Party People and Where's the Beef?!

S’up. 

I'm so gangsta. 

It’s been three days since I posted last, and I actually have some stuff to talk about!  Not important stuff, mind you, but random biased opinion!  If you were expecting more then you have comically overvalued my commitment to journalistic integrity.  This blog is more or less a gossip column about people you don’t care about.  In short my target audience is people who want to know about the European soccer experience so badly that they’re willing to sift through the boring tidbits of my daily life to get to some useful information every few days.  Today isn’t that day my friend, but I think you’ll be entertained all the same.

On my contract situation, I still don’t know anything.  ESK haven’t spoken to me about anything so I assume that decision will come later.  Meanwhile, I sent my Swedish agent an email today just to set up a time to meet.  I asked him to put out feeler for me, while passive aggressively suggesting who those feelers should go to first.  We’ll see if he comes through.

Now I wrote about the game and how it didn’t go so well and why I thought that was.  Well, after the game we decided that the only way to sort things out was to…go and get really drunk.  And we did; at least I did.  I was reintroduced to the idea that if you drink 7 beers while sitting down, then when you stand up you will feel like you drank 100 beers.  I was also reintroduced to the awful taste of hard alcohol, clear and dark.  Lastly, I learned that when Enkoping parties, they party as a community, so if you get really drunk expect to see every single person you’ve ever met in the city all at once.

The night started not long after the game.  Most of the team met at one of the guy’s house and played drinking games on the deck.  It was nice to hang out with the team.  I saw some guys who I never expected to see outside of training like Mica Tuhkanen, so it was nice to hang out with those guys.  After a few hours, we went to the city center.  There was a concert with the artist Laleh (the one who won the Motherf*cking Eurovision Song Contest) and a Swedish rapper named Timbuktu.  We got there after the concert was over, but we STILL had to pay 250SEK to get in!  Essentially, they put a fence up around public space and charged me $40 to get in, and like a chump I paid it.

Me and "the gang" looking exactly how we felt.

Once inside though, we had fun.  We went to a club-type place and danced for like an hour.  I took this picture inside the club and it pretty much explains how things were going at the time.  The girl’s name is Lina and along with her sister, Stina, is kind of like a new member of the gang.  It used to be Me, Robert, Fabian and Daniel, but now Fabian’s gone (he moved to China to work with his brother’s company) and has been replaced by Lina and Stina.  Lina wasn’t invited to the photo but popped in anyway!  Also you may notice the new face in the back: that’s Robert’s brother, Mattias.  Mattias played for ESK last year and since then has made incredible upward progress to the Atletico Madrid reserve team.  He has even had 1^st team offers in the top two leagues in Spain.  Living in Madrid, he knew how to party and thus was in much better shape than me.  I wanted to go home, but I got peer pressured into going over to Emil Strok’s house to drink some more.  On the way I made this video.  Please note that there is nothing to be learned from this video.  I didn't really see any reason to put it in the blog other than the faces that Joel and Robert make starting at 0:50 of the video.  Enjoy! 

Twenty minutes after the video, me and a couple of other guys gathered on Emil's balcony around this:

Tequila, whisky and vodka.  WHY???

Needless to say, that was bad news.  I went home and got in bed.  Two hours later I woke up and puked.  Then I slept for another 8 hours and woke up early Sunday evening.  Eggs and bacon saved the day.

The next day at training I got my pay for the month of June. 

*warning*  If you don’t like listening to my moaning and complaining then the post is over for today.  If you’re like me and take joy in hearing about the tedious problems of other people’s lives, then I’ve got a treat for you today….

So I get my pay for June and I start looking at the receipt (or whatever they call the thing that says where all your money has gone that you aren’t receiving directly) and I see:

Taxes – 2850 or so

Rent – 4000 (I still don’t have a shower or cable.  I gave up on those dreams weeks ago.)

Restaurant – 1500

Wait, what?

I haven’t gotten a single meal from a restaurant since I’ve signed my contract, and three months later they’re still deducting the money from my check?  Sensing my opportunity I chased after the guy who gave me the money and asked about the mystery deduction.  He sent me to Stefan and we had a conversation.  It wasn’t an argument and I don’t want to say things got heated, but they were contentious and perhaps a bit combative.  I pretty much was arguing that since I never have gotten a meal from a restaurant that I should get the money reserved for the meals.  Stefan told me that the club didn’t have the money to do that and that I needed to go to the restaurant.  My response was that’s fine, but I should still get the money for the food I didn’t receive in April, May and June.  Not to mention that the restaurant wasn’t even open in June because it had a fire.  His response translated roughly to, “tough titties.”

