The World Cup Runneth Over

JT is a huge sports fan, so it’s no surprise that he’s taken to football/soccer, keeping tabs on our own Cambridge United, following the premiership league in England, and, of course, watching the World Cup. I’m less of a sports fan, but I certainly appreciate that in Europe, football is a universal language – far more so than in the US.

This year, the World Cup has provided the opportunity for us to get together with friends old and new, experience the national pride that the tournament brings out, and talk to others, even when we don’t have a common language. The first big match in our house was England vs. USA. We had an evenly matched audience – three Brits and three Americans. It was a great crowd, and the 1-1 result meant the Americans were hugely happy at the comeback draw, and the Brits were already lamenting their failure!

The next game we hosted was England’s next game, England vs. Algeria. We used it as an excuse to invite our neighbors over, whom we’ve been meaning to have over for far too long, and who are, it turns out, huge football fans. Emily and I used the game as an excuse to plan a Mediterranean/Middle Eastern dinner feast.

We were in London when the U.S. played Algeria. The only problem was that England played Slovenia at the exact same time – we knew we’d be hard pressed to find a pub showing the U.S. game. Long ago I joined the London Meetup group, and it turned out they had found a pub to show the US game on the big screen, the England game on a small screen to the side. About 150 Americans – and 6 Algerians – crammed into the pub at 3 p.m. on a weekday to watch 89 minutes of tense football – and then completely let loose when the US scored the game-winning – and team-advancing – goal.


US vs Algeria from dceditors on Vimeo.

Over the following weeks, we’d hear cheers from local houses and pubs from the various groups watching the games. You’d see people walking around town wearing their team/country’s colors or jersey.

We headed to Turin, Italy, last week for a work conference and while strolling in town the first day we found a piazza where they were showing the Brazil/Holland game on a big screen in the town square. The Dutch won, which meant the Netherlands won would be playing three days later in the semifinal. One of our work colleagues is Dutch and was keen to watch the game, so of course we were happy to oblige—accompanied by a 5-course outdoor dinner in the same piazza as we watched the big screen.

The next day was the Germany-Spain semifinal. We were traveling from Turin to Nice, France, and made it to our apartment there just as the game was about to start but decided to dash out to grab a few groceries first. While JT picked out cereal and beer, I gathered my items at the checkout, looked at my watch, and made a face. The man behind the counter looked at me quizzically and I tapped my watch and said, “futbol.” “Ah, football,” he says, and proudly reaches over to a tiny iPhone sized screen and clicks it on. There on a three-inch screen was the football game: No way he was going to let work cause him to miss a game.

We arrived back in England just before the World Cup final started, and it was a given that the taxi driver would turn the game on the radio – he did. When we got to our house, we raced in and popped on the DVR on so we could unpack and take care of a few chores before sitting down to watch the rest of the game. That meant we were watching it on a delay. So, when we heard loud cheers from throughout the neighborhood, we knew a goal had been scored, but we didn’t know which team.

We tried not to listen too closely, or think too hard about whether our neighborhood is more Spanish or Dutch. Since we had been gone for about 10 days, we had missed the summer transition from the Cambridge University students to the summer foreign-language students; the college closest to us hosts hundreds of students from Spain who come to Cambridge each summer to learn/practice English. As I wandered around town the next day, I encountered several clumps of the students, wearing Spain’s red and gold and even carrying their national flag. They may be in town to learn English, but for that day, they spoke the international language of football.

The Dream is Over

(Cambridge fans filled the whole lower side of one stand and part of the stand to the right. Notice the yellow-jacketed police officers on the right separating the United fans and home fans!)

Now I know the misery of an English football fan.

Saturday, KT and I went on our biggest football adventure yet. We were part of the 4000-plus Cambridge United fans who made the 2.5 hour journey to Wolverhampton for the FA Cup clash between United and the mighty Wolves of Wolverhampton. The FA Cup is the annual tournament in which almost every soccer team in England can participate--from the smallest semi-pro squad to the Goliaths of the Premier League. Cambridge had advanced to the key round where the teams from the Premier league, who had byes til now, entered the competition. While it may seem odd since they would have little chance of winning, United had hoped to draw an away game at one of the big teams because it would mean a mammoth payday, perhaps enough to buy some new players or pay a good portion of the year's budget (The teams split the money from the attendance so the possibility of 30,000-60,000 buying tickets at a Premier League stadium is a cash bonanza. Indeed, one team about to go bankrupt may have saved it yesterday with a tie of a premier league team at home, thus earning an away match at their opponents and a lot of extra money).

