Matchday 9: Stockholm Saturday!

Whatup crazy kids!  I had quite a day yesterday in Stockholm.  We had a match, watched the Euro Championship matches then had a night (and day) on the town.

The reason I was in Stockholm for the third time in a week was that we were playing against Vasalunds.  This marked the fifth time in nine games that we were playing the team currently in first place in the league.  In fact the only team we’ve played that wasn’t in the top 5 was our only win against Akropolis.  Anyway, we got killed 5-1.  I was available on the bench, but wasn’t used.  The game was awful and we were on the back foot the entire time.  Vasalunds scored in the 4^th minute then continued to pressure the rest of the half, though they didn’t create many more great chances.  In the 22^nd minute, we scored completely against the run of play.  We cleared a ball to our attacking midfielder Ernesto, who played a really great through pass to Erik who scored a great goal with his left foot.  That was a great moment for us, but our happiness only lasted until halftime, because the second half started with them scoring again.  From that point, it was only a matter of how many they would score and by the 70^th minute it was 5-1.  Vasalunds continued to press, but our guys showed some good pride and prevented the scoreline from getting even worse.  We even had a goal wrongfully (in my opinion) disallowed for offsides.  Long story short, it was a forgettable game.  The fact that I didn’t play just made things all that much more disappointing for me.

After the terrible match, we were in need of a fun night.  So Daniel, Robert, Joel and I took the subway from the stadium to Gamla Stan (Old Town) to watch the European Championship matches.  After being initially turned away from O’Leary’s, the same chain of Boston-themed restaurants you may remember me going on about while I was in Jakobstad, Finland, we looked for another place to eat and watch the games.  However during our search, we ran into Kevin and his pops who incidentally owned the O’Leary’s we were turned away from.  After a quick phone call, we were in a booth at O’Leary’s with no wait.  VIP service!

Most of you will be unfamiliar with the various areas of Stockholm.  For you, I will explain a bit about Gamla Stan.  This area is a small island that makes up the very center of Stockholm.  I have done no research to support this next claim, nor do I intend to, but I think Gamla Stan used to be the entirety of Stockholm.  That may or may not be true, but considering that the only thing connecting current day Gamla Stan to the rest of the city are bridges, then there must have been some time when the island was the whole city.  Well, Gamla Stan is tourist central in Stockholm.  It is the location of the Royal Palace as well as the Nobel Museum and many other historic sites.  Amazingly though, among all that history and tourist attractions are hundreds of apartments that people still live in.  This leads me to the next part of my story where we visited Tom’s house to watch the 2^nd game of the night after we left O’Leary’s.  Tom lives in Gamla Stan and was gracious enough to host us for the match.  We had fun watching the game and drinking a little bit, then we went out to a club.  We snapped this picture in the subway station on our way.

L-R: Philip, Daniel, Tom, Me, Joel, Robert, Heradi

There’s not much to say about the club.  It was really more of a lounge feel but with much louder music.  One thing I absolutely do not like about Sweden and Europe in general is that most clubs only play house music or some sort of house/dance music hybrid.  I haven’t been going to clubs for too many years, but I’ve been to enough to know that I prefer rap/hip hop clubs to house music.  It’s just my preference in music.  I find it easier to dance and enjoy myself when my favorite kind of music is playing.  For that reason, I spent the majority of the evening hanging out with the guys in one of those huge curvy sofas that clubs have watching drunk Swedes dance and being peer pressured into taking just one more drink, one more shot, etc.  I’m not saying I didn’t have fun because I did, it just isn’t my ideal nightclub.  I don’t know if my ideal nightclub even exists in Stockholm.

