Item #20 - See Soccer in Europe

"Half back passes to center, back to wing, back to center! Center holds it! Holds it! Holds it!!"
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In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell says that for someone to become an expert, they need to work on their craft for about 10,000 hours. For some reason or another, I brought this up with my friend Aaron over Christmas break when we were talking about soccer. He thought we may have put in the requisite 10,000 hours by this point in our life. So of course, I had to nerdify this theory and create a spreadsheet, and estimate the amount of time I spent practicing and playing soccer throughout my life. The results:

 

Elementary School

Though I don't remember it myself, my parents have told me that for my very first game, when the coach went to sub me in, I started crying and sat out. Anyway, from kindergarten through 6th grade, I basically play on 1 team in the fall and 1 team in the spring. By 4th grade, I'm filling in the rest of the year with summer baseball and winter basketball. By 6th grade, I had gone from a sobbing pansy to a fairly decent player. 

Junior High

Games get a little more intense. The number of practices increase. I become a captain for the mighty St. Anne Eagles. I feel like a stud, sometimes playing striker, sometimes playing sweeper.

High School

I go to one of best soccer high schools in the state and no longer feel like a stud. I feel out-classed.  The number of practices and games skyrocket, as I discover indoor soccer in the winter, dropping basketball in the process, and drop baseball for more soccer in the summer, as soccer becomes a year-round gig.  

As a back-up forward on the freshmen team, I score a measly one goal and my ego really gets brought back down to Earth. However, as a sophomore on the JV team, I find my calling and start playing defense. I'm a starter again. Hooray.

Going into my junior year though, I was terrified. As I said, my high school has been fielding one of the best teams in the state for the last 25 years, with 5 state titles, 1 World Cup player, and countless players that end up playing in college on scholarship. And in high school, my least favorite day of the year was the first day of tryouts. Our coach was a stickler for 2 things - discipline and stamina, and the stamina was put to the test more so at our school's tryouts than any other. We didn't touch a soccer ball the first morning of tryouts, which typically consisted of being timed in a 2 mile run and then running sprints until lunch. And while I may be a decent runner these days, I was an asthmatic disaster with any sort of distance running back then (and yes, I'm counting a 2 miler as a distance run). We were supposed to break 12:30. I ran 14:10. It was not pretty. But somehow, the miraculous happens and I just barely make the team, as our coach tells me I was the last player to make it. It was a confusing day for the ego. I ride a lot of pine that year, we get ousted in regionals, and 12 years after it first happened, soccer once again makes me cry. 

Senior year sees one of the great examples of the "what doesn't kill me only makes me stronger" theory. On the eve of tryouts (again, my most hated day of the year), I get a phone call at 11:00pm. It's my girlfriend Christy. My first love. A fellow soccer player who's been by my side for 8 months (an eternity in high school relationships) . . . and she's dumping me. Yeah, that sucked. But I end up going out that week and absolutely KILLING tryouts. I earn a starting spot on a team that finishes the regular season with no losses and just a single tie. We dominate . . . until we play in a monsoon-filled mud-bowl of a game in regionals. Our stud players get neutralized by the weather and the field, and we lose 2-0. Tears are shed again, as my varsity jacket with an empty line on the back never gets filled out with "State Champs." That team becomes my Al Bundy "4 touchdowns in a single game" moment.

College

Time spent playing obviously goes down, but I still play a shit ton of games, in intramural leagues and in a city league. I start working for the intramural department, and start playing even more. "Oh, your team is a down person and needs someone? Well I'm an intramural supervisor, and I'll just supervise myself onto your team while I'm still on the clock." It was a nice perk.

While playing intramurals though I suffer my one of only 2 injuries to ever sideline me extensively. I break my shin playing in a coed game. Clean play. 50-50 ball. He just happened to get the ball and all of my shin,  breaking it in 2, despite me wearing shin guards (the same pair that I had been wearing since junior high, and the same pair I wear today. I think they've been washed about 5 times in their lifespan. I love them). I spend 6 weeks in a full leg cast, 6 with a cast on just my lower leg, and 6 in a walking boot. Sadly the casts don't work like magic with the ladies like I hoped they would.

Post-College

I play in some fairly hardcore Boston leagues. The league winners typically end up winning the state cup (ummm, that's not us).  We practice in mid-March with snow on the ground. We nearly end up in fights in about 1/3 of the games. One game ends 15 minutes into it as an opposing player, slightly disgruntled with a call, throws a punch at the ref. Eventually, I decide these leagues are more work than fun.

