Real Madrid Photos

Photos from last month's Real Madrid v. DC United football match.

Real Madrid

I went to see the Real Madrid - DC United football (soccer) match last night a Qwest Field (with my Mom who is in town this week). It was the second soccer game that I've attended (and the first for my Mom). I went to see Manchester United beat Celtic FC three years ago when they were in Seattle.

Zidane retired, but Real Madrid has David Beckham and the recently acquired Ruud van Nistelrooy. They were clearly the better team, controlling the possession and flow of the game and getting a lot more chances, but they couldn't get any breaks and missed all but one of their chances. In the end it ended up a 1-1 draw.

The Seattle PI has more details.

Vacation

I'm back from my (second) great European adventure. I started with a visit to my cousin Michael and his girlfriend Katie in London then travelled around Zealand/Øresund in Denmark and Sweden (i.e. Copenhagen). Afterward I went on the Berlin to Budapest Contiki tour (that also included intermediate stops in Prague and Vienna).

It was a lot of travelling (14 towns and cities in 8 countries, 6 airports, 6 train stations, 2 boats, well over 100 km of walking, and far too many buses, subways, and taxis to count), but I had a great time and so many unforgettable experiences - an English picnic in Hampstead Heath, sailing a Viking ship across a fjord, visiting the Tivoli amusement park, World Cup parties in Berlin, enjoying plum wine with friends in an open-air cafe on Prague's Old Town Square, cruising down the Vltava River, riding the famous Prater ferris wheel, and relaxing in the Gellért Thermal Baths.

I'm always willing to try new food and drinks, especially while travelling - salmon carpaccio (oops, I thought it was going to be cooked!) smoked eel smørrebrød (interesting...and I learned that the point and pick method of choosing food can yield some unexpected choices!), a giant pork knuckle with a 1 litre beer mug in Berlin (this meal can only be described as 'massive'), Sacher Torte chocolate cake at the Sacher Hotel in Vienna (very yummy), and a shot of absinthe ("Prost" to the 'green fairy'). And of course, I would be remiss if I did not have a 'Danish' pastry (weinerbrød) in Denmark!

I visited a lot of churches including Vor Frue Kirke with Thorvaldsen's beautiful marble statues of Jesus and the twelve Apostles, the ornate Berliner Dom, the singular Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächniskirche (the shattered bell tower is all the survived World War II), the beautifully rebuilt Dresden Frauenkirche, and St. Vitus in Prague Castle.

Of course, I also stopped at museums (e.g. HMS Belfast on the Thames, the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, and the famous Pergamon in Berlin), as well as palaces and castles (e.g. Kronborg Slot, Christiansborg, Prague Castle, the giant Schönbrunn (summer) and Hofburg (winter) palaces in Vienna).

The sights - Charles Bridge, the Brandenburg Gate and Reichstag, Fernsehturm TV tower, etc. - and history - a walking tour through Berlin (e.g. Checkpoint Charlie, Bebelplatz book burning commemoration, etc.) as well as the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and the Berlin Wall, etc. - were also numerous.

With all that, somehow I also made it to three concerts! - The Red Hot Chili Peppers in Prague (awesome), a classical music concert in Vienna, Pink in Heroes' Square in Budapest.

Lastly, I should mention all the wonderful people I met - the friendly and polite Danes as well as all the great people and new friends from the tour.

I'll post pictures (with stories) once I have time to sort through all the photographs that I took.

Amusing Article About Soccer (in the US)

American sports are played with your hands. Using your feet is for commies. is an amusing article about soccer in the US.

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The beauty of soccer for very young people is that, to create a simulacrum of the game, it requires very little skill. No other sport can bear such incompetence. With soccer, 22 kids can be running around, most of them aimlessly, or picking weeds by the sidelines, or crying for no apparent reason, and yet the game can have the general appearance of an actual soccer match. If there are three or four co-ordinated kids among the 22 flailing bodies, there will actually be dribbling, a few legal throw-ins, and a couple times when the ball stretches the back of the net. It will be soccer, more or less.

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