GERMANY: Berlin's Tiergarten park may never recover from the World Cup, city authorities said yesterday, because of the 100,000 litres of urine that beer-drinking football fans are depositing there daily.
Up to one million people are gathering daily to watch matches on big screens at the "fan mile", stretching from the Brandenburg Gate to the Victory Column through the Tiergarten.
With around 400,000 litres of beer sold so far, it doesn't take long - about 20 minutes in fact - for nature to come calling.
Fans who visit one of the 300 chemical toilets available might miss vital football action, and so most are answering the call of nature by going back to nature.
In small amounts, the ammonia in human urine can act as a fertiliser.
But too much urine can poison the soil and plants.
"The flora in the park are severely endangered," said Harald Büttner of Berlin's parks department. "It's like a month-long Love Parade."
The annual techno street parade - returning this year after a two-year hiatus - runs along the same route and the ravers have caused huge damage to the park in the last decade.
It will cost an estimated €500,000 to undo the damage of the beer-filled bladders.
To minimise the damage, and the smell, park officials are spraying the Tiergarten's plants and shrubbery daily with over six million litres of water from the nearby river Spree.
Fans complain that there are too few toilets and that the operators want 50 cent every time they want to spend a penny.
However, Harald Büttner says the 50 cent charge is completely discretionary and says that more toilets wouldn't solve the problem.
"Even if we set up hundreds of extra toilets the men still go in the bushes," he said. "It's obviously an archaic reflex to lift a leg."