Grad school sees a whole lot of pick-up soccer with other grad students. We play in the Purdue intramural league and end up playing a team of freshmen in the finals. Youth and speed vs experience, and experience wins out. It was gratifying . . . stupid punk kids with their FaceSpaces and their hip-hoppy music. 

However, while playing indoor I suffer side-lining injury #2 - a badly sprained ankle. While not actually broken, it keeps me from playing for 6 months. Lethargy starts to set in.

After grad school, after moving back to Boston, I continue to not play for awhile. I get fatter. Eventually, I say "what the fuck am I doing?" I join several coed-yet-competitive leagues, drop the weight, and once again appreciate the love of my life. Yeah, that sounds lame, but I'm ALWAYS happy playing soccer, so deal with it.

Results

If you want to get nerdy and see the spreadsheet, it's HERE.

Estimated # of games played:  ~900

Estimated # of practices:  ~750

Estimated total hours:  ~2,000

Wow. That's a shit ton of soccer, but its still WAAAAAY short of the 10,000 required for being an expert. Even if I was short by 50%, and even if you count every hour I've spent watching games or even playing soccer video games, I'd still be only halfway there. The dream of playing professional soccer? . . . Dead. Sigh.

But what those numbers do mean is that I fucking LOVE soccer, and it means that since I was about 14, I've dreamed of seeing a soccer game in Europe. I've been lucky enough to see 3 international games so far, 1 of them being a World Cup game, but since they all took place in the US, the atmosphere was "good" at best.

The friendly game between the US and England in 2005 actually had a better atmosphere than the World Cup game between the US and Switzerland back in 1994, thanks mainly to the 20,000 or so English fans in attendance. They were outnumbered, but they ran Soldier Field that day. Drunken singing and chanting all game. My personal favorite was them signing "George Bush is a wanker", to which we responded . . . . by also singing "George Bush is a wanker". 

Thus, a European league game has been #1 on my bucket list since early high school. So when Yaneeka asked me to meet up with her and Buddy in Barcelona, before I even checked the cost of flights, I grabbed my phone and checked FC Barcelona's schedule. They were playing at home that weekend, and money immediately became meaningless to me. I was going.

The Game

As if Yaneeka scoring a hotel room wasn't enough. She was able to get her company's corporate tickets to the game. So we weren't just going to see the world's best team, with the world's best player in Messi, we were going in style. The tickets (valued at about $400) gave us access to Snooty Central - a lounge that served free food, wine and beer an hour before the game and an hour after. It was ridiculous, and I literally had to buy dress shoes while over there so I could get into the lounge. But $70 dress shoes are small price to pay for fulfilling your #1 lifetime goal.

 $400 worth of Snooty Pre-Gaming. I'm 90% sure we ended up sitting next to guys in the Russian mafia

But before we even got up to the lounge, I had my Christmas morning moment. We got our tickets scanned, and I immediately ran to the first entrance I could find, walked out, saw this . . . 

 

. . . and was in heaven. It was absolutely surreal to finally be standing there, less than an hour from game time. Absolutely . . . surreal.

The game itself was pretty damn good. Barcelona took a 1-0 lead on a David Villa goal 3 minutes.  Athletico Bilbao tied it up in the 50th on a penalty kick, after a weak foul, but thy lord and savior Lionel Messi put Barca back on top in the 78th minute. He had magical moment after magical moment, but it was a fairly simple cross in the end that he scored on. On the whole, Barca DOMINATED the game. I checked the numbers afterwards and they held possession for 79% of the game. That's unfathomable. Those numbers are better than video game numbers. Ridiculous. Anyway, a few shots from the game:

 Messi and Dani Alves warming up. I could have watched this for an hour and been happy.

 One of my favorite players, Pique, going for a header (though he played like shit that game)

 

God, taking a corner kick

Pep giving David Villa a good-game-butt-slap

And my favorite video is probably this one.  Sometimes you watch a pro game and think "eh, these guys are good, but I might be able to hang for awhile." But then you watch them do a half-ass warm-up drill playing keep-away and your jaw drops. They're, ummm, really good. Really Really good. 

So the game was everything I hoped it could be, as I now search for a new top item for my bucket list. And if I didn't do another Do-52-New list item all year, I'd be OK, because the list helped me get to this formerly-unthinkable goal.  Again, absolutely surreal.

