Adventures in public transit: my football weekend in DC

I went to the Durham Amtrak station and waited for my train. I saw an old acquaintance in the lobby with two of his friends, who were going up to DC for one of their bachelor party, so we sat together. I didn't get much of the reading I'd intended done, but it was an enjoyable, convivial trip.

We were making good time, no delays, until about an hour north of Richmond, when we stopped. The engineer said there was a disabled freight train ahead of us, so we had to wait. (In the US, the freight companies own the tracks and have right of way, everywhere except the line between DC and Boston. Also, there is only one pair of tracks in most routes.) So we sat there for half an hour, when the engineer came back on and said the train was two miles long, so we'd be backing up to switch tracks.

We backed up most of the way to Richmond, which is apparently the closest switch. So I was about an hour and a half late, but I eventually made it to my sister's, where I dropped my bags off, and we walked out to Agora for Turkish (and a little Greek) tapas. I finally tried Imam bayildi (it was quite good). The falafel was excellent, and I took a couple of her brussels sprouts, which were fried and quite tasty.

Saturday I met a friend in Bethesda for lunch. My plan was to walk over to Dupont Circle to catch the red line north, except the red line was closed between Woodley Park and Metro Center for track work. So I took the shuttle and eventually made it to Bethesda. We ate at Tandoori Nights. I liked the food I had, paneer krahi. So then I went back to DC. At Woodley Park, everyone had to get out and get onto buses. I was herded onto what was apparently an express bus, so I had to then go find a second bus that would take me back to Dupont and actually let me out.

It was really fcking hot all weekend, with loads of humidity, so when I made my planned stop at Teaism to purchase looseleaf tea, I also bought a cup of iced tisane (which was one of the teas I bought, Ginger Zing. I liked it a lot.) which helped me get back to my sister's without getting massively dehydrated. (Gatorade is my BFF.)

That night we went out for wood-fired pizza at Matchbox, and my sister made pie. She lives in walking distance of both Dupont Circle and U St, which is really convenient.

Sunday morning, I had yet another transit adventure. I didn't want to deal with the line work (all of Metro was undergoing maintenance), so I opted for a bus route with one transfer. I got on the bus labeled for where I was going, except ... it stopped. So the driver told me I should walk a few blocks down to Pennsylvania and catch the bus I was going to get there. Except when I got to the stop and called up NextBus, it told me there were no buses coming "for a long time." So I did the only thing left: I called Ben's brother, to whose house I was going anyway. (I stayed with him Sunday night, so I had my luggage with me.) He was dropping a friend off at National and could pick me up in about 20 minutes. So I got a ride in his Miata with the top down.

Then we had to coordinate lunch for three people (me, him, his girlfriend) before going to RFK Stadium for the game. I've written more about the game for another blog, and you can read it there. Or you can look at my photos here. Here's a picture of me at the stadium. We were really close to the field.



After the game, we went back to their house and decided what to do for dinner. We eventually opted to walk over to a Thai restaurant, at which point it started pouring rain. We got out rain gear and walked maybe two blocks before I said, "I don't suppose this place delivers." Of course they do, so we walked back, dried off, and got take-out Thai food.

Monday morning's transit adventure wasn't much of an adventure. Aside from having to wait until the rain slowed down before I walked to the Metro station, getting from their house to Union Station wasn't a problem at all. The Amtrak train was delayed 25 minutes, so I had to wait in the gate area for longer than anticipated. That was the only delay, however, and I got a lot of reading done. I even took a nap.

One thing I always find surprising about Amtrak is how weird it is compared to European trains. Amtrak makes you get on particular cars based on where your destination is. They put tags over your seat with where you're getting off. The conductor will tell people their stop is coming up, personally, not just via the overhead communication system. Only certain doors open at any stop. It's just so weird. Having ridden trains in Germany, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, and Japan, where the conductors basically ignore you except to ask for your ticket (and fine you if you have the wrong one; also, in Germany at least, you can buy your ticket on the train from the conductor), I find this near paternalism utterly bizarre. The only time I've had to sit in a particular car was when I took the train from Berlin to Vienna, which split into two trains in the Czech Republic, so you had to sit in the right half of the train if you didn't want to end up somewhere like Brno instead. (I had a reserved seat anyway.)

Also, every time my German friends complain about how terrible Deutsche Bahn is, I want to challenge them to plan a trip on Amtrak.

One thing I had confirmed this weekend, though, is that I am definitely a city girl. I like tall buildings, lots of people, walking to get groceries or food. While we were driving home on the highway, I had this sense of something missing. Boredom. Loneliness. A need to get back to a city. Ideally, I want to live in Berlin. I can't afford to live in DC. (Also you really need a car, or a friend with a car, or a zipcar membership, if you want to go anywhere like MD or VA on a weekend or during non-commuting hours.)