We left the club at around 2:30am and were faced with a dilemma: no public transportation to Enkoping was leaving until 4:49am.  That meant we had two hours to kill in 50 degree weather and with nowhere to stay and nothing to do.  So, like the majority of Stockholm it seemed, we went to McDonald’s.  That only took up so much time so we just kind of walked around aimlessly.  Finally, we stopped at some steps and decided to just hang there until the train station opened.  For the story I’m going to tell you, you need to know that at 3:30am in Stockholm in the summer it is as sunny as the middle of the day.  That’s not an exaggeration: sunrise is around that time in the summer.  Anyway, we’re standing at the top of these steps when a really drunk (or on drugs) guy starts walking up.  There were about 40 steps total, and maybe ten steps from us the guy stops and decides he’s going to pee.  It’s the middle of the night, so this kind of thing isn’t the most unusual thing in the world.  However, it was sunny outside!  There was no cover of darkness that would usually protect someone doing something so stupid.  When this guy started peeing, we all kind of looked at each other (Me, Daniel, Joel and Robert) like, “Is this guy serious?”  He must have noticed, because he turned around and started aiming his pee at us!  We ran away to wait for the train a bit further down the street, but not before the guy walked up to us and uttered some nonsense along with a buddy of his who rambled on about leaving 60,000SEK somewhere and having it stolen.  I could tell by his eyes that the second guy was on drugs.

3:50am in Stockholm.  About to get peed at.

About five minutes into our waiting for the train station to open, a guy came up to us and offered us a ride.  When he heard that we needed to go 60km to Enkoping, he was shocked.  Once he came to grips with that, he made his offer: 300SEK per person to take us.  It would only cost half that to take public transportation so we denied.  However, after a bit of haggling with him and another guy we agreed to pay 200SEK per person.  That led to us getting a ride to Enkoping in a 2001 Audi A4 with some guy who was clearly not a taxi driver at 4am.  I fell asleep and when I woke up we were going 100mph on the highway.  I felt like I was going to die in an awful car crash.  Fearing for your life: the fitting end to yet another terrible matchday.

The season has been awful so far, but now we go into a stretch of matches against teams that aren’t in the top five of the league.  If we’re going to survive in this league, then we have to get results against the teams in the bottom half of the table.  We’ll train for a week then go for some points!

Matchday 7 and the motherf'ing Eurovision Song Contest

Hi friends!  There’s much to talk about, so let’s just get to it.  But first I have to say thanks to everyone who reads this blog.  I know my life isn’t terribly interesting, but many of you have continued to come back and read.  I just passed the 1000 pageview mark!  That may not sound like a lot, but since I haven’t advertised my blog in any way I’m proud of that.  Maybe I’ll start to advertise it a bit, but I don’t know.  I kind of like knowing that only people who actually care are coming to my blog.  I’ll try to keep doing things to make this blog interesting.  Just so you know, every time someone visits my blog, my niece Amani smiles!  Moving on…

"Read my uncle's blog!  I love him and want only for him to have success and occasionally change my diaper!"

We lost yesterday to Vasteras SK, 2-1.  I came off the bench for the second consecutive game in the 66^th minute.  I felt much better physically than I did in my last sub appearance and I had many positives in the moments that I had the ball.  Hopefully I can play from the start in our next match.

The game itself was actually pretty good.  We played one of our best games of the season, even though we were missing Kerim Mrabti, who had started every game so far.  That allowed Ernesto Ferreira to step in, and he did a very good job.  It’s been clear to anyone paying attention that Siggi has been itching to put Ernesto into the starting lineup, and now I see why.  Ernesto is our oldest player by far, but he is also probably our smartest.  His introduction brought with it a calming effect on the team.  For the first time since preseason, we were moving the ball from left to right and penetrating the other team’s defense.  Ernesto was instrumental in pulling the strings in the #10 spot.  He was clearly our man of the match and I hope he can continue to be so influential for us.  With Kerim missing due to injury and the fact that our captain Tom Noden had to pull out of the warm-up due to a migraine and didn’t play, we now have only one player who’s started every game: Robert Kjellman.  That’s a pretty extraordinary turnover considering we only have a 22 man squad, and from that three players haven’t played at all.  Anyway, the game was very even with a lot of possession from both sides, but no real attacking threat either way.  There was the odd chance, but the first half was played almost exclusively in the middle third.  Vasteras scored the only goal of that half on a questionable penalty.  They got the ball wide and the winger put in a cross that hit Philip Zamayeri on the arm.  There was no question that it hit his arm, the question was in whether such an infraction warranted a penalty kick.  His arm was tucked in on his body and there was no way he could have avoided the contact.  I don’t like the “ball to hand” rule in soccer, but it exists and this was a textbook example of ball to hand.  In my opinion it should have been a no call.

