1860 Munich: A nostalgic return to a loveable chaos club
Last weekend I finally returned to Giesing to watch my favourite club 1860 Munich. After being gone for four years I am happy to report that chaos still reigns at Munich's true love.
I feel intensely nostalgic whenever I go to an 1860 Munich game. Gegenpressing readers will, of course, know that I grew up an 1860 Munich fan. I may have even mentioned how my fanship came about on one of the podcasts. But here it is one more time. When I was about five, I asked my dad who he supported. My father said: “Well, internationally, I always support Bayern Munich, but I am actually an 1860 fan.”
To this day, I still wish he had just said: “I support Bayern.” But here we are. I ended up supporting the blue camp in Munich. And in fairness, die Blauen (blues) are the club of the city of Munich. Blue and white stickers with the stylized Bavarian Lion - which the club borrowed from the brewery Löwenbräu - and graffiti dominate the landscape of downtown Munich and the former workers’ quarter Giesing, where the club still trains and now once again plays.
It wasn’t also far from Giesing that I went to school. Although the club played at the old Olympiastadion at the time, we would often go to the training complex at the Grünwalder Straße to see the club train—unlike Bayern, all sessions back then were public—and hang out in and around the old Grünwalder Stadion, dreaming of the club one day returning to its home.
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