Though one of the most memorable scenes occurred immediately after the game. Sometimes after Red Sox games, you'll hear a "Yankees suck" chant on the subway ride home. It's amusing . . . for awhile. But in the subway after the Barca game, there was no hate. Only joy. Eight or so decked-out fans broke out in song. A good minute or so long, with lines for nearly every starter on the team. "Fiesta . . . fiesta fiesta . . . Andres Iiiiiiiniesta." And god damn it was beautiful. 

• Yaneeka . . . what else can I say? You rock. Thanks again for everything. The shot below couldn't have happened without you.

 Pure . . . Joy

Item #19 - Visit Barcelona

"En Espanol, my nickname es El Tigre!"   -Senor Chang!

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When it comes to grad school, being an engineer is the way to go. I spent 2 years at Purdue, and after getting hooked up with the right program and the right professor, I basically had a free ride after my first semester (like most grad school engineers). Tuition and about $1400 per months stipend (and while that may cover rent about little else in Boston, in West Lafayette, I could live like a king in the land of country bumpkins. The Coors Light flowed like water).

In my last semester there, my professor was undergoing a project with some of his undergrads.The students worked on a design project in parallel with a similar team from the Dublin Institute of Technology, with the final goal being a pair of presentations in Dublin. Somehow, I got tabbed to be the grad student adviser to the team of undergrads. And somehow, when the time came for the aforementioned presentations, there was leftover money in the budget for me to tag along with the team to Ireland. And like the last 3/4 of grad school, the trip was completely free. Granted, it was 4-to-a-room-in-a-hostel free, but considering I had never been out of North America, that was cool with me.

So we went. We drank Guinness.  We toured around. We drank Guinness.  We gave the presentations. We drank Guinness. You get the picture (seriously, Guinness is cheaper than Bud Light there. Up is down. Black is white. . . ).  And after having explored Dublin for 5 days, one of the other students and I hopped over to London for a 24 hour whirlwind extravaganza, seeing every tourist trap along the Thames we could fit into a single day.

When the trip wrapped up though, and I got back the The WL (as the cool kids call it (note: no actual cool kids exist in West Lafayette)), and I processed the week, while I certainly had a great time, I was left thinking . . . that didn't FEEL like Europe. Dublin was kind of like visiting Frankenmuth, Michigan.  Cool. Relatively quaint.A different culture, but not THAT different.  Dublin just happened to be, ummm, authentic. And London (at least the heart of it) was basically like visiting New York City, but with much cooler, and less-douchey, accents.  In both cases, I never really felt like I was out-of-place, and for some reason, I realized I actually wanted that feeling. Up to that point, the most out-of-place I had ever been was in Cozumel, Mexico, and that was just 1 day on a cruise, and in a very touristy area (though our cab driver did take us to La Casa de Putas. I guess my American joke/sarcasm didn't translate). I wanted to experience being abroad, and Dublin and London just didn't give me that out-of-place experience (I probably should have worn a George W shirt the whole time I was there. I think might have worked and drawn some European glares)

Fast forward to 4 weeks ago, and I randomly got my chance, thanks to a friend (Yaneeka) traveling to Barcelona for work. Friend #2, Buddy, was heading over to meet her (and eventually friend #3 Ryan would too). They invited me, and after first checking to make sure FC Barcelona (the local soccer team) was playing at home, which they were, I checked flights. And with a free hotel room, how could I not say no to a 4 day Barcelona vacation for just the cost of a $650 flight? Thus, a mere 9 days after booking the flight, I was finally able to make it to mainland Europe, truly be an American abroad, and add a list item I totally expect expect to actually happen.

I could give a play-by-play of the entire trip here, but that's probably the modern day equivalent of showing off vacation slides with a projector to your neighbors in the 60's. And since I can't supply you, the lovely reader, with enough wine/beer/absinthe to get through that, if you want to check out my entire trip, you can see the whole Picasa gallery here (with the exception of the soccer game, which gets its own post later). Otherwise, some random thoughts on my new favorite city:

• This is one of the first times I got sticker shock on something being INexpensive. I expected to be raped by the exhange rate while staying in a ritzy Mediterranean city. And while it wasn't stellar ($1 = 0.7 euro), the prices in Barcelona kind of made up for it. 10 subway rides for about $13. The dress shoes I bought for the soccer game (again, to be explained later) were $70. And the fancy tapas meal we had probably cost less than Tasca on Comm Ave in Brighton. Comparatively, a very cost-effective trip.
• Cleanest . . . city . . . ever. Granted were stayed in tourist central, but everywhere we went was clean. And while we were warned a little about pickpockets, I never felt unsafe. 
• You could have survived not knowing a lick of Spanish, but it helped to know the basic stuff that I did know. But what was great was that NOT knowing a certain word or phrase didn't automatically get a look of disdain from the locals.  On the other hand, I spent 3-4 hours on a layover in Paris, and EVERYONE gave off the "silly uneducated American, get out of my country" vibe. I now have no need to ever visit Paris, and I have no problem basing that on a layover. Damn cheese-eating surrender monkeys.

