The weekend from May, 14th to 15th 2011 was blocked in many calendars months before, so in mine. Since the fall 2010 the Dortmund football club BVB 09 was the top team of the German premier league (Fussball-Bundesliga) and was never topped since then. 320,000 wanted to attend the last match, the stadium only has a capacity of a little more than 80,000. Some 12,000 could attend a public viewing in the Westfalenhalle nearby the Stadium.
Before the match began thousands came back from trying to get a spot in the public viewing – no chance at all. They crowded the streets in our urban quarter and entered the bars and restaurants as far as they could. There were a lot of fans without a chance to attend. Warmhearted citizens took out their video-beamer onto the street to let the traveled fans have a look at the last match and the ceremony of the handover of the championship shield.
After the match and the ceremony were finished the fans absorbed the regiment of the town: The City is our! They turned four lanes wide streets to an pedestrian area and continued their party that has started even before getting in the stadium and with pulling out the turf as a climax. A whole town in football fever.
In the evening the fans had a boisterous but peaceful party like two weeks before. Have a lock at the feautured image on top of the post. I took a little bit smaler risks this time while attending the party of these hoarser fellows and hard-core fans because I did not want some more beer showers and did not want to step through broken bottels. There were a lot of fans that displayed emergency signals / bengal fireworks within the masses but they did not want ot hurt somebody and they didn´t hurt anyone. These fans celebrated connectedness in a way that is not mine but I was left in peace by these fans not beeing dressed like them and not singing their songs but constantly smiling and showing them my respect.
Thousands were raving and chanting and I could hardly get through the crowd. So I created photographs with my strung-out arm assisted by the other one firing roughly into the direction I wanted to cover the scene.