Friday Miscellany

Amtrak willing, as you read this, I am on my way to Washington, DC, to see the German men's soccer team take on the Americans in a friendly on Sunday. I'm seeing my sister and some friends, as well as my brother-in-law and his girlfriend.

I've added share this links to the blog, so you can just click a button and share to twitter or wherever.

I plan to make headway in this year's Hugo nominees as I sit in a train for about 12 hours round trip, fingers crossed it doesn't take more. The last time I did this, I was delayed an hour at least each way. Which is why I'm always somewhere between horrified and amused when I see Germans ranting about how horrible Deutsche Bahn is. I challenge them to come here and try to get from Raleigh/Durham to Memphis by train (hint: you can't) or take a cross-country trip (hint: those 3000 miles will take 68 hours, with a short layover. You can drive from coast to coast in about 45 hours.)

Right, tangent. Sorry.

I don't know if there'll be a post on Monday. I might have time to write something up about the short stories, but I won't make any promises.

Movie review: Offside

Offside, 2006. Directed by Jafar Panahi.

Iranian director Panahi is rather controversial at home, where he is currently serving a six-year jail sentence for “assembly and colluding with the intention to commit crimes against the country’s national security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic,” and is banned for making movies for twenty years.

Offside is a movie about women living in Tehran who want to watch the Iranian national team play Bahrain in the final match of the 2006 World Cup qualifiers in mid-2005. Women aren't allowed to go to stadiums, because there are men there, and these men may swear or curse in manners that will harm women's delicate sensibilities.

It starts with one girl, wearing a ball cap, loose fitting clothing, and an Iranian flag around her shoulders like a scarf, riding a bus to Azadi Stadium. She buys a ticket from a scalper and joins the queue to get in, where she is pulled aside and taken to a holding area above the outer rings of the stands, to wait for the Vice Squad to pick them up.

There are other girls and young women there, all of whom just want to watch their national team qualify for the World Cup. The film focuses on them and how they relate to each other and the Army guys guarding them. Several times, they get one of the guards to narrate the action on the pitch.

The tone is comedic, the dark humor you use when the situation you're in is so ludicrous but you can't do anything about it, because, as he says in the interview that's one of the extras on the DVD, all you can do is laugh at the absurdity.

The movie isn't much about soccer (you only see a few moments of the game, and that on a TV screen in the background), but more a social commentary on restrictions in the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is why the official censors aren't very keen on it.

I recommend this movie, even if you're not a soccer fan. If you are a soccer fan, I highly recommend it.

Book review: Tor!

Tor! The Story of German Football by Ulrich Hesse-Lichtenberger, revised 2002 edition

As I may have mentioned, I'm a fan of German football (soccer), so this book is right up my alley. It came recommended by many people, and what I've read of Hesse's writing (for places like ESPN Soccernet) I've enjoyed.

The books opens in Bern, on July 4, 1954, with a man named Fritz Walter. It is a fateful day for German football, the Miracle of Bern. The Germans have somehow made it to the finals of the World Cup and are facing a much stronger team.

He takes the reader from the birth of football in Germany (a slow process, stymied by the Prussian ideals of fitness and a preference for gymnastics) through both World Wars and their aftermaths, to the founding of the Bundesliga in 1963 (100 years after the English football association was founded, and a good 75 years after the first regional leagues were founded in Germany). He takes a brief side trip to the strange world of football in the GDR.

The book closes in Korea, in June 2002. Fritz Walter passed away four days prior. The Germans have somehow made it to the finals of the World Cup, where they will face Brazil (and lose 0:2, the only goals conceded by Olli Kahn in the tournament.) Miroslav Klose expresses his sadness at his friend and mentor's death and returns to training for the next match.

Hesse's writing is never dry, and occasionally self-deprecating. The chapters set during and after the Wars are poignant and highlight the pointlessness of the Great War. He doesn't gloss over the NSDAP years, where some clubs acted admirably; others less so.

If you're a fan of German football, this book belongs on your shelf. If you aren't, you may find it less interesting.

I need more consistency

I'm not very good at blogging regularly. That's probably because it takes effort to put a thoughtful post together, about a book or movie or a meta topic, and I'm just not very up for that lately. I seem to be more in the "say something random on twitter" mindset lately.

That, and there just isn't all that much going on right now. I still have a good-sized stack of books to review. I'm still making progress on writing. That's about it.

