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06/27/2004: football whine
During major football tournaments I really feel for Hermione among her Quidditch obsessed friends. I mean, I don't know anyone who's really interested in football and still it's the first and rather dominant topic of conversation these days, since of course everybody follows the European Cup. I don't know weather there's an equivalent in the US, but you can't escape football here during these events. Like last Monday (when it was worse than now since Germany hadn't lost yet) I had dinner with my family for my sister's birthday, and we were in this Indian restaurant and obviously the first topic was football, because the restaurant was empty as a little bit later the game would start and there was no tv in the restaurant. And of course the streets were much emptier than usual as well, not as much as when Germany plays, but empty enough. You can hear the drop in traffic noise during the games. And to my surprise the others had followed the games, and were talking football for some time. Gah.
Mind you, in general my family is about as much interested in sports as I am, with maybe my dad being slightly more interested, and yet there they were, talking about football. Then again, right now I'm listening to the game Denmark vs. Czech Republic, so I won't be totally lost tomorrow, when people will talk about this game. It's not that I care in particular, though I like the Danish team ever since their surprise win 1992 which was kind of endearing, though it looks quite bad for them right now, but it's tiresome not to be able to participate in half of the conversations for weeks. So some general idea of what was going on is useful.
At least the German team didn't get to the quarter finals so there's not quite as much fan mayhem. It's not even the people who think football is more important than anything else that get to me, I mean, I get fans, even extreme ones. It's that things just rearrange themselves around football even for non-fans. Because people schedule things so that there's no conflict with the games, so that they're home early enough, or in a pub early enough to be able to watch etc. and I mentioned already how small talk inevitably gravitates towards football these days. Well at least it's two years still to the World Cup nightmare which will take place in Germany 2006, when there will be really no escape.
At least with Quidditch you'd have people flying on broomsticks, a high injury risk with all those bludgers and such, and a fast pace with all those balls, and action in three dimensions. I think I'd take Quidditch over football any day, unfortunately I'm stuck with the latter as the focus sport. I guess the good thing is that you can commiserate instantly with people everywhere, unlike the Americans who are stuck with the weird American games like American football that almost nobody else cares about.
Sigh.