The club, he said, doesn’t have any money so the meal plan is the only possibility.  Not taking the meals is not possible because presumably the club can’t spare the 1500SEK each month.  But wait a second…didn’t two players just leave the club?  Surely their combined salaries were over 1500SEK.  How would we have survived if they had stayed?  The answer is simply the business of soccer:  If you are wanted then there is always money.  If you’re not a priority then money is always tight.

That’s not actually a big problem for me.  I know that there are a handful of players at this club who would NEVER have had to have the sort of conversation I had with Stefan.  But then again, what have I done for this club?  I’ve been here 15 weeks and we have 4 points.  I haven’t scored a goal in the regular season.  I understand that I’m not gonna be able to convince the people at the top to pay me the money, even though it is rightfully mine.  I just wish they wouldn’t hide behind the “We have no money” line.  I would bet that 2-3 new players get brought in in August with all the money ESK doesn’t have.

I’ve ranted enough.  There’s not much to report from the last two days of training other than the fact that we have about 13 healthy bodies at the moment.  Should make for an interesting trip to Lulea this weekend – the only game we have to fly to.

In case you were feeling kind of down for any reason, I leave you with delightful photobomb:

Matchday 12: Different Process, Same Result

We lost again today, 1-0, to Eskilstuna City.  They were terrible and only created a handful of chances the entire match.  We on the other hand dominated the game, though we also only created a few chances.  I came on in the 58^th minute as a striker and had a big chance from a scramble in the box, but the goalie blocked it.  Perhaps I should have scored but I didn’t have much time to really size up the goal and the keeper saved it with pretty much just throwing his arms up.  He did a good job of making himself big and in the end made the save.  Also, for the second successive home game, I put the ball in the net only to have it called back.  Last game I had no idea I was flagged for offsides and neither did the goalie.  Today though I thought I might have been off even though I didn’t see the linesman.  I don’t know if the goalie saw the flag go up, but I suspect he did because I rounded him rather easily.

I won’t go into much detail about the match.  The only thing I will say is that we’ve totally abandoned the passing game we played in the preseason in favor of long balls.  No offense to anyone on our team, but we have no Andrea Pirlo’s in the squad.  For that reason, we can’t be trying to unlock defenses with 40-50 yard aerial passes  from just inside midfield or our own half.  Today our strategy was to breakdown the defense with long passes from one of our holding midfielders.  He would come equal to our backline and then try to play perfect passes to streaking runners on either flank.  It’s the soccer equivalent of calling a Hail Mary every single play.  The problem with playing like that is two-fold.  First, you start off every attack with a pass that has a 30% chance of being completed.  By that logic, you will only retain possession for more than 10 seconds roughly 1 in 3 times you get the ball.  Naturally your players will be forced to chase the ball more and tire out.  The second problem is that the other team simply drops deeper and deeper, making the strategy almost impossible.  That reaction is the equivalent of a defense in football using 8 DB’s when they know your team will do a Hail Mary.  What was a 30% chance becomes too low a chance to really even be considered.

When I came on, I looked to change things a bit.  In the early moments I was successful, linking up with Daniel and Erik quite well and getting that goal that was called back.  Also was a chance where I linked up with the midfield and played a ball that would have put Erik in on goal, but was blocked by a sliding intervention from the center back.  Those were both within 10 minutes of coming on.  Things were looking good.  But then we went back to long diagonal balls and we hardly had another chance.

Training this week wasn’t very good.  We played last weekend, so we had plenty of time to rest but still prepare properly for this match.  Monday was a complete washout because it rained the entire day.  There would have been no way we could have had a decent training in the downpour.  Me and some of the guys didn’t take the day off though; we met at the stadium and lifted weights, while I ran some difficult fitness out on the track since I had only played 20 minutes the day before and needed to do some running.  I did a track-soccer hybrid type workout.  Pretty much that means that I use track distances, but with a soccer rest.  Actually that probably doesn’t help you so I’ll just tell you the workout.  I ran, in order, 200m-300m-400m-200m-300m-400m.  The rest was to job half the distance of the previous run.  So, after the first 200, I jogged 100m and then ran 300m then jogged 150m and so on.  It was quite difficult since my body isn’t used to making runs longer than 60m maximum at a time, but that’s what it takes to get truly fit.  You have to push yourself beyond your comfort zone sometimes.