The second half was a bit different in that we had to chase the game.  By the time I came on in the middle of the second half, we were essentially playing 4-2-4, with both wingers and Ernesto pushed up alongside Erik Andersson.  I came on as a left winger, which was kind of new since I haven’t played there since preseason.  I’ve been used this season exclusively as an option to run behind the defense and put in crosses.  By playing on the left though, I was given more freedom to come inside and play almost as like a 2^nd #10.  For the tactical soccer nuts out there (I’m in that category.  I love analyzing various tactics) I was playing a role similar to the 2 in a 4-3-2-1.  That’s not the formation we were playing, but that’s what I was doing.  I like the role because it combines the two positions I’m best at: winger and withdrawn/2nd striker.  I felt instantly more comfortable than I ever feel as an out-and-out winger.  I was also able to be more dynamic and unpredictable which made me far more difficult to defend.

In other news, I have been getting more boring by the day.  If my life was a tv show it would get canceled at this point.  I hang out with the same people in the same places almost every single day.  And I have no real desire to go out and meet new people in Enkoping.  It’s not a knock on the town, but I’ve already got a handful of really good friends here now and I feel no need to make new ones.  In short, I’m boring, which is why I’m shocked at myself for bringing up the idea to go to Stockholm a few days ago.  Just spontaneously at lunch with Daniel, Linus, Joel and Fabian (look them up on my Meet ESK link.  Fabian’s not on there just yet) I blurt out, “I wanna do something.  I kind of feel like going to Stockholm.”  Daniel, a native of Stockholm, immediately jumped on the idea and was ready to go.  I on the other hand, had already soured on the idea once I considered the time and money involved in a half day trip to and from Stockholm.  I want to visit Stockholm, but not on a tight schedule.  Long story short, I was convinced to compromise on a trip to a “fotball golf” course in Stragnas.  I’ve butchered the spelling of the town since I don’t know how to put the dots over the a’s.  Well, once we got to Stragnas we saw this:

And this:

This fotball golf course was more like an abandoned amusement park.  We played the course anyway and I finished 2^nd.  Daniel won and he was all to happy to let everybody know about it.  I’m glad I went out with the guys.  Sitting at the Poorhouse (my apartment, keep up) wouldn’t have done me any good.

The last thing I’ll talk about before I go is the ridiculousness that is the Eurovision Song Contest.  Now if you’ve never heard of this, then congratulations, your life is better than anyone in Europe.  But also sorry, because now you’re going to hear about it from me.  The Eurovision Song Contest, which I insist must be pronounced “the motherf’ing European Song Contest” in the same way as the Catalina Wine Mixer from the movie “Stepbrothers”, is something that I don’t understand at all but I will try to explain it.  Essentially it is American Idol, just that the people performing create their own songs.  People watch the performances then vote for their favorites.  There are no live judges from what I can tell.  I’m pretty sure that the artists have to be amateurs and cannot have the backing of a music label, at least when they begin the competition.  Each European country has their own competition and declares a champion, then that champion competes at the international level to see which country will have the winner.  Sweden’s representative was Loreen with her song, “Euphoria”.  I really like the song and apparently so does the rest of Europe because she was voted champion!  This was a big source of pride for Swedes, with probably half of all Swedish people I’ve spoken to in the last month have mentioned that Loreen was a favorite to win the Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final, a competition of the top 20 countries.  Now I’ve never been a big American Idol fan or any of the similar shows, but at least I understand them.  It’s cool to see someone go from unknown to star in front of your eyes and partially with your help.  This contest though doesn’t seem to have that quality.  I’ve been hearing “Euphoria” on the radio since I got to Sweden.  I am 99.9% sure that Loreen has a recording deal with a music label and that her song is on an album.  That makes this seem more like a vote to see which country has the artist with the #1 song in Europe at the moment.  I don’t see how that could possibly be popular but what do I know.  Maybe only Sweden was interested because they knew they’d win!  Anyway, I can’t talk so much about a song and then not post it, so here you have it: Loreen performing “Euphoria” at the Eurovision Song Contest Finals.  See you guys. 

