The Game Of The Chicken

In East Germany there is a popular game called The Game Of The Chicken. I knew the game in my childhood and used to play it with dubious results while biking. In East Germany I renamed The Game Of The Chicken to The Panzer Game. Locals are really playful lads and don’t miss an opportunity to play during the day - at work, stores, trains and of course the toughest one: on the streets - ie The Panzer Game. Easy to play, hard to master, you’ll find yourself quickly addicted to the game playing it even without noticing except if you find yourself abroad were the game is quite unpopular and people even excuse themselves when you do end a casual street play.

This sounds interesting you may say, but how can I play? Do I have to be a club member or something? Do not worry avid reader - I’ll explain everything you need to know about the game now. To play you’ll need at least two persons coming from opposite directions in a collision course. The point of the game is to keep on walking straight and oblige the opponent to swerve before a crash happens. In Erfurt I discovered that the city is full of professional players as they do not swerve. On a non-player environment if you find yourself almost crashing both persons will give a step aside and slightly turn their body in the opposite direction in order to make both walkers pass by without problem. In Erfurt I’ve found that when they don’t play, they practice. I cannot remember the many times I crashed because I was just walking slowly, lost in my thoughts, and some “Profi” just ran into me because I was supposed to move aside. The first times I did excuse myself, for me totally normal, though me expecting the same treatment from the other person involved led me to get insulted and blamed for it instead. It seems it was my role to "chicken out". Here it was, the discovery of The Panzer Game.

I don’t know why but many people assume that when they walk EVERYBODY has to give them passage; men, children - even women! Really classy I must admit. Getting a closer look to it I noticed that this situation happened on a daily basis, mostly with older men, but many younger ones were taking over this habit too. Usually I tried to walk fast and just avoid the people passing around if necessary. I discovered that trying to normal giving in a bit aside is not corresponded by most of the people arriving from the opposite side and I ended up most of the time bumping in to a Panzer Gamer who didn’t believe he should move or did not understand why I did not give him a clear way. During my last days in Germany I decided to simply not budge a millimeter and play the game as hard as I could. That day I was walking back slowly to my place on an empty street on a direct straight line. Soon, a Panzer Gamer was ahead, 150 meters from my position. I continued to walk slowly in a straight line while my random opponent was doing the same but at a much quicker pace. I could see on his body language that he was not going to stop or chicken out - neither would I! At 100 meters distance I started looking around and down, sending him enough signals of that I was not aware of his presence. I glanced shortly and saw that he was looking straight ahead as a professional Panzer Gamer at heart he would not have changed his course for anything in the world. At 60 meters, he quickened his pace, I slowed mine down, which probably made him think I am backing off I thought. At 30 meters, we were entering the decision time, I talked with the persons at my side, avoiding eye contact with my opponent, distance was soon decreased to under 15 meters - your call, Panzer One. At 5 meters I almost could feel his arrogance in the air asking himself why I was not budging? BAM!

A frontal shock but we kept walking. After a safe distance of 5 meters away from me he send a “this is not a pinball god damn it!” in the air. I answered by some self explanatory hand language about the possibility of both of us giving space to each other showing him my two hands sliding paralleled. Just saying “Hellllooooo? Can you understand that?” I kept on walking. My last game was a tie.