 And a few random picture highlights:

LOVED the architecture. It seemed like every single building had a balcony with metal railing, which gave it that old-timey-euro feel, which London and Dublin didn't have. My new beautification plan for Detroit isn't to tear down all the abandoned buildings. Costs too much. Just add balconies to everything. Second floor, first floor, basements, whatever. More balconies! They just announced a $200+ million renovation for Cobo Hall in Detroit? Should have just spent $1 million and lined the outside with balconies.

 

The one semi-lame scenery picture . . . but I love it, so deal with it. When I pictured Mediterranean Europe beforehand, I pictured the aforementioned balconies,and the cityscape with mountains behind it. Getting up Montjuic gave me my moneyshot. And note the sign with the man falling down the mountain. We did not fall down the mountain.

 

The bar directly across the street/alley from our hotel was open until 3am every night and also had live music every night. We finished all 4 nights there (despite having a 5am flight the day we left), and how could we not - it was called Cheers. It was a sign.

One bar had Duff beer. Of course Buddy had it.

I've helped spread Shake Face across several states, and now, I've helped spread it to Europe. We taught it to the bartenders at Cheers, despite their lack of English. "Como se dice Shake? y con la cara. Si? Comprendes?"

 I don't know what the hell the movie Chico & Rita is about, but I'm not sure how they're allowed to advertise in a public subway for what appears to be an animated porno. Why is Rita giving Chico an HJ while he's trying to play the piano? Loco.

No great conclusion to this adventure other than that i LOVE Barcelona. If I were allowed to take a year out of my life and go and live anywhere right now, it would be Barcelona. Immerse myself. Legitimately learn Spanish (though they actually speak Catalan in Barcelona). Get season tickets to FC Barcelona so I can drool over Messi every week. Yeah . . . that would be nice.

Item #18 - Eat at Pizzeria Regina and Santarpio's

I've now spent the majority of my live in either the Detroit area or the Boston area (I also spent 2 years living in West Lafayette in middle-of-freaking-nowhere Indiana, but we're just going to try and forget about those two years because, well, as i said, it was in the middle of nowhere).

Anyway, having spent extensive time in both Boston and Detroit, I have a pretty good idea now of what each city can do better than the other. Their pro's, their con's. Strengths and weaknesses. For example, based on my knowledge and my experience, here is a brief list of things that Boston has over Detroit:

• Better crime rate
• Better schools
• Better bar scene
• Better history
• Better employment rate
• Better pay
• Better restaurants
• Better mass transit
• Better hospitals
• Better museums
• Better pro sports teams (based on current success)
• Better looking quarterback (yowza!)
• Better shopping
• Better beer selections

So I guess Boston's a decent town, ya know, if you consider any of those things to be important for whatever reason.  Really, unless your name is Captain Detroit (like my buddy Drew), it's pretty damn tough to put together any type of argument for Detroit over Boston on any sort of large-scale debate. But, that doesn't mean Detroit isn't complete devoid of any sort of  . . . charm?

I feel like talking about Detroit is kind of like talking about your race. I know Detroit is in rut. A loooooooong loooooong rut without all that much hope in sight (though I hope and pray it does find a way out of this rut). And I'll talk shit about Detroit to anyone. But I lived there. I'm allowed to. You can take the boy out of Detroit, but you can't the Detroit out of the boy, etc (despite the fact that I write this as a white boy who grew up in the uber-white middle-class suburb of Sterling Heights, AKA, Sterling Whites, 9 miles from the Detroit city limits). But when I hear people out here talk shit about Detroit, I want to say "fuck you, man. You're not one of us. You can't use those words about Detroit. Only we Detroiters can say that about Detroit" (because I actually went to downtown 4 times a year from the burbs . . . . thug life, holla).

