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 4th minute then continued to pressure
the rest of the half, though they didn’t create many more great chances. In the 22nd 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 70th 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 2nd 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!
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