*3 - Berlin Fire Salamanders - Berlin Field in Berlin, Germany (Fire Salamanders vs P - Printable Version +- International Simulation Football League (https://forums.sim-football.com) +-- Forum: Community (https://forums.sim-football.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=5) +--- Forum: Media (https://forums.sim-football.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=37) +---- Forum: Graded Articles (https://forums.sim-football.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=38) +---- Thread: *3 - Berlin Fire Salamanders - Berlin Field in Berlin, Germany (Fire Salamanders vs P (/showthread.php?tid=31623)

*3 - Berlin Fire Salamanders - Berlin Field in Berlin, Germany (Fire Salamanders vs P - IceBear32 - 04-23-2021 50 / 50 Split with @Fronk 3 - Berlin Fire Salamanders - Berlin Field in Berlin, Germany (Fire Salamanders vs Philadelphia Liberty) Introduction: IceBear: Alright 2 weeks down and about 15 years off my life expectancy. How do you think last week went? Is this gonna help or hurt our recruiting if we ever make it to ISFL? Fronk: Guten Tag IceBear! I had a good time last week in the Colorado Mountains. As far as our next step, ultimately, I believe this medium will familiarize us about the league and the league about us, so I think it will help get us to the next step. With that being said, I do want to apologize to any Yeti fans if we used too many big words in our post last week. On the brightside, Colorado went into San Jose and came out with a victory and then won again against Baltimore. You know what that means IceBear? IceBear: That we need to go to Minnesota so the Grey Ducks can win a game? Fronk: Ouch… I meant the ULTIMATE FAN EXPERIENCE -ence -ence -ence good luck streak is still alive! I’m sure the team we will be seeing next will not need our help. Have you ever been overseas anywhere? IceBear: I have not and I got to admit, I’m a bit scared. I am one that gets pretty set in my ways and I like to have control over things. New places, where I have limited intuitive instinct, do not allow that for me. Regardless, I'm super excited for this adventure. How about you? Fronk: I’ve always wanted to travel overseas, but I have just never really had the opportunity. That’s why I was excited with the prospect of going to Berlin and catching a Fire Salamander’s game. I really have no prior knowledge of what this team is about and I thought I would reach out to some of the players. I ended up having a conversation with their defensive end, Mario VonPebbles. Have you ever came out of a conversation and felt like you were in a car accident? Talk about a personality. IceBear: Haha well I look forward to meeting him someday. Perhaps when I become a member of the Berlin Fire Salamander’s defense. Anyway… Let’s get started on our trip to Berlin. Here’s a quick reminder of what we review. Hotel / City / Commute / Local Bars Tailgate Experience Stadium Appearance / Seating / Views / Attractions Field Weather / Climate Concessions Conclusions and Game Results For Berlin and the Fire Salamanders, what do you think we should rate these out of? Fronk: Let’s rate this week’s experience out of 1 to 10 Meow Meow Beenz! Hotel/City/Commute/Local Bars: Fronk: Knowing we were to review this section for our trip to Berlin in order to give THE ULTIMATE FAN EXPERIENCE -ence -ence had me anxious, but not nearly as much as IceBear. Experiencing a new type of place for the first time should be with someone who knows where they are going, how to properly navigate, and have some sense of communicating with local people. Luckily people around us were not dumb like us and most can speak English. We finally managed to find our hotel; a nice historic building in the middle of Prenzlauer Berg. Turns out this place is wild! Lots of young people who dressed very unique and seemed to do whatever they felt like doing. This was very out of our element and so we explored elsewhere for places to drink. Which IceBear was excited to get into more detail about. I enjoyed experiencing what I got to see of Berlin. I need to come back more prepared and maybe with someone from the Fire Salamander team and not IceBear. Rating: 7.1/10 Meow Meow Beenz IceBear: I don’t do “Let’s wing it” when my home is 4,400 miles away. I’m not a stick in the mud by any means, but everything I know about this place is from the one night of google as I was packing my bags. I just keep picturing myself ending up in jail and Fronk having to figure how to bust me out. Anyway, getting off the plane wasn’t as big as a culture shock as I was preparing myself for. Hotel was a neat place right in the middle of town. As Fronk mentioned this town was nuts and the hotel ended up being in the perfect location for these wild nights. With the game being the next day, we set off to enjoy drinks for the night after putting our bags down. We ran across this place called Kit Kat. Now I like to have fun, but to start the night here was out of the question, definitely with how anxious I already was. As we walked in it looked like an exotic runway performance. The guard at the door then informed us of the dress code. To enter this bar we had two options. Fetish Clothes or underwear. I basically had to drag Fronk away from the place. I hoped with every fiber in my body that this wasn’t setting the norm for the night. After many “should we try this place?”, we eventually found a neat place in Warschauerstabe. Still not an average setting for Fronk and I, but seemed it was about the closest we were about to get. I do have to say a recurring theme was hipsters. Hipsters everywhere! I place a level of doubt with every move I made, thinking I was being judged to the extreme. Thinking back, I should have known better than to think that any of them cared about a single thing I did. I built in this doubt and made a less enjoyable experience for myself. I’m actually mad at myself here that I didn’t embrace the experience. I have an underwear subscription (Me Undies), and missed out on my one opportunity to show them off to the public! I blame myself for not enjoying it as much as I think I could have. My score reflects a mixture of what I experience and the potential I think this area has with someone with a more adventurous mindset.  