But Detroit does have it's positive points:

• Better music. The "music scene" might be better in Boston, but you can't argue the people repping the cities. Detroit has something for everyone - Eminem, the White Stripes, Kid Rock, Ted Nugent, Bob Seager, Madonna, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, just to name a few. Oh, and it kind of has entire genre named after it in "Motown." But for all of it's history in other aspects in life, Boston comes up pretty damn weak in music. Aerosmith? Overrated. New Kids on the Block? Lame. Dropkick Murphy's? Nobody outside New England cares. And of course, Marky Mark. Though I'm unfamiliar with the origins of his Funky Bunch
• Better casinos. Sure, Boston doesn't have them yet, and thus you have to drive 2 hours to get to one, but technically, Detroit's are then better.
• Lower cost of living. You can buy a house for $100. No seriously. Probably what you might call a "fixer upper."

But the one that matters here is that Detroit by far has better pizza. Boston's got a stranglehold on the restaurant biz on the whole, what with Detroit's infatuation on chain restaurants, but 90% of the pizza out here is generic "(insert city name) House of Pizza." And it's crap.

Though really, pizza is kind of like sex. Even when you have a bad piece of pie, in the scheme of life, it's still pretty damn good.

The 2 best places I've been to out here have been Uno's (for deep dish) and Bertucci's, and both of those are giant chains. And before the yuppie Bostonians start crying, yes, I've had Upper Crust. It's decent, but it's overpriced and overrated, and your opinion of it is wrong.

Hi-Fi Pizza also gets a nod here. But while I've had it 20 or so times (including last night), I still think I've yet to have it less than 5 beers deep and anytime before 1:00am. So the jury is out on it's actual deliciousness. 

But Detroit has a much better batting average when it comes to quality pizza. Pizzapapalis in Greektown is probably my favorite deep dish place around. Buddy's pizza, with its sauce-on-top style is nationally known. The old Backroom in Ann Arbor remains on my list of meals-to-have-on-death-row.

And even the chains around there are good, and unlike Boston, each has their own unique style and taste. Jet's has a phenomenal square sicilian style (something almost no place in Boston does). Hungry Howie's invented the idea of flavored crust years ago. Little Caeser's created the $5 hot-n-ready (though their square is 10x better than their round for some reason) and Domino's invented pizza delivery (yeah, Domino's and Little Caeser's are national, but they're based in Detroit, so Detroit gets the props for the innovations).

So after bitching about Boston pizza for years, it was time to give the 2 most famous places around here a shot at being this city's saving graces for pizza - Santarpio's and Pizzeria Regina. I'd seen and heard about them for years, but never put in the tiny bit of effort required to check them out.

Santarpio's is little hole-in-the-wall by the airport, which means if you go there, you should probably park close and walk fast (like going to Detroit!). And if you need to know more about the decor and atmosphere, I think the extensive beer list will probably give you a good idea about it - Bud, Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller, Miller Lite, Heineken, Rolling Rock and Labatt's (again, kind of like going to any bar in Detroit). But I was there for the food, not the brew. So my friend Joy met me up there for some sausage and garlic "bar pie".

And it was . . . pretty good. Nothing to blow my socks off, but good. Again, there's not really any such thing as bad pizza. But I thought it was just a better than average "bar pie." And while I certainly enjoyed it, I think I was just expecting a little more given the hype (I'm pretty sure these guys paid off the Phantom Gourmet).

So the last hope for Boston Pizza was Pizzeria Regina. It's the old-timey brick oven place in the North End that goes back to 1926, but they recently opened a new site in Allston a mile or so down the road (they have a bunch of food court locations, but I think this might only be their second actual restaurant). So Walter, Robin, Matt and I headed to it a few weeks ago for some more sausage and garlic delightfulness, and it was . . .

fantastic. I think this was the first time that I had "Boston pizza" and was thoroughly satisfied. A good hearty slice (none of this bullshit NY this slice crap) with ample toppings and ample cheese. And thus, the long 7 year journey to find legit Boston pizza FINALLY came to a happy ending.

Random notes:

• If you're under the age of 50, and thus are somewhat familiar with a "reader" or an "RSS feed," I suggest you use the "Subscribe to" feature on the right to subscribe to these posts with the Googles and such. Not that my writing is groundbreaking or anything, but if you're still reading down here after a post about pizza places, then you probably dig me a little, and this will make your life easier. And also because I don't feel like posting every not-amazingly-interesting thing on Facebook.
• This was one of the toughest posts to write. A, because there's only so much you can say about going to 2 pizza parlors. And B, because I 3 other posts to write that are vastly more exciting. Going to Barcelona, going to European soccer/futbol, and as of today, doing the flying trapeze.