Another (depressing) Loss and Celia Visits

EDIT:  I've added a link to the match highlights: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVOd12SysNg

Hey everybody, I’m back.  Sorry for the delay, but my very pretty friend Celia came to visit for few days so I didn’t want to take the time I normally would to write the blog.  We went to Vasteras and also became sadly familiar with Sweden’s public transportation system.  In news you may actually care about, we played our fourth game and sadly suffered our fourth loss.  Let’s recap:

I’ll start with the match because that’s what most of you will care about.  Normally I don’t go much into games, but I will talk a bit about this one.  We lost the game, 4-2, to IK Frej.  I’ve now played three games this season, and they’ve been against the teams in 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd of the current table.  And guess who’s in 4^th? None other than our next opponents, BK Forward.  The first two games were probably deserved losses, even though we had chances in both.  The past game though hurts a lot because I think we should have won the game.  We were winning the match 2-1 with about 25 minutes remaining but then got a red card and pretty much fell victim to that.

The reason the loss to IK Frej was so depressing was that it was entirely avoidable.  I rarely blame a referee for a loss, but I have to pin this one on the ref.  He handed out 7 or 8 yellow cards to us in addition to the red card.  IK Frej had maybe one or two.  He also ejected Siggi in the first half.  Even I got a yellow card, the first of my professional career and only the third or fourth I’ve ever received.  I don’t know if the ref had a bad week or maybe he broke up with his girlfriend because he seemed very eager to show that he was in control.  He called fouls at a pretty equal rate between both teams, but only our players received cards.  As a result it made it very difficult to commit to tackles since by halftime most of our team had cards.  It changed the way we played and made the game more difficult for us than it needed to be.

On another note, I actually played pretty well yesterday.  I created the first goal with a free kick that hit the crossbar and was headed in by Kerim Mrabti.  The picture on the right is my free kick hitting the bar.  I also played a less significant role in the 2^nd goal.  I lost possession of the ball, but sprinted back 30-40 yards and nipped it away, which sent the left back, Robert Kjellman, forward.  He ran forward about 30 yards then sent in a great low cross that Erik Andersson finished really well.  Those two goals gave us 1-0 and 2-1 leads.

Aside from the crazy referee, the loss sucked because we had such bad luck.  When we were up 1-0 I made a good run to the endline and laid the ball back to Daniel Alund, but his shot from about 10 yards hit the post.  He had the keeper beaten and was literally six inches away from putting us up 2-0.  Unfortunately from that same passage of play IK Frej took the ball down the field and scored to tie the match 1-1.  Later, when we were up 2-1 but down a man we did a good job of holding our lead for maybe 5-10 minutes.  We were keeping an okay amount of possession and doing a good job keeping them away from our goal.  When they finally did get a chance they hit the post, only for the rebound to hit our goalkeeper and go in the goal.  It was a terrible bit of luck.  Ironically, had the shot been on target our ‘keeper probably would have saved it.  Later, with the score 2-2, I had a good chance from a corner kick, but my header hit first the goalie, then a player on the line before being scrambled away.  The goalie knew nothing about the save; he just threw his hands up at the right place at the right time.  The pic above shows the play.  The guy on the post with his eyes closed ultimately made the save after the goalie deflected my header.  All of these factors I mentioned worked in unison to deny us any points from the match.  The fourth goal came with the last kick of the ball while we had our whole team pressing for a goal.  It made it 4-2, a very harsh scoreline based on how the match was played.

Moving on from soccer, my friend Celia came to visit this weekend.  I initially met here years ago in Baltimore when I was playing for CPB.  She was studying at a college there at the time as part of a student exchange program.  We kept in touch and have seen each other a few times since then.  Last year she visited me in Harrisburg while she was vacationing with her friends in the US and then a few months later I visited her in her hometown of Sway, England.  I’ll use this opportunity to throw in a picture or two of me in London.