In any case, United drew the Wolves who play in the Championship league, one step down from the Premiere. Still, the Wolves are a major squad--one of the few automatically known by their nickname--that has been in the Premiere league and they have a historic and beautiful stadium. KT and I decided we couldn't pass up on the trip and with some friends signed up for the buses Cambridge United was offering. So did many others! We ended up with about 25 buses making the trip, which ended with a police escort to the stadium for the convoy if you can believe it. Overall, the police presence was amazing--a sad reminder that English football has a nasty history of violence among its fans. Indeed, United's fans--like most away fans at football matches--had to enter through specific gates and sit in separate parts of the stadium. Silly? Perhaps not. In the second half, police in one part of the stadium had to use their batons to keep the two sides' fans apart.

When KT and I attend United games we usually sit in the quiet main stand, not among the loud and rowdy crowds in other sections. But for the FA Cup we were among the fanatics (including our friends who wore yellow and black wigs). United fans were singing and chanting from the start, putting the home fans to shame. The Wolves only had about 10,000 fans of their own as they all expected an easy win. KT and I finally figured out some of the chants--"If you love Cambridge, Stand up!!" or "Bounce Bounce Amber Army!" (and one must jump up and down of course).

United scores--Goooooooooaaaaal!!!

As for the game itself, it was a heartbreaker. United has been playing poorly and the Wolves were clearly more skilled, but we held then off early and had some great chances to score. Then, right before the half, United scored to go up by one. We all went crazy. The second half started and time seems to slow as the Wolves had chance after to chance and finally tied the game with 20 minutes left. Still, a draw seemed likely which would have meant a money-making rematch at home in Cambridge. Then disaster. The ref made a bad call, giving the Wolves a free kick about 20 yards from goal--a Wolf passed it into the middle and a teammate headed it into the goal to take the lead with just 2 minutes left. The long bus ride home in the dark was quiet. So close.--JT

Mind the Gap

The day after Thanksgiving, we headed into London for a mini-break, a belated birthday present for KT. The centerpiece of the trip was a visit that afternoon to the British Museum to see a sampling China's 8000 terracotta warriors, the first exhibition outside China of this unusual archaeological find. Here's a excerpt from the wikipedia description:

The Terracotta Army was buried with the Emperor of Qin (Qin Shi Huangdi) in 210-209 BC (his reign over Qin was from 247 BC to 221 BC and unified China from 221 BC to the end of his life in 210 BC). Their purpose was to help rule another empire with Shi Huangdi in the afterlife. Consequently, they are also sometimes referred to as "Qin's Armies". The Terracotta Army was discovered in March 1974 by local farmers drilling a water well to the east of Mount Lishan. Mount Lishan is also where the material to make the terracotta warriors originated. In addition to the warriors, an entire man-made necropolis for the emperor has been excavated.

I actually wasn't all that excited to see this show, because, hey, it's a bunch of similar looking statues. But I was wrong. First, the exhibit provided an impressive and clear history of China's first emperor, a story I shamefully knew little about. Second, the scope of the buried city he created with these statues is simply amazing. No two statues are identical, and the terracotta ranks go beyond soldiers--acrobats, horses, birds and more. Finally, I was moved that China had identified the burial mound where the First Emperor is but is refraining from digging it up. It hopes that non-invasive technologies will develop that will allow them to probe the site without disturbing it.

After the British Museum, we dashed over to South Kensington the subway as KT wanted to do some Christmas shopping at the Victoria & Albert museum shop (KT let me wait in a pub--she's the best wife in the world!). The V&A is also next to the Natural History museum where one of London's best outdoor skating rinks has been set up. We adored the South Kensington area--the subway stop has a nearby bakery, cheese shop, cookie store and more--and would love to live there if anyone wants to donate a million (pounds not dollars!) to let us buy a place.

