English Football

Have I said enough great things about Denmark on this blog? I think not. Here's one more thing that's awesome about the home of Hamlet: breakfast. Here's a Danish breakfast that Danny and I tried to recreate at home:

This was inspired by the discovery that we could buy traditional Danish 100% rye bread (rugbrød) at the farmers market. I can really only speak for breakfast as it existed at my host family's house, so that may not be completely universal, but I like to think that all Danes sit down to a breakfast as complete as we did in Jyllinge. I guess that first I should specify that the version that Danny and I created was more of a mix of breakfast and lunch. What's more typical is that breakfast would involve some plain white rolls, with many options for toppings: solid cheese, cream cheese, 2 kinds of jam, butter, and Danny's favorite, thin chocolate wafers. On weekends breakfast was expanded to include yogurt and soft-boiled eggs. Weekend lunch would be rugbrød with cheeses, many kinds of herring, hard boiled egg slices, and liver paste. Danny and I threw in poached eggs because we just can't get enough of them. Importantly, it was in Denmark that I learned that putting jam on top of a slice of mild cheese is delicious. Seriously. Try it.


But right, back to English football. In some ways, I can't believe it's taken us until February to write about football, but actually this makes sense for several reasons. In Europe, football is a winter sport, so the season didn't start until some time after we'd been here. Then for most of the early winter we were totally preoccupied with The Ashes, and we weren't paying attention to the football (on a related note, the cricket world cup starts Feb 19th!). Then our first foray into going to a football match - an England vs. Montenegro Euro cup qualifier match at Wembley - was perhaps one of the most boring soccer matches you could have asked for. It was a 0-0 draw. Seriously. Do you know the population of Montenegro? Less than 700,000. You'd think that England could have at least gotten one goal in, you know? Anyway, English fans booed the team at the end of the game because they had played so badly, and honestly, they deserved it.

This experience left me assuming that the old days of English soccer hooliganism were completely over, and that lack of crowd-control and mugs of beer had been replaced with calm, serious fans and mugs of tea. And while I was happy there were no riots or broken beer bottles or destruction of stadium property (seriously, click on the link above - it used to be bad), I was a little disappointed by the lack of passion from the fans. But it turns out we just hadn't been to the right game yet.

On Sunday we took advantage of a friend-of-a-friend connection to get cheap tickets to a Queens Park Rangers game. In order for this to make sense, let me take a minute to explain the workings of the English football league. According to wikipedia, there are about 7,000 clubs that are technically members of the league. Let's just pause on that number for a minute. That is a huge number. Not all of these clubs are professional, of course, but the defining characteristic of the football league is that it is completely fluid. As in, if your team plays really well one season, you get bumped up to a higher division the next season. And vice versa. So theoretically, some local team of guys who play football in their spare time could become amazing and one day be playing against Arsenal. Theoretically.

The highest division is the one you hear about - the Premier league, which contains well-known teams such as Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal. There are always 20 teams in the league, which is sometimes also called the premiership. The second highest division is called the Championship (not to be confused with the champions league, which is a Euro-wide competition between the best club teams from each country). Below the championship are League One and League Two, which, confusingly, are actually the 3rd and 4th levels, but whatever. At the end of every season there is a well-regulated method of moving teams up and down between divisions. And sadly, it looks as if our localest team, Barnet, will be moving down out of league two after this season, currently being in 24th place out of 24.

Alright, all that was just background, so that me saying that Queens Park Rangers (QPR) are currently in 1st place in the championship and will likely be moving up to the premier league next season will mean something to you. Between this fact, and the fact that Sunday's rival Nottingham Forest were not far behind at 4th place, the atmosphere at the stadium was great. The stadium was packed - topping out at over 17,000 fans. We happened to be sitting very close to the Nottingham fan section which led to some amazing heckling. Well, I don't really want to call it heckling, because it was much more that that. Each fan base has a full arsenal of songs and chants that went on for the entire game practically non-stop (many of which are the same, just with their team name thrown in), and their comments are quite pointed.

I could talk about intra-England prejudices for quite a while (and don't even get us started on intra-Scottish factions, which neatly break down along Catholic-Protestant divide), but for the purposes of this game, it's enough to know that to Londoners, anyone from north of Cambridge is a rural country idiot or a grimy former miner who's living on benefits, neither of whom ever learned to speak proper English. And to anyone from the North, Southerners are posh elitist snobs who stupidly pronounce R's as W's. (Note: the Southwest doesn't fit into these categories, and people there talk like the Irish. but I digress). Of course these are huge generalizations and there are many people who like and respect their Northern/Southern compatriots, but for the purposes of the QPR match, Nottingham fans were referred to as a bunch of "sheep shagging c**ts". And as for what the Nottingham fans were calling the QPR side, I couldn't understand it at all; you know how funny those country folk talk.

