You learn a lot sitting in the bar of a Polish train at four o'clock in the morning. For example, Poles don't only drink vodka. There are some who like their whiskey. And they like to share it.

If the train, like the one cruising through the Polish countryside in Wednesday morning's wee hours, happens to be carting frenzied football fans to watch their country's soccer team take on Germany in the World Cup , there are even more lessons to be learned. Like, for example, Poland's national team has some seriously dedicated supporters.

Close to a thousand Polish men -- and perhaps a dozen Polish women -- swarmed onto a dimly lit platform in Warsaw East train station just past midnight early on Wednesday morning before clamouring aboard a 12-car train reserved exclusively for football fans. A short time later the train rolled out of the Polish capital on its way to Dortmund, some 14 hours away, where the Polish team will take on the Germans at 9:00 p.m. in a Group A clash. Just three hours after the final whistle, those same fans will herd back onto the train for their 14-hour return journey.

"This is a very special game," said 38-year-old Darek Sienko between sips of his half-liter can of beer. "This is not the time for sleep. I can sleep when I get back home."

"Polska red and white!"

Indeed, dozing off was a virtual impossibility with the raucous fans, clad in red-and-white Polish flags, football jerseys and fan scarves, repeatedly breaking into football chants and patriotic songs -- both of which became increasingly slurred as the night went on. "Polska! Red and white! Polska! Red and white!" Even the burly security guards along for the ride occasionally joined in.

Yet for all the animated good cheer -- and the brotherly passing around of the vodka bottles (and Johnnie Walker Red Label) -- there was a dark lining to that cloud of euphoria. Wednesday evening's match, after all, isn't just any old soccer game. The Polish team lost their first game to Ecuador 2-0, making the Germany match-up essentially a must-win situation. And if there's one thing history has taught Poland, it's that they don't win against Germany. On the football pitch, as virtually every passenger on the fan train insisted on repeating, Poland has zero wins in 10 tries against the Germans. Six losses and four draws.

And then there's that geo-political pitch in the not so distant past.

"It's an important game because of the history," says Lukas de Ines, a 27-year-old telecommunications technician from southern Poland. "We treat games against Germany like a rivalry and it has something to do with World War II. For the young people of Poland, it's maybe not such a big deal. But my grandpa would say something different. He was in a concentration camp during the war."

Where's Poland?

It is, of course, reaching a bit to equate a joyful sporting event like the World Cup with the horrors of war. And the match has nothing like the political tension of the post-Falklands War rumble between England and Argentina in 1986, when Maradona scored with a little help from the "hand of God." Nor will it be quite as scrutinized as every match Iran plays in this year's tournament.

But there is little love lost between the Poles and the Germans -- even today. Repeated attempts by the German Federation of Expellees -- which represents those Germans who were booted out of Poland and the Czechoslovakia following World War II -- to build a center in Berlin documenting their suffering have been met with anger on the other side of the Oder. Plans to build a gas pipeline through the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany -- completely bypassing Poland -- likewise resulted in a ratcheting up of the rhetoric. On the other side of the border, Poland's new president Lech Kaczynski raised eyebrows during his campaign last year with his threats to force Germany to pay reparations for the World War II destruction of Warsaw.

Beneath the level of international diplomacy, though, the Polish-German relationship stands out primarily for how studiously the Germans ignore their neighbors to the East. Most Germans have never been to Poland, fearful that their cars will be stolen as soon as they cross the border. And the eastbound Berlin-Warsaw express, connecting the two capital cities by rail a few times a day, often doesn't start to fill up until it crosses the border into Poland. The train doesn't even bother to make announcements in Polish until local conductors take over across the border in Rzepin.

Not all Poles are hooligans

All these slights are noticed by Germany's neighbor to the east. Even a recent neo-Nazi T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan "Seventeen days in 1939, 90 minutes in 2006" -- a reference to the speed with which the Nazi blitzkrieg overwhelmed Poland at the beginning of World War II -- has found resonance. One fan was wearing the Polish response: "Cendynia 972. Grunwald 1410. Dortmund 2006." The first two on the list are references to important Polish battlefield victories over the Germans.

"We still don't feel totally part of the European Union," says de Ines. "Before we joined, we felt like second class citizens. Things have now gotten a bit better, but nobody in Germany knows anything about Poland."

And what they do know tends to be negative. For months, the German press has been fretting about a possible invasion of Polish hooligans. The risk is real. But the fans partying their way through the misty Polish flatlands on Wednesday morning didn't want to hear about it.

"Yes, we have a hooligan problem," says Michal Sloniewicz, 28. "But it's not one to one. It's not like all Polish fans are hooligans. We've got some hooligans just like Germany, England and Holland have them."

On Wednesday, though, Germany is about to learn quite a bit more about the Poles. The train load of loud, excited Polish fans crawled across the border into Frankfurt an der Oder at just after 9 a.m. on Wednesday. Immediately, the covered train station began echoing with yet more chants and songs as the German press interviewed fans through train windows. Dozens of German police stood passively by with little to do.