Foosball

Foosball: Traversing Language Barriers One Game at a Time.

Friday afternoon the guys (Christian, Simon, Dominik, and Thorston) invited me to join them for a little after lunch foosball. Over in the chemical engineering building there's a foosball table and a ping pong table that they frequent. I am sadly out of practice and definitely the worst player. I lost every single game. Terribly sad, but I'm sure I'll get better. The wonderful thing about foosball is that you don't need to talk to enjoy it. A lot of the time people just talk in German which I don't understand, so I sort of zone out. The conversation naturally tends to just sort of bypass me because I have no idea what they're talking about. Thorston chides me and tells me I need to complain more because they need to practice their english anyway. Mostly though it just doesn't bother me enough. Foosball however is the exception. Cries of delight and moans of despair are pretty much universally understood. We can all play foosball and no one needs a translation to be a part of what's going on. We laughed and teased each other about times when the goalie accidently knocked the ball into his own goal or when the kickers in the middle bounced the ball back to the other team. Foosball is great, and I may like soccer just a tiny bit more because of it.