QPR and Notts drew 1-1, though with Notts playing with only 10 men for the last 60 minutes of the game, QPR really should have won it. We'll see about that promotion...

Taking Advantage

Random photo today:


Cake. You know you want it. And this one is almost healthy, made with lots of apples and olive oil. Though that's before you smear on the butter and cream cheese frosting, which is delicious. Luckily many other foodies have posted the recipe before me, saving me the trouble. You can find it here, just scroll about a third of the way down. My icing is a different color because I used dark sugar.

As some of you may know, Danny and I have now booked our tickets back to the states. May 18th is our departure/return date, which means we can now start counting down our days in London. This means we're trying to fit in as much as possible before we go - from local restaurants to travels across the EU. The past few days we've been doing some fun neighborhood stuff. I'm sorry if this post is a bit mundane, but hopefully it gives you a taste of what it's like to live in Dartmouth Park!

Thursday: The Star. We've mentioned this local pub many times, but on Thursday we did something especially fun, which was to bring our awesome travel backgammon set, on loan from my parents, with us to the bar. The Star has something that many good English pubs have: a real fireplace, and comfy couches around that fireplace. Why don't more American bars have fireplaces? And why aren't any of them quiet enough that you could sit and play a board game? We sat with our pints and absorbed the warmth from the dying embers, and although I quickly went up by 4 points, we ended the night even-stevens. Though I'm still up by 5 points overall.

Friday: A few months ago we happened to walk by an Italian restaurant up Highgate Hill from us (about a 10 minute walk) that featured pizza by the meter. Well then. We both had a productive week, so we decided to reward ourselves with pizza at Fabrizio's. The food was good (an appetizer plate of various fried things, and 1/2 metre of thin-crust pizza), but the most endearing thing about the place was the intimacy of it. The restaurant is small; there's just one waiter and one woman who's sole job seemed to be to grind fresh pepper and grate fresh parmesan onto your food, plus Fabrizio the chef, and everyone is Italian. Fabrizio brings out some of the food himself, and he clearly gets a kick out of chatting with the patrons. Earlier in the night he had mentioned to us that the fried rice balls we were eating were a specialty from Rome, which is where he is from. So of course later on in the evening Danny told him that he had lived in Rome for 3 months, and Fabrizio looked very pleased. 30 seconds later he came back to our table with a sly look and asked which Rome football team Danny liked. uh oh. Danny stated that he didn't have much preference, but that he had once been to a Lazio game. Right answer! Fabrizio got really excited and proceeded to congratulate Danny on having good taste in football teams and to give the waiter, who was apparently a Roma fan, and hard time. It was pretty amazing.

Saturday: This Saturday started out like every other Saturday when we are in London - a short run, a cup of tea, then a trip to the farmers market. The rest of the daylight hours were spent going to two other neighborhood pubs (The Dartmouth Arm and the Lord Palmerson) to watch sport. First was the Manchester United vs. Manchester City soccer game. As I recently learned, these matches between local rivals are referred to as "derbys", and with Man U and Man City close to the top of the league, this was going to be a big game. As the linked article states, Rooney's winning goal (Man U won 2-1) was absolutely brilliant. He may be the baldingest man in the Premiere League, but don't say he's lost his touch. After the football was England vs. Italy in the rugby 6 Nations. With a 59-13 victory for England, this game was perhaps less thrilling, but it was still fun to watch. And by the way, Chris Ashton, who scored 4 tries for England, was born in 1987. oof. On an unrelated note, know what else I like about English pubs? People bring their kids to them to watch sport. It's cute.

Not wanting to feel to cramped by NW5, we ended this day with an evening at the Tate Modern. Neither of us are huge fans of modern art, but the Tate is kind of a big deal, so we felt we should give it a chance. There were some pieces I liked, but there were also moments where I found myself thinking "Do you think someone should tell the curator that the painting they have labeled as 'Unfinished Painting' is really just a mirror?" And things like that. Added bonus of the evening was walking back across the Millennium Bridge towards an illuminated St. Paul's Cathedral. Beautiful.


Sunday was more football! We went with our friend Leanna to see the Queens Park Rangers vs. Nottingham Forest, which is a Championship game (2nd tier teams). This was an experience worthy of it's own blog post, so I think I'm going to leave it at that. And now, I'm off to have a slice of leftover pizza for breakfast...

