Do not rile the German soccer fans

August 7th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanR

Yesterday, E told you about how the gracious folks of Philadelphia will be supplying the Russian national baseball team with vodka — lots of sweet, sweet vodka. (Veiled ignorance at its finest!) Perhaps Philly caught wind of the German soccer fans who encountered a broken tap on a train ride to a game.

Germany’s national railway wasn’t about to risk sending a trainload of soccer fans to a German Cup match without beer.

Federal police said Monday that the beer tap failed aboard a special train carrying Bayer Leverkusen fans to Hamburg on Saturday. The fault was discovered half an hour into the journey.

“In order not to endanger the good mood” of the passengers, railway officials halted the train in Wuppertal for 25 minutes and had a replacement part delivered by taxi, a police statement said. It added that there was no trouble among the fans.

Wait, they have kegs on trains in Germany? And train officials are actually willing to stop the train for 25 minutes in order to get one functioning properly again? They’re doing the Lord’s work over there, alright.

{Via Fark. UPDATE: Our man Fornelli got on this today, too.}