Anyway, because Monday was rained out the team didn’t get to do anything together that day.  Tuesday all we did was have a intrasquad scrimmage with some filler players from the youth team.  It was largely pointless and afterwards we ran some really difficult fitness, which was even harder for me since I had run so hard the day before.  Wednesday was off (for my birthday, I presume J) and Thursday was a good training, though we didn’t actually work on anything for the match.  Friday was simply a walkthrough.  So, despite the fact that we have been consistently giving up set play goals, we didn’t spend any of our three trainings working on defending set plays.  That’s what made this week of training bad.  We worked hard, but accomplished very little in my opinion.

For those of you who care, I still don’t have my contract situation sorted.  My contract ends at the end of July and I don’t have any offers as of now.  I’ve played in every game I’ve been eligible so far this season except against Vasalunds (a 5-1 loss).  With the injuries we have at the club right now I think that I’ll be offered an extension, I just worry that once everyone heals up that I might get buried on the bench here.  I’ve said it before, but I’m too old to be buried on any lower-division bench. If an MLS team wants to pay me $90k a year and put me on the bench then I’ll happily sit, but for essentially $1200 a month(before tax)  I get here, no thanks.

Lastly, Allsvenskan started back up today after their Euro Championships break.  I like that Allsvenskan schedules games on a stagger because it gives me a game to watch every night during the summer.  I'm excited for the league to be back and running!

Actually I lied, that wasn't the last thing.  To quote one of my favorite shows in America, Pardon the Interruption, a melancholy happy trails to Tom Noden and Philip Zamayeri.  Both of these players have left the team.  Noden's contract was up today and Zamayeri left the team for his own reasons which I don't fully know.  Even if I did know I wouldn't put those reasons in a public forum like this.  I got along well with both of those guys and I'll miss them.  I wish them nothing but the best with their new clubs, whoever those clubs might be!  When you see this photo imagine Boyz II Men's "It's So Hard To Say Goodbye" playing in the background...

Zamayeri on the far left, Noden in the grey sweater in front.

It Is Your Birthday.

The title is an "Office" reference, by the way.

It’s my birthday!  And I’m so cool that I’m taking the time to write my blog.  I’m turning 25.  I won’t be long because I’ve got big plans and can’t spend too much time writing.  I’m kidding of course; I have absolutely nothing to do whatsoever.

Anyway, when you have a birthday you tend to think about life a little bit.  I’ve had the chance to do that and I’m ok with where things are at the moment.  On one hand, I’m 25 with little savings, no real close friends living locally and playing at a level that isn’t so thrilling to me.  In athlete terms, I’m just about middle aged.  On the other hand, I’m chasing my dream.  I’m seeing a part of the world and learning about a culture that I never would without soccer.  I have so much free time and so little stress.  I have no debt of any kind and using my free time to learn Swedish and html, among other things.  I’ve made a few new friends that are really important to me and gotten new experiences that can’t be gained through a book or even a vacation.

Some of the things that I’ve thought about are specific to being abroad.  For instance, as I get older I start to sense my time in Europe coming to a close.  Now I don’t think that I’ll move back anytime soon, but eventually I plan on returning to America to live.  I would actually like to come back at some point and play in MLS (not “the” MLS) or USL/NASL if it’s in the right city.  It would be a dream for me to play for DC United or the Philly Union, but in my opinion it’s more likely that I make a big club in Scandinavia than get a decent salary and position in an MLS team.  That’s the main reason I decided to have a go in Europe.  In my ideal world, I get 3-4 years of big time soccer in Europe then come back to MLS around 29-30 on a good salary and so I can still be an important player.  My game revolves around my athleticism, though I think I’m pretty smart as well.  When I’m 33 though, I probably won’t be the fastest or strongest guy around.  I don’t want to return to America and MLS so late that no one wants me.  In that case though I could still see myself very happy at the Tampa Bay Rowdies or some yet to be created USL/NASL team in Indianapolis.  I just want to play soccer for as long as I can without ruining my future.  I don’t want to wake up on my 35^th birthday still playing soccer in a lower league in Europe with no money.  At some point you have to grow up; luckily for me 25 doesn’t seem to be that point.

