Matthias is in Berlin, for reasons that will resonate if you’re a fan of specific sports teams (a character trait that passed me by), but is also just something straight out of an underdog Hollywood sports movie. He’s been a fan of his local football (soccer) team for his whole life — unless you know Germany and German football well you won’t have heard of the city or the team — which is generally pretty thankless. Comparably, they’re not a very good team, and yo-yo back and forth between the first, second and third divisions.

This year they are in the third division which is like only a few steps above being amateurs. But the third division also competes with the higher division teams for the cup (although normally in practice the lower division teams get knocked out early on by better teams), and this year, for some bizarre reason, his team beat the then-highest first division team in the cup quarter final. (To translate this to your own context, think of any competitive thing you can think of, and imagine a semi amateur person/team beating the best professional person/team in that event, that’s how unlikely this was.)

Everyone thought it was just a fluke, but then they won their semi final as well, so now they’re competing in the cup final in Berlin today. If they win this they get to compete at European level next year against all the more famous European teams you might have heard of, while still only being in the second division (since they were promoted due to also doing well within their third division competition, but you can’t be promoted from third to first division). It’s very unlikely they win today, but if they do, Matthias always said he would go to their first ever European game, no matter where it was (so, have fun going to Baku, I guess).

He's currently hanging out in Berlin with his sister and nephew, and waiting to meet up with their other friends, having travelled — since it was bizarrely cheaper and more convenient — via Poznan in Poland (where he stayed with another of our friends overnight) and an early train from Poznan to Berlin this morning.

Another nice thing that's happening alongside all this is that the local MP from their home region — knowing that lots of families would be in Berlin for the game — arranged to give a free tour of the German parliamentary building for a bunch of children who were there for the game, including our nephew.

The whole thing is quite surreal.