That's me punching a bust of Hitler.

Anyway, Celia was only here for like two days, so there wasn’t so much we could really do.  I went to get here in Vasteras which is the closest city to Enkoping with an airport.  Unfortunately once I got to Vasteras via train, I learned that there were no airport shuttles running.  That meant I had to take the city bus to the closest stop and walk the rest of the way.  The closest stop was over a mile away!  Once I got Celia at the airport, I had to pay 200SEK to go back to the train station, even though the airport shuttle would have only been 50SEK.  Since there were no shuttles running, I was forced to pay the taxi price.  Anyway we spent a few hours in Vasteras before finally heading to Enkoping.  The next day I wanted to show Celia the town so we walked into the city center and found that some sort of festival was happening.  Actually it was more like a huge flea market with a carnival at the end of it.  Still, it was great that so much was going on.  Celia is living in London now, so I’m happy that Enkoping showed a little hustle and bustle while she was here.  The carnival was notable for one ride, which scared me to even look at.  Why anyone would get on a ride like this when it was installed literally a day earlier is beyond me.  It did lead to a big crowd watching though.  Sadly, there wasn’t much more to Celia's visit since she was here for such a short time.  We did learn however that bus tickets to Vasteras are twice as expensive as train tickets, even though the bus takes twice as long to get there.  I assume the train system must be subsidized to allow their prices to be so much cheaper.

In my final piece for today, I’ll mention that I’ve started the “classYfication" of my room.  I bought some wallpaper and that’s going up now in a quite cheap way.  I don’t want to buy wallpaper glue so I’m just taping the wallpaper up with the tape you use to tape ankles along with some clear tape.  Laugh if you want it’s working well!  I also now have a working stove AND sink-gate is over after roughly two weeks.  Still no shower, but I bought a shower sponge that I can use to clean myself easily from the sink.  It’s not ideal, but my place is getting better everyday!  I've also been paid, so that's great.  Less than I wanted but more than I expected so I can't complain.

Moving Day! (Not for me)

It’s been a few days and I have much to report.  The third game of the season was yesterday and unfortunately we lost, 2-0 to Vasby United.  Vasby was a good team and they are now top of the table with three wins from three.  ESK on the other hand is at the bottom with 0 points from our three games.  It doesn’t get any easier as our next game is against the 2^nd place team in the current table.  I won’t go into the game but the match report is on esk.nu.  I played the full 90 but didn’t really create any chances.  I made plenty of runs and got a few good passes but overall the match felt kind of like a fitness session, with me running back and forward with not much to show for it.

Anyway going back in time, April 30 was payday!  Unfortunately I didn’t get paid.  I’ve talked to a few people and everyone thinks this is an awful thing, but I still haven’t been able to find someone who can give me my payment.  I’m not worried though because my Pennsylvania tax return came in!  I’M RICH!  And by rich I mean I have a small amount of disposable income.  Maybe I’ll use my newfound riches to start my apartment decoration.

May 1 was moving day for Daniel.  Being the good friend that I am, I offered to help him move.  Long story short we went to a couple of places around Stockholm collecting Daniel’s stuff for his apartment before moving it all in to his new place in Enkoping.  I took a couple of pictures to show the trip, but I’ve since realized that there’s only two and they don’t really convey the trip so well.  The first one is the moving truck we rented.  It had a motorized back and the photo is of us learning how to use it.  We did well and by the third stop we were pros!  The second picture is of the SEB bank building is Solna, Stockholm.  I mentioned the building before from an earlier post so I thought it would be cool to actually have a visual to go with the description.  Another landmark moment in my European adventure was my acquisition of a bicycle!  One of our stops was Robert’s house (his actual house, not the one in Enkoping) and there we found a bike that Robert is loaning me for the summer.  It’s a really nice gesture from Robert and his family and it saves me probably $150 because bikes here are not cheap.  It’s impossible to find a new one for less than $200 and difficult to find a used one for less than $100.  Thanks to Robert though I paid nothing and now I’m the coolest kid on two wheels in Enkoping!