Enough now of me talking on this day of days.  I realize that the blog has been a bit stale this month.  To be honest I keep writing it as much as a keepsake for my future self as for possible readers.  You can be sure that I will keep writing it for as long as I’m in Europe.  That said, things will definitely get more interesting in July.  My contract is effectively up on July 15 and at the moment I have no idea if I will be offered an extension.  Also, the team has two weeks off for the midseason break in the second half of July so I’m sure to do some traveling and perhaps even some new trials during that time.  Uncertainty is a big inspiration for me to write.  That’s why I wrote a blog almost every day in February and only about once every 3-4 days in June.  Everything was new then and my situation changed almost daily.  July will probably be bad for my nerves, but great for the blog!

Matchday 11 and Midsommar

We played our eleventh game of the season today against Sandviken IF.  I came on and played the last 25 minutes but we lost, 2-1, in a game where we could have maybe gotten some points.  Sandviken was good, but we created a lot of chances.  They also created a ton of chances.  It was a pretty open game and it was obvious that both teams were playing to win.  Unfortunately for us, not only did we lose, but the two teams down on the bottom with us both won.  That means that we’re last place again.  I took these photos of the stadium before the game.  I am not going to go much more into detail into the match.  As always, you can go onto www.esk.nu and read the match report if you care to.  The one thing I will say is congratulations to Kevin Sharro for scoring his first goal.  For a 17-year-old who started the season as our 3rd string left back, he's managed to play the last four games and now seems to be a regular.  Good for him!

As I’ve mentioned a few times here, the sun barely ever goes down here in the summer.  This has lead somehow to a holiday called Midsommar.  I could tell you the history of the holiday, but I don’t know it.  Maybe Wikipedia can help.  Anyway from whatever started the holiday it has now become a day for Swedes to drink to excess.  We had a game two days after the holiday so we weren’t allowed to drink.  That didn’t stop me from enjoying the day with some of the locals.

I spent the day with Emil Strok and his family and friends.  Emil is one of the players who lives in Enkoping.  He is also from Enkoping so his family was all in town to celebrate Midsommar.  I ended up hanging out with Emil, his older brother Marcus, his neighbor Tobias and another neighbor whose name I can’t recall anymore.  Emil is about a year older than me and his friends were all 27 or 28.  I was so happy to be in a group of people older than me for a change.  When I hang out with the other guys who live in Enkoping I’m always the oldest and it can get kind of weird sometimes.  Well anyway the day was really nice.  I ate a lot of traditional Midsommar dishes: there was fish marinated in like a pickle juice and serve raw.  There was also a homemade potato salad and bread.  Lastly, there was porkchops that were really good.  I love to try new foods so all the traditional dishes were nice, but I still enjoyed the porkchops the best.  We ate everything at a table outside under the sun.  I should have taken a picture of all the food but it somehow slipped my mind.  After we ate, we played a game that is kind of difficult to explain, but it’s a similar idea to the bean bag toss game you see at tailgates in the US.  With the sun still up, we went inside to watch the European Championships game between Germany and Greece before going home.  My first Midsommar wasn’t the crazy alcohol-fest that some people had described it as, but I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Matchday 10: Last My Ass

We tied our game on Monday, 0-0.  I was on the bench again, but I came on the last 20 minutes and did ok.  The point means we're no longer at the bottom of the table!  I’ll get to the game in just a minute, but first I have to tell you that I’m pretty sure that a freaking Chubacabra lives outside of my building where I live.

Now I know what you’re thinking: Chubacabras, while obviously real, don’t live in Scandinavia.  Well then to you I pose this situation.  Yesterday I put out some trash.  Today I walk out and see this:

Game. Set. Match.  Or, to quote ‘How I Met Your Mother’, “lawyered”.

Realizing my goal was ruled offside.

The game last Monday was against Dalkurd.  They were near the top of Division 1 last year, but this year they are firmly in the middle of the table.  They were pretty good and were absolutely the most deliberate of any of the teams we’ve played thus far.  That kind of played to our advantage because it caused us to play a bit calmer than we usually do.  I’ll skip ahead to the 60^th minute, when Siggi summoned me from my warm-up to go in.  As kind of a metaphor for my season, instead of putting me straight in Siggi had a change of heart and had me continue to warm up next to the bench.  It was kind of weird.  Anyway 10 minutes later I came in for Daniel as a left winger.  Now I think I’ve mentioned already that we tweaked our 4-2-3-1 formation a bit to push our fullbacks higher up the field and also push our winger higher and more central so that they play a bit more like strikers.  On defense we’re still 4-2-3-1, but now on offense we look much more like an old school 4-3-3, with all three strikers playing within the width of the 18 yard box.  I point this out only to explain how with maybe five minutes left I ended up in the right side of the box scoring a goal.  A disallowed goal, but a good finish all the same.  Robert, who was playing center midfield instead of his usual center back, played a great deep cross to me between two defenders.  Instead of trying a header from 15 yards, I took the ball off my chest and finished from a half volley with my left foot.  Unfortunately I was whistled for offsides, though I’m quite sure I was not offside.  Attackers never think they’re offside, but in my case I was standing a yard in front of the defender when the ball was played and ran past him as it was in the air.  Our disallowed goal was almost identical to a goal Spain scored against Croatia two hours later, just I shot directly instead of passing.  I'd put a video up but it would surely be taken down by UEFA in ten minutes so you can just look it up yourself if you want.  www.tvgolo.com is the website I use for highlights.

