I Flew to Berlin for an NFL Game—and Finally Understand the League’s Obsession with Europe
The things they haven’t mastered yet, though, are the logistics. Lines for pretzels, currywurst, and the all-important beer stretched longer than the Berlin Wall, and when we finally got our pretzels, they were cold. The nearly 100-year-old venue was ill-equipped to handle the sheer volume of people queuing for concessions, which made the concourse a treacherous zone to avoid at all costs. The German fans, meanwhile, didn’t quite understand when to get up for those concessions. Sitting for an entire stoppage of play, only to get up and shimmy their way through the aisle as soon as a drive started was particularly aggrieving, and created a perpetual dance of sitting and standing to let some guy fetch another pilsner.
Those grievances, of course, were a minor blip in an otherwise lovely trip. Having lunch at Borchardt, the city’s famed schnitzel restaurant, a few tables over from both Falcons owner Arthur Blank and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was a standout moment. So was attending an Alba Berlin basketball game and being delighted by the sight of coaches still wearing suits. Every stranger I spoke to, regardless of demographic, immediately brought up Zohran Mamdani whenever I mentioned living in New York. On a very congenial walking tour of the city, organized by Marriott, our guide also casually dropped a quote that won’t leave my brain anytime soon: “No matter how dark you think German history is, it’s worse.”
Even so! My time in the city could not have been better, and the anthropological experience of seeing the biggest and brashest American sport played 3,900 miles from home was unforgettable. (Shout out Jonathan Taylor, whose 244 rushing yards also contributed to that.) Of course, like anything in life, you can never please everyone. While chilling in a stadium lounge before the game, munching on onion rings, I met an elderly German couple. The husband bore a passing resemblance to Werner Herzog, and the wife jumped at the opportunity to show me a news story about Donald Trump falling asleep in the Oval Office. Through limited English, she also said that she not only doesn’t care for the NFL, she didn’t even know it existed until it descended on her homeland.
This helped answer my central question of who the Berlin game is ultimately for. While it wasn’t necessarily aimed at this woman, perhaps a riveting back-and-forth game featuring an 83-yard touchdown run from Taylor and the comic tragedy that shrouds the Atlanta Falcons wound up getting her hooked on the sport. Who knows? Maybe by the next time the league circles back to Berlin, she’ll be decked out in three different teams’ gear.
