Enjoying Soccer at Subzero Temperatures
June 26, 2006
Andreas Buhl is a technician at the Neumayer station of the Alfred Wegener Institute in the Antarctic.
DW-WORLD.DE: How are you following the World Cup?
Andreas Buhl: We're a team of nine people here and five of us are soccer fans. We follow the games via Internet radio. We have a dedicated line for transferring scientific data and don't have to use the entire bandwidth. So the rest is at our disposal to keep in touch with friends or listen to soccer. But we can't watch the games. There's not enough capacity for that. And the sound sometimes catches.
How many games have you heard?
We've listened to all of the Germany games. So we've heard three of the total seven wins till now. Soon, we'll be world champion (laughs).
Can you describe how you listen to soccer?
We have a workshop here, which is a heated room. We've hung up our flags there. When we have visitors from other stations, we fly the flag of that country on our flagpole outside. We have flags from all the other countries, which have stations here in the Antarctic, for example Brazil, Argentina, Russia, Poland, the Netherlands, France, Italy, etc. They're all hanging here. We make ourselves comfortable after work, sit at a small table and turn on the laptop.
Can you listen to the games with other stations?
Well, the next station is from the South Africans and 230 kilometers away. The English station is 780 kilometers away. We mainly have contact via the Internet.
Are you disappointed that you as a soccer fan can't follow the World Cup live in Germany?
I'm 45 years old and followed the World Cup in 1974 in Germany live. It would have been nice to experience the World Cup in my own country. But I miss my family more than soccer.
How long have you been at the station?
We've been here at the station since Nov. 27, 2005. My flight home is planned for Feb. 18, 2007.
And what's the weather like right now?
It's 34.3 degrees Celsius below zero (minus 29.7 degrees Fahrenheit), wind of 16 knots, that's about 30 kilometers per hour. When you're standing out in the wind, it's pretty unpleasant.