A long weekend in Barcelona, part 3

As Becca mentioned, we’re going to be running a half-marathon in June, which means that we’re now committed to running most days of the week, with no exceptions for vacations.  So last Sunday we went on the longest run of my life: roughly 8 miles: down La Rambla, along the beach, up through Poblenou, then back to our hotel along Avenida Diagonal and Gran Via.  It was a great way to see bits of the city that we wouldn’t have otherwise seen, and we got to enjoy the sun along the beach and dip our hands in the Mediterranean.  Let me tell you: the Mediterranean in January?  Warmer than the Atlantic in Maine in July.

After the long run, we were pretty hungry, but we kept getting sidetracked before getting a proper meal.  First was the Mercat de Sant Antoni.  During the week, it’s a food market, but on Sundays there’s an eclectic collection of old books, bottle caps, picture postcards, and the like.  But the real highlight, surely, was a video game booth with an old-school Nintendo (with original Spanish-language packaging!).

We held our hunger at bay for a little while longer with a roasted sweet potato from a street vendor.  Then came our next distraction: a large group of people dancing the sardana, a traditional Catalan circle dance.  Wikipedia suggests that “As a a relatively slow, non-performance dance, the sardana does not require special fitness.”  Becca described it as a “gentle hora.”

Next up was what was either a dog park or an incredibly amateurish dog competition.  Given that there were cones, ramps, and similar obstacles for the dogs and their owners to (not) maneuver around, I’m pretty convinced that it was a dog show.  Let’s just say that it’s not surprising that your mental image of the dog show world doesn’t have much space for Spain.

At this point, we finally found a place to eat.  I was craving sugar after that long run, so I had a Fanta to go along with my manchego sandwich.  Becca got a tortilla española and we shared some patatas bravas.  Best of all, all the required exchanges took place in Spanish.  I’m especially proud of the fact that I managed to communicate the fact that the drinks didn’t appear on the receipt and that we should be paying more.

Our main plan for the day was to see the Romanesque collection at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya.  The collection’s highlights are church murals from around Catalunya that were moved to the museum in the early 20th century.  But here, I’m afraid, our best-laid plans began to be foiled.  Somehow we had missed the fact that the museum closed on Sundays at 2:30 in the afternoon.  So when we reached the top of the steps at 10 minutes to 2, it hardly seemed worth paying the admission fee.  It turns out that the Romanesque collection is closed to visitors until June, so it’s just as well.  We did, at least, get a nice view of Plaça Espanya.

So instead of medieval Catalan wall paintings, we opted for more Gaudí, this time the Park Güell in the northern part of the city.  Writing about whimsical architecture like this always feels a bit futile, so I’ll just post some pictures instead.

After the park, we hit something of a dry spell.  Maritime Museum?  Closed for renovation.  Palau Güell?  Closed for renovation.  A second visit to Granja Viador to lift our spirits with chocolate and churros?  Closed.  Belgious, a recommended waffle place?  Closed.  Things were getting pretty desperate by this point, and if Becca hadn’t found some cute earrings with swallows on La Rambla, this portion of the day would have felt like a failure.

Just when our spirits were at their lowest, we were rescued by… beer.  La Cerveteca appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, to warm our hearts with winter ale (for me) and something Belgian and fruity (for Becca).   In addition to the beer on tap, they also had a pretty good selection of imports in bottles.  It’s always really interesting to see what American beers ‘make it’ as exports.  Brooklyn Lager, Anchor Porter, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale – it’s as if we’re back at the Trader Joe’s in Coolidge Corner.

Rejuvenated, we suddenly realized we were just a few steps away from the pastry shop recommended by our friend Laura.  Fortified by the sugar of a cornet con trufa (basically a chocolate ice cream cone) and a piece of chocolate cake, we practically raced to an Irish pub to catch the tail-end of the scoreless draw between Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United.

The exciting last few minutes of that game proved a nice prelude to the main event for the evening: a trip to Camp Nou for the Barcelona-Málaga match.  For those of you who aren’t keeping up with La Liga, Barcelona are solidly in first place, with Málaga towards the bottom of the standings.  So were were expecting something of a rout.  And that’s what we got.

Scattered thoughts on the action:

- David Villa’s first touch is simply extravagant, no matter at what height or angle the ball reaches him.  With that sort of ball control, it’s not surprising that he’s already at 14 goals on the season.

- Barça’s aggressiveness is something to behold.  Even after they were up 3-0, they kept up the pressure on Málaga, with the whole team in Málaga’s half of the field whenever the ball was there.  This could prove risky against a good counter-attack, but Málaga’s never looked like doing much when they had the ball, so it was fun just to sit back and watch the Barça players kill themselves to get possession of the ball back after turnovers.