That’s all for now folks.  Once again it’s back to the drawing board for our next match on Monday.  We’re at home so it’ll be a good chance to get some points and really get our season going.  I couldn’t sleep after the game because my mind was too focused on things that maybe I could have done here and there to change the outcome.  One of the few stresses that goes along with being a professional soccer player is that when things aren’t going well, it’s easy for negative thoughts to consume you.  At 24, I’m the grizzly veteran of the squad and as such I’ve seen more seasons start poorly than I care to mention.  However, I’ve seen most of those seasons turned around so I know not to panic.  I worry though that the younger players may not have that discipline.  I don’t know all of these guys’ backgrounds, but some of them this may be their first ever three match losing streak.  It’s not easy to get over losses and you never get comfortable with losing, but how we bounce back is going to say a lot about our team.  If we can get playing well, then we have a really long string of winnable games that could put us in a very good position in the second half of the season.  I’m no leader in this team, but I will definitely try to set a good example for the other guys, young and old.

I’m off to go curtain shopping now.  I went to sleep at around 4am last night and by 5am the freaking sun was starting to come out.  It’s only a matter of time before I can’t get any sleep without my windows being completely covered!  See you all next time!

A social life is born and Contemplating my memoirs

Hey guys!

For the first time in weeks, I actually have some things to talk about.  I’m really excited about my blog actually being entertaining again.  In the last 72 hours I’ve gone out socially for the first time in Enkoping, been offered a job and excelled at training.  Hopefully I’ll start playing really well and then the blog will be interesting for soccer reasons, but until then you’ll have to settle for hearing about my social life.

First you should know that I’ve been doing quite well in training.  I still make my fair share of mistakes, but having the confidence of my peers and time to work on my game has helped me a lot.  This is really the first week that I’ve not been worrying at all about playing time or if I’ll earn a contract or anything else.  I’m just going to training and focusing on improving.  I think playing as a winger is helping that process, because I have so much to learn about the position.  It’s always easier to work hard to improve when you know you need it, as opposed to training the same thing that you’ve been doing for 10 years.  It’s been paying off.  We had a intrasquad scrimmage with the teams evenly split between starters and reserves and I scored two goals.  My team won the game 2-0 so of course that will loom in Siggi’s head when he selects the team for our game Wednesday.

In life things have started to become more fun in Enkoping.  I’ve kind of come to accept my apartment as the place that I will live for at least the next three months.  I think I’ll go to IKEA (obviously) and get some stuff to spruce the place up.  Ironically, getting stuff from IKEA will make my place feel more like (my US) home.  As of right now, the only thing I have on the walls of my room are some newspaper cut outs and an enormous American flag.  Not to mention the green sheet acting as a curtain.  I give you all my word that by the end of this week there will be some changes around here.

Anyway yesterday training was very simple.  We just did some finishing drills and some 5v2 and called it a day.  We training in the morning since it was Saturday and no one had any schedule conflicts, and it was fun because there were a lot of people around.  They were they for their own various reasons, but it was nice to train in front of a crowd.  You’ll be happy to know that my team dominated the finishing competitions, but perhaps unhappy to know that I contributed absolutely nothing to the cause.

After training, I went home and immediately cracked open a beer.  It’s been quite a while since I’ve had any alcohol of any kind, so with the following day free and 5 days until the match I felt safe in having a couple beers that have been in my fridge since a week after I got here.  Then I went over to Fabian’s house and hung out with the guys for a few hours.  Fabian and Siggi had bet on a series of matches and for once they actually won, for a jackpot of 20,000 SEK so they were in a great mood.  Also in a great mood (and completely hammered at 5:30pm) was a big sponsor for the club.  We saw him by chance because Fabian offered to buy drinks at K14 since he won so much money.  I don’t know the sponsor’s name, but I wouldn’t mention it anyway.  He was hilariously drunk and after two minutes of talking I was offered a job!  Whether or not the job actually exists is up for debate, but I’m sure if he does offer something then it will be not-so-difficult and have good pay.  A nice combination if you ask me.  After a few minutes at K14 we went back to Fabian’s before we headed to the house of some of their lady friends.

