UEFA's pre-Champions League final dinner to be held in a former Nazi holding
UEFA have organised a huge dinner for Friday night, the eve if of the Champions League final between Barcelona and Juventus. It will not be the usual meeting between directors of clubs, but an event in a huge location, with up to 5,000 people invited.
Among those present will be Josep Maria Bartomeu and Andres Agnelli, the presidents of Barça and Juve, while Michel Platini, UEFA president, should also be in attendance.
The dinner itself is not the curious thing, though, rather the location of the dinner, because UEFA have chosen the Berlin-Tempelhof airport to hold the big bash. It's not longer used as an airport, but it was where Adolf Hitler ran his operations during the Nazi years in Germany.
After Hitler's death, when the Soviet Union blocked all land and water routes to West Berlin in 1948, the only access to Berlin was in the air. The city, with a population of two and a half million which needed 4,500 tons of food each day, was left without access to food.
To counter this, from the Berlin-Tempelhof airport, airplanes would take off, handing out food from the air.
The airport remained small over the years and as it was situated in the middle of the city it could not expand, so the decision was finally taken to close it just over four years ago.
Today, Tempelhof airport has become a large convention centre, capable of accommodating different types of festivals like Pepkomm, the Berlin Festival or some better known in Barcelona, such as Bread and Butter.