Yesterday we were back to work with a whopping eight people at training, including the goalkeepers.  None of the guys who started trained but instead jogged and did recovery stuff.  Meanwhile, the guys who did train were treated to the hardest freaking training of the year.  Essentially we did drills intended for 10-14 players, but with six guys.  That meant no rotations in high tempo games that would normally feature a 1:2 work-to-rest ratio.  It was difficult, but good.  I’m never one to shy away from hard work and I could use the fitness anyway.

I only slept five hours last night because I had to wake up to watch the end of the NBA Finals game 4.  I’m a big time supporter of the Miami Heat so I want them to win the championship.  Actually, to be fair I’m just a big time supporter of LeBron James, so I’m rooting for him to finally win a championship.  Without getting into it so much, I think that James is incredibly scrutinized unnecessarily.  He’s the best basketball player on earth, but people hate him.  He appears to be a much nicer person than Michael Jordan (who is better) ever was, but people loved MJ.  If you’re not from Ohio and you have a grudge against LeBron James, then that’s a YOU problem (to quote Colin Cowherd).  I’ve got 99 problems but hating the best player in the NBA ain’t one.

Homesick

‘ello!

That’s me being British, by the way.  I’m only doing it because I got over 100 hits from the UK over the last 48 hours.  I think the fact that my blog is in English and talks a lot about soccer in Sweden is the reason so many Brits ended up at my blog on the day England played Sweden at the European Championships.  Besides that, sorry I’ve been away for a bit.  To be honest things have not been going very well here in Enkoping or in my personal life.  I won’t go into the personal things, but they play a major part of my life.  Just not really for the blog I guess.  The point I’m making though is that this week has really sucked and for the first time in my life I am truly homesick.

It’s a weird thing being homesick.  At least for me it is.  When I was 18 I left home to live in Tampa for college, then subsequently Baltimore and Harrisburg and now Sweden (and very briefly Finland).  I’ve spent plenty of time at home during those years.  In fact, I lived there for 4 months this past winter, which were awesome because I got to know little baby Amani.  Still, I’ve spent a lot of time far away from home and not once have I ever felt the way I felt a couple days ago.  I won’t talk about the personal life stuff, but I will say that I got hit with a couple of doozies within 72 hours of each other.  Those were coupled with the facts that I’ve been relegated to the bench for what are probably my last five games with ESK and the uncertainty of becoming a free agent in six weeks.  I emailed my agent contacts in Sweden and Finland, but neither has responded as yet.  That’s not good.  Typically when an agent doesn’t respond it’s because they have nothing for you.  An agent who has options for you is happy to talk and work out a contract.  Maybe I just need to be patient.  I would be happy to stay at ESK for the rest of the season, but not if I’m going to be buried on the bench.  I can sit on the bench in America.  Or in a city that has more to do off the field than Enkoping.  Hell, from what I saw when I was there, I could probably walk into a 2^nd division Finnish team no problem.  But that stuff isn’t for me to find, it’s for the agents.  There’s money in it for them so I know that they’ll look.  I'm not saying I necessarily want to leave ESK; in fact to get to Allsvenskan I'll probably need to play the whole season at ESK anyway.  I can't imagine a team taking me from the bench of the third tier to Allsvenskan in the August transfer window.

This is getting kind of disjointed but oh well, back to being homesick.  I’ve missed home before, but I’ve never considered myself to be homesick.  It just kind of seems like everything in my life is going to hell all of a sudden.  My dream of playing professional soccer has taken me to the last place team in the third division of Sweden, where I've done nothing to help the situation and sit on the bench.  My contract will be up in essentially one month and from there I have no options at the moment.  The only person in the entire country who I knew before I got here is my ex-girlfriend.  Think about that, you’re in a faraway place and you’re miserable and the only person you can possibly talk to is your ex-girlfriend?  You’d be homesick too.  She and I get along well, but you know what I'm saying.

