Humba Humba Humba Täterä - #862

 

Excellent!

Christoph's got hold of 2 tickets for today's Mainz05 game vs Hanover.

Must be do-able - Mainz 10th in the table, Hanover 16th - but Hanover's got a new trainer and when THAT happens, just EVERYONE in the team extracts their collective digits and plays as if possessed in a very transparent display of brown-nosing.

"Apple for the teacher" stuff in a parallel universe.

But if stumbling over a bottle of Mainz 05's official wine yesterday wasn't an omen of great portent....

It's called "Humba" after one of those classic Karneval songs that you can still sing when you're utterly ripped:

"Humba Humba Humba Täterä" (repeated ad nauseum) is verse, bridge and chorus and you'll hear it after every Mainz home victory.

As in:

First there's a chorus, exhorting the players to sit down on the pitch in front of the hard-core-standing-room-only stand, the fans - by an eerily effective display of group dynamics - select their player of the day who then ascends the cage wall fence and leads the throng with a "Give me an "H", give me a "U"....", followed by verse/bridge/chorus to which all and sundry jump up and down and during which great fun and enjoyment is had by all.


Not to be confused, of course, with the NSFW "Feel like I'm fixing to die" cheer from Woodstock....

And then, of course, there's the non-apocryphal tale of a journalist from WDR (the German equivalent of NPR) in the 1960s, who was in Egypt covering the impending state visit of Walter Ulbricht, chairman of the Communist Party and East German head honcho.

Someone from the army band - possibly unaware of the difference between FRG and GDR - asked for his help in learning the East German national anthem.

"Of course" he said "it's called Humba Humba Humba Täterä and it goes like this...."

And they played it perfectly as Ulbricht descended the aircraft stairs onto the red carpet......