Rating: 7.2/10 Meow Meow Beenz Tailgating Experience: IceBear: Tailgating? I don’t think these hipsters are sure what that is. There wasn’t really a place or setup for a tailgating experience. I think this may have been a similar situation in Nola, where some of the bigger parties and tailgates are at the local bars rather than stadium-side. Unlike Nola, there wasn’t really even an attempt at the stadium. Maybe the stadium dress code and Kit Kat’s just don’t line up enough for people to enjoy a pre game experience and enjoy the game. BUT if you're able to dig around and find yourself a spot, there are certainly people celebrating. We ended up popping in and out of different bars and each one seemed to have its own experience. If you're not wanting to explore and get the different experiences, I’m sure you can find your location and have a truly enjoyable time. Rating: 6.8/10 Meow Meow Beenz Fronk: The tailgating experience was almost non-existent. It could have been that most of the exterior of Berlin Field is the river. Instead once you got off of the train, the normal pregame parties that one might see in a parking lot in the states were present at the local bars/eateries/ratskeller. Crowds of people in full Berlin Fire Salamander get up were elbow-to-elbow crowding the places and nearby streets anticipating the upcoming beatdown of the Philadelphia Liberty. People were singing, laughing, arguing, and having a great time. I even overheard friendly wagers of $200K were being placed that the Liberty QB would be picked off by Salamander cornerback Jeeeeroy Lenkins. While the stadium parking lot and truck beds were lacking in this tailgating experience, the passion and excitement for the upcoming game was not. Rating: 6.2/10 Meow Meow Beenz Stadium Appearance / Seating / Views / Attractions: IceBear: This thing is just awesome to look at. Not a bad seat in the house. The atmosphere of this game reminded me of something you see in a World Cup’s Final. The fans were ecstatic from kickoff until the clocks hit zero. This seemed like a full 180 from the relaxed feel from the pre game activities. I do believe a winning season does help spark this interest. I’ll have to test this theory and return some other season, but I don’t expect this team to have a losing record here in the near future. Going along with the earlier soccer reference, we have not yet been to a stadium that did as many chants as this stadium and team. Overall a great stadium with optimal seating. Besides the chanting, there really weren't any special attractions or anything. The stadium looked great and the experience here was exactly what it should be from a winning culture.  Rating: 7.7/10 Meow Meow Beenz Fronk: Architecture, man. It’s truly a fascinating art. An American football stadium comes to Berlin and the city puts in their own twist and creates a wonderful landmark. The stadium is fire-red brick with six large towers surrounding the stadium. It’s style is intended to mimic the iconic neighboring Oberbaum Bridge. The interior of Berlin Stadium is much more traditional (especially the actual field). It has a bowl-like stadium that one might see at the famous Olympiastadion that some crazed hipster fan kept telling me about and that it was “stadion“ The bowl is truly the ideal stadium design. Every seat has a good view and the fans were amazing! I’m not sure if it was the change in culture or the fact that the Fire Salamanders are the top ranked team in all of ISFL, but the passion and choreographed cheers and celebrations was unlike anything I have experienced at a sporting event. I truly recommend getting yourself to Berlin and joining the Fire Salamander fandemonium. Rating:  8.8/10 Meow Meow Beenz Field: IceBear: What an awesome logo. Fire Salamanders.. are those real things over there? I picture one running across the floors like one could expect to see a mouse. Gosh, I hope that’s not that case. The Flag background in the endzones is an awesome tribute to their country, and it looks nice and sleek. I also enjoy this same tribute at the 20 yard lines as an easy way to make this unique yardage stick out while continuing the theme. I do have to say that there seems to be a lack of creativity outside of black, red, yellow flag tie ins. You end up seeing the same logo 5 different times on the field. Would love to see a different connection or branding joining the “BERLIN” text in the endzone. Sweet logo, I wish they did more with it. Rating:  5.8 /10 Meow Meow Beenz Fronk: Berlin’s field has a classic look that does not try to do too much. Almost to a fault. Let’s start with the midfield logo. I love this logo. It works well as a centerpiece, but it might just be toned down a little too much. Most center logos should dominate the field and stand out above the yard markings and lines and this Salamander is begging to be released from behind bars. I really appreciate the design that shows up in both endzones. The German flag background and the bold all white BERLIN gives the place such an identity. And of course you have to place that dope logo wherever you can. Other than that though, the field is pretty generic which is not terribly a bad thing. There are plenty of fields throughout the league (especially the development league) that teams would have been better off with deciding “green should be the color of a football field”. Good field with potential, but maybe it’s that center logo that needs to be brought forward. Rating:  5.0/10 Meow Meow Beenz  Weather/Climate: IceBear: So getting ready and packing I just kept asking Fronk what the weather was like and he just kept saying 10 degrees-ish all week. Not having ANY idea about Berlin