That is literally all I have right now.  I wish I lived somewhere exciting, but I don’t.  We have 2 out of every 5 days off so 40% of the days I do absolutely nothing.  The only thing keeping me sane right now is entertainment in the form of Netflix and the Euro Championships.  I guess I could go to Stockholm again.  If nothing else I could just walk around the city.  I really like visiting big cities, even though I wouldn’t want to live in one.  I bought a new Playstation 2 game as well, so that should take up a big chunk of time.

I’m feeling better now, so you know.  I’ve had a rough week, but that’s par for the course when you move to a very new place.  There’s gonna be bumps in the road and it’s all about how you handle them.  It could always be worse.  I mean (knock on wood) I have my health, and my moviestar good looks!  I still believe that I will make it in a good league here in Europe.  Maybe it’ll be Sweden, or maybe it will be Finland, Belgium, Denmark or some other place. Or the 2nd divisions of one of the bigger leagues.  I believe in my ability, and just as importantly I believe in the ability of the people who find clubs for me.  Hopefully I can prove my worth here at ESK and make a move from that, but if not there’s other ways to get where I want to be.  Keep supporting me.  I know I’ll make it!

Things in America I Miss

Sometimes when I’m going off talking about random things going on in my life and season, it’s easy for me to forget just how unusual my life is.  I’m 24 going on 25, and I live in a northern European country playing the game I love.  Even though things are not going as well as I had hoped, I’m still happy with my life right now.  I also have high hopes for what the future may bring and I don’t plan on leaving Europe anytime soon.  That’s all well and good, but there are some things that I truly miss from America.  I figure I’ll use this post to list those things I miss.

1.       Amani – Amani is my niece and I miss her more than anything in this world.  I obviously haven’t seen her since I got to Europe.  She’s now 10 months old and I just want to give her the biggest hug and kiss and carry her around!  I will go back to the US in November, so I’ll see her then.

2.       Fast Food - When I initially put this on my list, I hadn’t been to a fast food restaurant in weeks.  Still, I rarely eat fast food here.  In America, I would get fast food a couple times a week.  And that’s not just McDonald’s, I’m also including Chipotle and Taco Bell and Chinese food and other fast foods.  In America I always took for granted that there would be plenty of fast food places within a reasonable distance.  Here, there’s only a McDonalds that takes me 20 minutes to bike to.

3.       Driving – Unlike most people, I love to drive.  And I don’t mean driving fast or aggressively, but just cruising around.  I love the freedom of having a car.  You can take a day trip much more cheaply and easily than with public transportation to any place other than Stockholm.  When I first moved to Baltimore, I spent three hours just driving around the city getting to know it.  As a result, I felt like I knew the city of Baltimore far better than I know the equivalent area in and around Enkoping.

4.       Political Television – Even though I rarely mention it in the blog, I am a big fan of politics.  One of my true interests in life are the dynamics of politics in America and the game of politics.  To me, politics in America have turned into something fascinating and very frustrating at the same time.  Also, I think there’s something to democracy the way we do it in America.  It seems counterintuitive, but it takes more than a good idea to get things done.  You have to be able to work with people and with challenging ideas.  And all of this typically plays out in front of dozens of cameras and countless media sources.  It all makes for incredibly entertaining tv, which I can’t see most days because the stations don’t show in Sweden (and I don’t have a tv anyway.)  Also lumped in the group of stations I miss are HGTV, DIY Network, Cartoon Network and Comedy Central.

5.       Pop Tarts and Grape Jelly – Most of the food that I eat in the US is available in Enkoping.  For some reason though, there are no Pop Tarts or Grape Jelly.  I can kind of understand pop tarts, but grape jelly?  I figured that would be pretty universal.  I mean, Enkoping grocery stores have a zillion marmalades and jams but no jelly.  And when I asked the guys about where to find grape jelly, they didn’t even know what I was talking about.  Thus, my daily peanut butter and jelly sandwich is really a peanut butter and marmalade sandwich.  Nothing like what mom used to make.

6.       The last – and honestly most important – thing that I miss is the commentating brilliance that is Ray Hudson.  Anyone who watches GolTv back in the US knows about Mr. Hudson.  He is the greatest, most hilarious commentator who ever lived.  I can’t describe his delivery better than just putting in a video, so I’ll put one here.  I have to preface it by saying he has a severe man crush on Messi and Riquelme.  Enjoy and I’ll post again soon!

You're welcome.