Andrea G. sent this Swiss billboard in after posting about it on her blog:
In her post, she said,
It seems to be related to the the UEFA08 European Soccer Championship which is being hosted here in Switzerland this month. My off-the-cuff translation of “Frauen an den Ball” was “women on the ball”…But when I actually looked closer, I realized that “an” is being used in the accusative, which (in German) implies motion or movement from one place to another rather than fixed location, so the translation is closer to “women coming to the ball”. It turns out if you go to the website advertised, you can download a brochure (pdf) which includes several similar images and a several page summary of the rules of soccer (“das kleine ABC der Fussballregeln” = “the small ABCs of football rules”) apparently targeted towards women to bring them up to speed on the game so they can enjoy the games too. The intro text, which I can’t entirely translate, discusses surprising your man with your knowledge of football so you can talk with him (rather than avoiding the topic as in years past). It certainly seems targeted towards enhancing his pleasure of the games by having an enthusiastic female at his side (rather than a party-pooper who doesn’t care about the games).
Thanks for the post and your encouraging comments, Andrea!
Comments 1
Anonymous — June 10, 2008
also re soccer, the official soccer championship website has noted that 45% of soccer fans in salzburg are women, and they call this a "surprising, but charming fact". and then they have pictures of women in their soccer-national teams-whatever shirts: http://de.euro2008.uefa.com/countries/cities/city=2685/fanzones/newsid=711116.html#so+schon+salzburgs+fan+zone