As nice a town as Winterthur is, and only thirty minutes from Zürich by train, I was a little disappointed at the lack of atmosphere in the city. Save for a few heavily reduced to clear football related tat, I suspect the place was never that enamoured by Euro2008 in the first place. There were no flags, shirts or Italians hanging out of cars. No-one had even bothered to claim any the statue outside the Rathaus in the name of the Dutch using an Oranje shirt and a traffic cone.
However, I was in Winterthur for footballing reasons and that was to take in the Hans van der Meer “European Fields” exhibition at the Fotomuseum. With a whole day set aside, I made the bold move of wandering out without a map or any clue where I might find this museum. Having got as far as the suburbs and with Autobahn signs becoming ever prominent, I decided to ask two ambling policeman where I should be. The answer was about three miles away. No matter.
I stumbled across Han van der Meer’s book of European Fields, a collection of photographs of amateur football matches from across the continent, during my last day at the previous World Cup. I had looked everywhere for it during my visit but in the end had given up hope and took instead to walking around Cologne’s backwaters. On my third circuit of the town (I hadn’t bothered with a map then either), I found the book in a bookshop of all places (which begs the question why I hadn’t started my search there) and have longed to see the photos up close since. What interested me even more was that some of the photos were taken around the Bradford area and to my knowledge I had played on at least one of them (at Oxenhope).
Though I had seen most of the photos in the exhibition before, it was great to see them fully blown up and the films commissioned by museums such as the Bradford Film & Photography museum. I spent a good deal longer than anyone else in there and often found myself laughing out loud. It was often the action (for want of a better word) on the periphary which peaked my interest. A girlfriend wearing not to much on a freezing-looking day, animal bystanders gazing at this absurd Sunday morning pasttime and even a priest willing on his charges.
It couldn’t have been a more rampant contrast to the tournament in Zürich and for that perspective I am grateful. What’s more, everyone at any of the levels of the game I had watched all had the same dreams of glory. Though some were significantly closer to matching those dreams than others, you can’t help but chuckle at the sight of referees in invariably pristine attire and goalkeepers ludicrously annoyed at themselves for not being able to quickly throw their 20-stone bodies into the top corner of a fiercely mis-hit shot.
As a pilgrimage of sorts it was well worth the 7 Francs entrance charge though I wish Winterthur had done more to embrace the tournament, even if on a small town scale.
