Editor’s note: Our buddy Sergio is traveling around Europe and has decided to change things up a bit when it comes to his contributions to the blog for the next couple of weeks. With that said, Sergio’s posts will not necessarily be solely about Juventus, but also about his travels abroad and what kind of football-centric things he gets into during his time in Europe.
Monday, Sept. 29, 2025
Mallorca, Spain
Perhaps it was only shocking to me. Maybe it’s a very well-known fact that a lot of people from Germany go to Mallorca — or indeed
— retire on the Spanish island.
Regardless, I was very confused when we were recommended the El Arenal area to have a “fun” drink and stumbled upon what for all intents and purposes was a German outpost right along the shores of the Mediterranean.
All the signage was in German. The food, the people, the locales all taken straight out of your everyday average German city.
That confusion only grew as we entered a place galled Mega Park (and pictured above). A makeshift cathedral —- made to look like an actual Cathedral from the outside —- to this strange little enclave.
It is very difficult to explain what Mega Park is, but my guess is that around eight to 10 people got together to start a bar, they all had wildly different ideas about the place, never communicated with one another about them and ended up doing them all simultaneously.
While the outside looks like a large church, the inside is a sea of bar tables that reminisce the Bavarian Oktoberfest tents. The walls and ceiling are covered in fake ivy and tropical plants that presumably goes well with the bootleg Rainforest Cafe theming because there’s also a golden elephant head mounted in a few of the walls and a bunch of LED screens with an infinite loop of AI generated animals walking through it.
In the center area there’s a hanging circular LED arrangement, similar to what big Las Vegas club have that flashes the next important concert dates and guest DJs while in the back there are (more) giant screens showing the Bundesliga matches of the day. The music is nothing but German pop, which everyone there seems to know all the lyrics to.
In this Club/Oktoberfest/Themed Restaurant/Sport Bar hybrid, everyone is wearing either branded Mega Park merch or a football shirt. And I do mean everyone. As far as the eye can see is all neon printed t-shirts thanking their customers for 20 years of partying (!!!) with the Mega Park logo or a kit for an obscure German side.
There was a nice sort of non spoken dance in which people wearing the kits of the team that was being shown on the big screen started to move and angle around the club area and into the back to watch the game and the ones that had either already finished watching their own match or didn’t care about football moved to the other side without even acknowledging one another at times.
If you so desired, you could sit at Mega Park from dusk till dawn and catch essentially every single Bundesliga game that Sunday. I have no idea why anybody would do that, of course. The concept of spending my hard earned euros to fly to the Mediterranean Sea and spend all my time at a place that sort of simulates the exact same one I just left is an insane concept to me.
Then again, Mega Park has been around for over 20 years, so I guess they are tapping into something that I’m just not seeing.
We order some beers and get “comped” five shirts for our troubles — which explains why everyone is wearing the same ghastly things. Then again, the bill is €100 for 5 liters of beer, so I guess the shirts are not so much comped as already baked into the price.
I do enjoy myself spotting random kits from teams I vaguely remember seeing in a FIFA video game. There’s also a lot of vintage German national team shirts that I can only assume come from all the people selling fake kits outside. Very difficult to imagine that everyone has an “old” Franz Beckenbauer jersey in their closet.
While I can’t say I’d ever be back in Mega Park, I’m at least happy to have had the experience and even happier that after FC Köln dropped the game against Stuttgart we make a quick exit.
I still haven’t really experienced the full on European football match experience, but with a few more days to go and some interesting stops along the way, I hope that I can catch one soon.