Oh, and I'm helping run a new convention, which eats part of my life (but not much, because I'm just a track director).

My gardenias are flowering, and they smell really good. If I can figure out how, I want to try rooting some cuttings so I can have more. It'd be a ton of effort, but we could replace the ugly bushes next to the front stairs with gardenias. A ton of effort; the bushes are 12 years old and have massive taproots. But the gardenias would smell much prettier when we open the window.

Oddly, I'm not much of a gardener. I like puttering around a bit and having fresh herbs, but I hate weeding and maintenance. Which is kind of a problem.

I went to Animazement on Saturday. I hadn't gone in 2 or 3 years, mainly because I didn't want to spend money to be allowed to go in and spend money. But they had Ichiro Itano, one of the animators and directors of Macross (who invented the Itano Circus), and I wanted to see him. So I went, paid my money, got DVD liner notes signed and heard a great panel with amusing stories (and one fanboy who posed his question in Japanese). I didn't spend much in the dealers room. I only got a tai chi sword (which I need for my class, and was cheaper than ordering one online) and a little figurine. Ben got a bunch of stuff, including some Macross art to get signed.

Last night, Ben and I went to see the Carolina Railhawks play the LA Galaxy in a cup tournament. It was pretty fun, and much nicer than the last Railhawks game we went to that got thunderstormed-out. The Railhawks won, surprisingly, though LAG didn't send most of their first string. It's such a fun atmosphere, though the lack of vegetarian food for dinner at their concession is disappointing. (We planned ahead and stopped at Taco Bell. They didn't put my bean burrito on the order at all. So I had a smoothie, a pretzel, and ice cream for dinner :/ Moral of the story: always check your drive-thru order before you leave.)

I don't promise that I'll get any better at blogging regularly, though I need to get reviews up. One a week will get me into July, anyway...

Show homophobia the red card.

I'm a fan of association football, and I'm an advocate for LGBT rights. There's a brand new campaign to promote awareness of homophobia in football and to kick it out of the game: Red Card Homophobia.

It started out over in livejournal, but they also have tumblr, facebook, and twitter accounts, and a forum.

Anyway, all this to say that I wrote a piece over there on football culture and homophobia. Go have a read!

(association) FOOTBALL!

As you may know, I'm a football (soccer) fan. Between June 12 and July 13, I watched close to 60 football matches, mostly in Spanish (on Univision, low-def). I own a jersey for the German national team (2006) and covet a 2010 away jersey in gorgeous black.

The Bundesliga's just starting up again, 3 match days into their 34-match season. I had to decide which team to follow. This was difficult. In years past, it's been more of a peripheral attention I've paid, because US news sites don't really cover German football, and it was hard to keep track. But now there are blogs and livejournal communities and twitterfeeds, and all sorts of things that are made possible with the internet.

Anyway. I don't live in Germany, much to my dismay. If I did, I'd live in Berlin, so picking a Berlin team is only natural, right? Hertha BSC was relegated to the 2nd league after a disastrous 2009/10 season, and who cares about the 2. BuLi, right? But Berlin is the home of my heart, so Hertha is the team of my heart. And they're in 3rd place in the 2nd league right now, having won all three of their games so far (ties in points are decided on goal differential, and they're 3rd on that.) So maybe they'll be back in the 1st league in 2011!

So I looked for a 1. BuLi team. There are some players from the national team whom I really like watching play, so I checked out their teams. Mesut Özil was bought by Real Madrid, so that took away my main reason for interest in Werder Bremen. As much as I like Müller, Klose, Schweinsteiger, et al, there's no way in hell I'm rooting for FC Bayern. It's like rooting for the Yankees (if you're not from New York or don't have a long-standing family tradition).

Then there's the lovely center-back Arne Friedrich, who used to play at Hertha, but moved to Wolfsburg after they were relegated. Then he slipped a disc in practice and had to get surgery, so he *still* hasn't played this season. :P

I don't like deciding on something without seeing how they play, so I watched a few Wolfsburg matches, and I tried watching a Werder match, but I couldn't get into it. And, despite the fact that the Wolves have lost all three of their matches so far (one of which went from a comfortable 3:1 at half time to 3:4 at the end), I still like them. When they actually work together, they look good. And we're doing better than Schalke (though only on goal differential...) The defense keeps falling down on the job, though. (Hopefully that'll change when Arne's deemed fit to play again.)

It's weird to sit down and consciously decide which team to support. It's not like anyone in my family has a favorite team in the German Football League; they're all American Football fans, if they follow sports at all.

I really need to time my next trip to Germany to include a live Bundesliga match. Tickets aren't too unreasonably priced.