had already been standing at the barrier fence in front of the goal for seven hours. Löw has the first word. “We are all world champions,” he shouts. The question was actually whether he would continue. At the DFB, they are already “absolutely certain” that the national coach will fulfill his contract, which runs until 2016. But even in this historic moment, Löw avoids making a clear announcement. The people cheer anyway. But the people would also have cheered if Löw had said: “We’re all sausages.”

Before landing, the plane makes a loop over the Tiergarten

Then the world champions finally arrive, perfectly sorted into shared flats from Campo Bahia. Each flat share has rehearsed a little play for the final party before the summer vacation. Per Mertesacker kicks things off with his roommates. The Arsenal FC defender shuffles across the catwalk as BFGR, the Big Fucking German Rapper. Thomas Müller, for his part, gets almost half a million people to sit down on command and bawl Humba-Tätärä. Philipp Lahm is also somewhere with the World Cup trophy.

It’s a bit like a song contest. You can feel that the universally invoked team spirit actually exists – across all natural boundaries. Schalke’s Julian Draxler sings: “Großkreutz get the kebab out!” And Dortmund’s Kevin Großkreutz, most recently a defendant in a kebab-throwing trial, dances solo waltzes to this. Lukas Podolski is even brave enough to show up with a cape that at first glance looks like the Polish national flag. In fact, it is the flag of the city of Cologne. Courageous nonetheless.

The natives are looked after by Jérôme Boateng, who plays Kennedy in a highly serious manner: “I’m proud to be a Berliner,” proclaims the native Berliner who lives in Munich. Somewhere between pretentious and embarrassing is the flat share led by guardian Miroslav Klose, 36. Together with his colleagues Götze, Schürrle, Kroos, Weidenfeller and Mustafi, he waddles up in monkey gear and sings: “This is how the Gauchos go, the Gauchos go like this!”

It had already started so wonderfully imperfectly, with a lot of delays. At Rio de Janeiro airport, a luggage trolley actually crashed into the fuselage of the winning German plane. If it wasn’t for the fact that the Argentinian footballers Ezequiel Garay and Javier Mascherano had a good alibi, as they were already at home in Buenos Aires at the time, one would have had to assume that a final hidden foul had been committed by their opponents in the final. The plane stood around on the tarmac for two hours for safety checks. It finally reached German airspace on Tuesday morning as scratched up as the Schweinsteiger.

At around 10 a.m. (local time), onlookers on Straße des 17. Juni were able to see for themselves that the transatlantic flight with the precious cargo had worked despite the damage to the paintwork. Thanks to a special permit from the Berlin Senate and German Air Traffic Control (DFS), the winning plane was allowed to make a small loop over the Tiergarten before landing.

At an altitude of around 1000 meters, it flew over the heads of the fans and politely waved its wings. Half the country must have watched this world championship approach maneuver on their smartphones. A popular flight radar app collapsed in the meantime. Perhaps the digital motorcade was invented on this Tuesday in Berlin.

Every era has its celebrations. When the heroes of 1954 jolted home from Bern on the train, there was no national tweet of joy, instead the players were handed the most precious gifts through the train windows. In Immenstadt there was a mountain cheese weighing a good 15 kilos, in Radolfzell the Schiesser company donated several boxes of white fine rib underwear. Stacks of illustrated books (“Our Constance”) were waiting on the platform in Constance. Heavily laden with Baumkuchen, ashtrays, tea sets and exquisite red wines, the first German world champions finally plunged into the crowd in Munich.

The most memorable thing about the party for Germany’s second World Cup title in 1974 was that the party mood soon evaporated. Because the players‘ wives were barred from the banquet in Munich, the world champions took to the barricades. In 1990, in keeping with the spirit of the times, people danced the lambada at the streetlights.

The national team was cheered on by 20,000 fans (an intimate group from today’s perspective) on Frankfurt’s Römerberg, although the Berliners had ensured in good time that they could celebrate again at the Brandenburg Gate. This most German of all German places of remembrance then developed into the DFB party headquarters during the so-called fairytale summer. World champions and European champions of the heart were welcomed here twice, in 2006 and 2008. This time, no hearts were needed. This time they had a trophy with them.

Back in 2006, when the Germans were wondering about themselves, it still had to be said with a slightly tense insistence that this was a new form of relaxed patriotism. This time it was superfluous. Everyone could see that it was first and foremost a party. Soccer for everyone. The great sense of togetherness. With all the flags that could be found and a black, red and gold Schland color shower.

One can assume that the new German world champions were impressed. Bastian Schweinsteiger said: “I’ve never seen so many people on the roadside, even in Munich. Of course, that’s because Munich is smaller.” So you could even learn something about geography at this beautiful ceremony.

Of course, the punchline could only come from Thomas Müller. When the last Humba-Tätärä had faded away, he politely handed the microphone back to the presenter of the broadcasting TV station and said: “So ARD, now you can do the weather again!” After a World Cup that broke all TV records at home, could there be a better closing statement?

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