Throw a Good Party and I'll Root for You

My reasons for rooting for Germany in the semi-finals were pretty arbitrary: I'm part German, which, when you think about it, is actually a pretty good reason for pulling for the German team; Michael Ballack's pretty cute; there's this one Canadian of Italian decent whom I don't like very much; and I prefer Lehmann to Buffon for various reasons but mainly because of the hair. The above list of randomness coalesced into a coherent desire for a German victory for close to an hour and a half yesterday as I sat on the sofa and watched the match. Despite the lack of rhyme and reason for my team preference, I was still mightily bummed when Germany lost. I will concede that the first of Italy's goals was gorgeous.

Now, I live in one of two Italian neighborhoods in Toronto. There is Little Italy, where more yuppies than Italians live and then there is Corso Italia, where there are more Italians than yuppies. Immediately after the second goal was scored, cars started driving down my street to get to the main drag and kids with Italian flags and whistles started encouraging all of the cars driving down my street to honk, which they did.

Ptichka came home. We ate the best grilled veggie quesadillas ever thanks to our low-rent grocery store's decision to carry queso blanco all of the sudden and drank some gin-laced grapefruit stuff (grapefruit-stuff laced gin?), before deciding to go see what was going on in the 'hood.

We are a two-minute walk from the main drag in Corso Italia, so it didn't take us long to discover that traffic was going on in the 'hood. From our little side street all the way west to Dufferin. Except for one car with a tiny German flag, every other car on the stret had people hanging out of every opening, including sun roofs, waving flags. Every streetcar island was full of people waving flags. The video in the previous post gives you an idea of what traffic was like, even though I shot it as we were heading home.

Below are a couple more pictures of people celebrating in their cars.



We then wandered down the main drag to Dufferin, where the police had wisely set up a barricade. From Dufferin west to, I'm assuming, Landsdowne; the entire street was a big party. It was fun. We saw many hook-ups; a guy dressed up as a monk; an actual nun; much singing and dancing; a Portuguese family hanging out on their porch and contemplating how they're going to party if Portugal makes it to the finals; and many, many flags. Neither of us had an eye put out and I was only impaled once.



Since my reasons for wanting a German victory were random, this is the point in the post where I pledge my equally less justified support for Italy in the championship match. I grudgingly admit that last night, the Italians threw a much finer (and closer) party than the Germans would have thrown had the Germans won. We would have had to have gone out to Kitchener for the festivities. For the possible party alone on Sunday night, which would probably be at least twice the size of last night's, I will pull for Italy until I change my mind.

And now it is time to return to the dissertation so that I can watch the France-Portugal match this afternoon without guilt.