The second goal of the weekend was to watch the Texas A&M vs Texas game at a sports bar hosting the London alumni clubs of both schools. So we sped away from the V&A, stopped in at Bodeans, the great BBQ place we found on a previous London trip, and rushed into the bar just after kickoff around 9pm. The Longhorns far outnumbered the Aggies, and Texas was expected to win easily, but A&M amazingly could not be stopped. You can spot KT in the right corner as everyone watches a key play. We rolled into our hotel room around 1am with our throats hoarse from shouting and celebrating the Aggie win.

We had a short agenda for Saturday. KT wanted to visit Borough Market, which was full of people, cheese, food, and more cheese. This market is one of London's oldest and most popular--Jude Law and other celebs often appear, and it's been used as location for many movies in need of a classic street market. Given that it's next to the Thames river, the Tate Modern museum, a wine mega-museum, and a brewpub, we would happily move here too if people gave us that million pounds.

Our final destination was the Tate Modern, one of the most popular museums in London (and the world). The Tate Modern houses an amazing modern art collection in a former power station and it's perhaps best known for the huge pieces of art installed in the central hall that used to house the station's turbines. The scary spider I recently wrote about was once on display in that hall. While we did speed through some of the collections and shopped again at the museum store, we were most taken with the new turbine hall installation, which has gotten everyone talking. Called Shibboleth and created by Doris Salcedo, it's a a crack in the floor (hence this post's title). That doesn't sound impressive but it is. The crack starts almost imperceptibly at one end of the huge hall and gradually widens and eventually splits into two fissures, creating a Y-shape. The gap's width never gets much bigger than the length of a foot but it's nonetheless dramatic visually. And people love it. They interact with, sticking hands into it, jumping across, lying down on the ground next to it. We spent a good 10 minutes watching people from above. The work has people guessing how Salcedo created it--this Guardian story with interview with construction experts is a fun read--as the interior of the crack has barbwire and other content that is obviously not from the Tate. Even the New York Times took note of the project yesterday. Mind the gap! -- JT

Are you ready for some football? U-NI-TED

For those who get this blog by email or who have trouble seeing the football field, here's the link http://www.wikimapia.org/#lat=52.20627&lon=0.155812&z=19&l=0&m=a&v=2

Most of you reading this blog probably haven't played all that much with the satellite image map in the right column. It's from wikimapia, the same folks who bring you wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. Basically, it's a stunningly clear satellite image on which people can mark objects and attach descriptions of comments (A nice blog entry explaing some basics is here. I simply like zooming in and out of Cambridge, looking at the aerial view of things I normally see from ground level. For example, when I looked at our house, I noticed the image was taken right at the start of construction of the new apartments across the street--the site is cleared but no building yet.

In any case, one day I was looking at Coldhams Common, a parklike area where the recreational leagues play soccer. Since I didn't quite know where the fields were I looked at the wikimapia and was amused to find an American football field marked off next to the soccer fields. After a bit of Googling this morning, I discovered there's a British American football league and our area fields a team, the Cambridgeshire Cats. They apparently play during the summer--their last game was a few weeks ago--so I'll have to wait til 2008 to attend a game and report back.

For those following the Amber Wave, the UK form of football, KT and I yesterday attended Cambridge United's amazing come-from-behind victory, 2-1, over Aldershot ("Sit down! Shut up! Aldershot!" was one of the non-obscene Cambridge chants). This was the first round of the FA Cup, which is England's famously democratic tournament where almost any team in the nation can qualify and play against the big boys, even Premier League teams like Manchester United. Cambridge had won its qualifying matches and drew a home game in the first round, the first FA cup match at home in many years. They also drew Aldershot who happen to be the top team in our own league. It was a very entertaining match and today at 5pm they draw for who plays who in the next round. The Premier League teams get byes for another round, I believe, but Cambridge could certainly play a team from the league or two above. Sometimes the lower league teams make quite a run. It would be like a single A minor league baseball team ending up in the Major League baseball playoffs, or George Mason University making the Final Four in college basketball. Hope for a miracle (and another home game)!
--jt