Germans are insane.

No, wait, I don’t really mean that. German football fans — they’re insane.

I rode the U-Bahn home last night with a gaggle (what is the collective noun for crazed football fans?) of drunken, scarf-wearing, beer-can-hoisting, song-screaming fans, obviously excited over the victory of the St. Pauli team over a club from Munich. At least I think it was a victory; I wasn’t insane enough to actually begin asking the folks how the game went. It might have turned ugly.

Even before the train showed up, I knew what to expect. The train going in the other direction had been jammed with an enthusiasic bunch, who amazingly still found room to wave their scarves around. (Football fans in Germany, and I think the rest of Europe, show their solidarity by wearing multi-colored woolen scarves with their team symbols on it. Seeing just one scarfed individual always looks festive, like it’s some sort of strange Christmas decoration. It loses a bit of the charm when there’s hundreds of ‘em.) There were other clues as well: the empty Jagermeister bottles scattered around the station, the number of security guards loitering about, the stream of people buying beers at the little kiosk.

I’m too American to really get into soccer, despite patient tutoring by various European friends. Nevertheless, when the folks in the subway car I was in started literally rocking the car as they jumped around, I joined in the singing. Yep, that’s me: No. 1 fan.

Go St. Pauli … or whoever it was who won.