- The lack of selfishness among the Barça players is pretty fantastic to watch.  It’s much easier to be selfless, I suppose, when there are plenty of goals to go around.

But just as much as the sparkling action on the field, the trip to Camp Nou was thrilling for the atmosphere of the crowd.  Men and women, all ages, willing their team to victory.  I went to the bathroom midway through the first half (thereby missing David Villa’s first goal), and the concourse was completely empty – no one wanted to miss anything on the field.

This video gives you a sense of the pre-game atmosphere.

So – not a bad way to round out the trip.  We made an early-morning stop at La Boqueria on the next morning for a quick breakfast and some goodies (dried fruit, marzipan, clementines), then it was back to London.

Parks of London #1: Waterlow Park

First, a photo of my breakfast this morning:

All from the farmers market! I haven't seen cherries at the markets I've been to in New England, so this was pretty exciting. This was also my first time trying homemade, organic yog(h)urt (ingredients: cow's milk, probiotic cultures). It tasted kind of like...cheese. By which I mean, it was delicious.
Anyway, back to yesterday's London adventure, which was a visit to Waterlow park, a lovely park between us and our very posh neighbor to the North, Highgate. Waterlow park has everything a great urban park should have: bodies of water for waterfowl and other wildlife, organized sporting areas (in this case, tennis courts) as well as open fields for football kicking and disc throwing, well-manicured flower gardens as well as untended wildflowers, sunny knolls for reading and relaxing as well as shady wooded groves for the paler of us, and an abundance of walking paths to hold it all together. Waterlow park is also home to a small cafe and the Lauderdale house, which hosts jazz concerts, plays and art galleries. In other words, it has just enough to bring all members of a community out to enjoy a beautiful English weekend. We saw lots of families with young children (including what looked like a girls youth soccer team and their coaches having a 3-legged race), as well as old friends meeting for a cup of coffee. As I said, it was lovely.

We were there to people-watch and to remember how to throw and catch the disc, but I was immediately charmed by the rather large population of waterfowl. Thank goodness Danny got me the RSPB Guide to British Birds (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds). We were able to come home and identify all the ones I didn't know already.

This is a male tufted duck (note the tuft in the back of the head), apparently the commonest diving duck in Britain. It was, in fact, a very good diver. There were several families of tufted ducks on the various ponds of the park - the largest one had 9 ducklings! But as they were practicing their diving, it was very difficult to get all of them in a photo at once.

We also saw several families of Coots (right), which were the aggressors of the ponds. As confirmed by the bird guide, coots are very territorial, and they were constantly chasing off the other ducks on the pond. The chicks, however, were adorable and noisy.

And just for good measure, here's a picture of a juvenile Moorhen (below), one of Britain's more awkward-looking birds. Don't worry, I'm sure I'll post some pictures of the adults in the future.


Want more pictures of baby birds? Of course you do. Here's one of some mallards we saw in Montreal in June:
The ducklings proceeded to attempt to fly off the bridge, but since their wings were so small they just flapped helplessly and plopped into the pond below. It was quite endearing.

And lest you think we only care about waterfowl, here is probably the cutest thing we saw in the park all day:
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, in London, families play cricket in the park. I'll leave the heavy blogging about cricket to Danny (he's working on a doozy right now!), but let me just say that it is truly adorable to see five year olds have the patience and hand-eye coordination to play the refined, slow-to-progress game of cricket.



So in summary, Waterlow park is a great place to watch birds and people interact with their environment and their peers, a great place for the community to come together. We plan on returning for an outdoor performance of Othello, an evening bat-watching walk, and an afternoon of jazz in the garden. And of course we'll have to see how our little ducklings molt into their adult feathers!

The evening after this trip to the park we hosted our first house guest! David, who is now a world-famous musicologist, joined us at one of our local pubs to watch the world cup final. In the words of the woman shouting in the pub, vamos España!

Our first home-cooked meal

After a successful first trip to the Parliament Hill Farmers' Market, we were pretty psyched about pulling it all together for our first home-cooked meal in London.  Becca tends to provide the creativity in our meals, so I left the menu planning in her able hands.  Here's what she came up with:

On the left are broad beans sautéed in butter with shallots and garlic.  On the right, broiled (or, as the British say, grilled) potatoes - note the Isle of Wight ketchup.  All washed down with Tuborg.  This was our first time cooking broad beans, and they may have benefited from some parboiling.  But still, it's hard to go wrong when you have shallots sautéed in butter, isn't it?

Not a bad accompaniment to the third-place Germany-Uruguay game.  Speaking of which, that Diego Forlán is something else, isn't he?