...Holland...

...Holland..., originally uploaded by AmsterSam - The Wicked Reflectah.

Random shot of 'Orangeness' in Amsterdam. Taken with my HTC Desire using the Camera360 Android app.

Tonight the Dutch team is facing one of its worst fears, playing against the German team in a big International tournament, an age-old trauma that just won't seem to heal, everybody is talking about this match for weeks already, mentally preparing for another severe beating by 'Die Mannschaft', and nobody really believes that the impossible can happen, that we actually might win, make it to the finals where we'll meet the Germans again AND win against them...but I'm saying anything can happen, this is a wickedcrazy year, and we might actually end up with the Cup that has not graced this lovely country in such a long time, we might as well not, but I sure hope that until then at least we'll have a great time celebrating the fact that we're duking this out on the grass, with a ball, and not on some actual battlefield :)

To give you an idea what it used to be like on the old days, here are some quotes (borrowed from Wikipedia) from Dutch and German players:

"I didn't give a damn about the score. 1–0 was enough, as long as we could humiliate them. I hate them. They murdered my family. My father, my sister, two of my brothers. Each time I faced Germany I was angst-filled." —Wim van Hanegem (b. 1944), Dutch midfielder

"Before the game we knew that it was going to be tense. We had sworn to win, because that victory was so important to our sense of pride. To them, beating us is the best thing there is. They hate us so much more than we hate them." —Karl-Heinz Förster (b. 1958), German midfielder on the UEFA Euro 1980 match

Luckily those tense days are over and it's mostly about making fun of the other guys...so may the best team win, preferably the Dutch one, wish us luck, lol :D

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