I just went along with it, long johns and all. Luckily it was overpacking for what I thought would be freezing temps. He was having his fun and letting me think it was fahrenheit like I’ve known my whole life. He knew what he was doing. Again, at least it was over packing vs freezing all trip. The weather was quite fine actually. It was comfortable over the few days. This section will always bring back the awful memories of the Nola heat. So Berlin… thanks for not trying to kill me with death by muggy-ness. Rating:  8.3 /10 Meow Meow Beenz Fronk: Berlin weather is not too much different from what I am used to at where I live. We luckily had a beautiful 9 degree day so all I needed was a nice Fire Salamander hood zip where I could zip the jacket all the way up past my face and look pretty similar to the iconic logo. Pretty comfortable. Rating:  7.7/10 Meow Meow Beenz Concessions: IceBear:  Remember earlier when I mentioned I liked control and I’m kinda set in my ways? When it comes to food, I may be one of the least adventurous people out there. I went through college getting my same order of chicken strips and fries with a fruit punch Snapple, and I was happy. I know what I like and I’m gonna stick to that mindset. These college years are likely the reason I succeeded in The Nugget Power Hour and others fell short (Fronk). And also my pear shape body makes all seats seem just a bit smaller than they should.  I do default to meat luckily and was willing to try a sausage platter. It was delicious and allowed me to get through the game without having to make too many crazy choices. Most importantly, it allowed me to enjoy my favorite part of every concession, beer. With my brews, I’m the complete opposite and will try whatever is handed to me. Even when I know I’m gonna hate it, I still have to give it a try! For any beer lovers out there make sure you check out all the different stands. We basically treated our pre game stadium walk through as a beer festival stopping at each of the locations. Only downfall of the beer in this situation is the fact we were just in the home of craft beer in Colorado last week and it unfortunately set a very high bar for Berlin. I can dock them here but a side by side comparison, the scale is always gonna tip in Colorado’s favor. Good experience overall with the beer, but in a not adventurous mood that evening, everything ended up just being what it needed to be. Rating:  6.6/10 Meow Meow Beenz Fronk: Both IceBear and I knew that we were in for something unique for concessions when it came to a game in Germany. Nobody is getting a stadium dog lubed up with ketchup here. Fans here enjoy a plate of currywurst with their special curry ketchup. Both my parent’s families are from German heritage and my Maw-Maw loves making her spin on sauerbraten, rouladen, spatzle, wiener scnitzel and more. I was pleased to find most of these on the concessions menus and pointed IceBear in the direction of what I thought he would enjoy the most. And of course IceBear and I had to try every beer we could get our hands on. It felt like we were in Willy Wonka’s Beer Factory. There was beer available at every single nook and cranny in the stadium. We upgraded our game ticket to the one that came with a Fire Salamander’s mug and got one free pour at every location. This had us feeling great for the game and what we were about to experience. Rating:  8.1/10 Meow Meow Beenz Conclusions and Game Results: IceBear: I go back to being more upset with myself for not trying the full experience. I should have been at the jukebox in those MeUndies embracing everything Berlin had to offer. I should have been more adventurous with the food selections at the concessions. I didn’t have a bad time at all, but there wasn’t much that pushed the experience over the edge for me. I’m not sure if that’s at my own fault or if that is what they are going for. “We are going to do the basics and we are going to do them well.” I look forward to coming back and really going all in on the culture. I do hope to have some more connections in the Salamander’s locker room that may be able to act as a tour guide on our next visit. I feel with the right guide and finding that right pre game bar this could be a top notch experience. Just need to be in the right place at the right time sometimes. Overall Rating:  7.5/10 Meow Meow Beenz Fronk: What a good experience it was for my first time dipping my toes overseas. I’m not sure if IceBear nor I are qualified to give suggestions on how prospective fans can gain the ULTIMATE FAN EXPERIENCE -ence -ence. We probably should have brought on someone to help guide us. Maybe we need to revisit and get someone to steer us in the correct direction. While we did love aspects like all the beer that was available, I think I only could quaff down like half of the beers I tried. My palette just can not handle some of those unmarked taps we were pulling. The city and stadium were wonderful to take in as a tourist. I believe another run at a Fire Salamander’s game would be ideal for a complete review for THE ULTIMATE FAN EXPERIENCE -ence -ence and maybe my score will reflect that. The game itself went as predicted. The Fire Salamanders jumped out to a comfortable lead early and kept it for the rest of the game. There were a few times in the first half that I thought the Liberty gained some traction as they returned an interception for a touchdown. But Berlin has a monster of a team and improved their record to 10-2 on the season. Poor Philadelphia and poor that-one-guy at the bar who bet that Leeeeroy Jenkins would pick off QB Ryan Negs. Overall Rating:  Incomplete/10 Meow Meow Beenz Where should we go next? Be sure to reach out if you want us to visit - we absolutely can be bought! Cheers! RE: 3 - Berlin Fire Salamanders - Berlin Field in Berlin, Germany (Fire Salamanders vs Ph - WildfireMicro - 04-23-2021 You know the field looks and feels a lot different when you have to run on it