-Sidebar-

If you ever happen to be with a group of college-aged Swedish guys who are about to go over to some girls’ house, then bring something to read.  Something that will take time, like a textbook on String Theory, because the guys you are going out with WILL take a minimum of 90 minutes to prepare.  I’m convinced that Fabian, Daniel and Robert are all secretly competing in some sort of reality-fashion design tv show.  I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that they take so long to get ready because they are actually creating and sewing their outfits on the spot for when we go out.  It would actually make the 90-minute time frame pretty impressive.

-end of Sidebar-

So we get to the girls’ place and we’re having a good time.  I was enjoying myself even though I didn’t understand 90% of the conversation.  One conversation I did understand (because it was in English) was a hilarious exchange in which Daniel tried to convince us that incest (yes, incest) shouldn’t be illegal.  Amazingly, this wasn’t the first time Daniel had brought this up, which made the conversation even funnier.  He wasn’t defending incest, just saying that it shouldn’t be against the law.  If a brother and sister love each other, he posited, then they should be able to be together and get married.  Of course we all saw no place for civil discourse and immediately wanted to know if Daniel had a sister and what she looked like!

The time spent not understanding the rest of the conversation was a bit depressing, not least because I felt kind of like a chaperone.  None of the guys are within 2-3 years of me and the girls were probably the same age.  Now I’m no saint; I have no problem being romantically involved with an 18- or 19-year-old lady.  I’m a pretty stand up guy, but the law is the law and if I’m on the right side of it then I have no moral objections.  I figure I’m something like Bill Clinton: the more you know, the less of a saint I become.  That said, there was a pretty lady who seemed quite interested from that group of girls and then a couple more at the bar/club we went to afterward.  I didn’t go home with any girls because that’s not really my thing, but I will say this: I still got it J.  Even with the hair of a caveman I still got it!

As is customary after a late night out, I got up ungodly early this morning (9:30am.  Shocking, I know).  I went to McDonald’s with the guys, which has been a dream of mine since I got to Enkoping but where I’ve never gone since it’s a solid 30 minute walk from my apartment.  In Sweden the colors for McDonald’s are green and brown.  They still have the classic red/yellow signage, but the facility itself looks more like a Whole Foods than fast food joint.  A funny thing I’ve noticed about McDonald’s in Sweden(Gothenburg, Stockholm and now Enkoping) is that the cashiers are universally college-aged girls.  It’s kind of like in the absence of Hooters, hot girls just decided to give Mcdonald’s a go.  After Mcdonald’s, we all went to Café Wickman for what I affectionately call “birdwatching” .  This is when you set up shop somewhere and admire all the pretty girls that walk by or come into the establishment.  Feel free to use that term, btw.  You think you won’t use it, but you will.  My gift to you. 

That’s all for now folks.  I have a game in three days so I don’t know if I’ll get to a post before then.  I’ll have you know that I’m very close to starting my career autobiography.  It’s a mental battle in my head because the task is so daunting.  I’m trying to decide now if I want it to be 5000 or 50,000 words.  I could literally write 100 pages on my time between my last college game and now.  It’s a hell of a story that goes from Tampa -> Denver-> Bradenton, FL -> Baltimore -> DC -> Austin, TX -> Saigon, Vietnam -> An Giang (Nam)-> Can Tho (Nam) -> Indianapolis -> Tampa -> Ave Maria, FL -> Orlando -> Wilmington, NC -> Harrisburg, PA -> Gothenburg, Sweden -> Valkeakoski, Finland -> Jakobstad (FIN) -> Myllykoski (FIN) -> Enkoping.  That doesn’t even include the great non-soccer-related stories in Charlottesville, VA (2-3 hilarious stories); Philadelphia, San Antonio, Stockholm, London and dozens of road trip stories.  I put a picture up from the very early days of my Baltimore adventure.  As you can see, my autobiography could go on for quite a long time.  I’m just concerned that most people don’t really care about an unabridged account of the last 3 years of my life.  I’ll probably publish the short(er) version and keep the longer one for when I’m famous and write a book that people actually will pay money to read!

Til next time.