Confessions of a soccer hater

I don’t like soccer.

It’s a boring game. After watching twenty-two men chasing a ball for ninety minutes, you’d be lucky if they scored thrice. In 306 games in the Dutch Eredivisie this year, the average was 3.12 goals per game. That’s roughly one goal every half hour, or less if you include the half-time break. Major League Baseball teams managed 9.60 runs per game in the 2007 regular season. Granted, baseball games take longer, but not more than three times as long.

Normally, it’s quite possible to avoid soccer, but every other summer there’s a European Championship or a World Championship. During those three or four weeks, it’s as if there’s nothing but soccer. It’s on every tv channel, in every newspaper, on every website. Homes and bars and stores turn orange. Even people turn orange, and Planet Earth might as well be a giant soccer ball.

Most annoyingly, nobody seems to be allowed not to like soccer for the duration of the tournament. The soccer craze is forced upon you, whether you like it or not. You have to watch the games and talk about them the next day. That’s society’s fault, though, not the game’s.

Indeed, it’s no different this time. The European Championship started last week and it’s everywhere. Just two more weeks, and I’ll be free again until June 11th, 2010.

Still…

I watched the Netherlands’ first game on Monday, against reigning World Champs Italy, and I have to confess I enjoyed it. The score was certainly pleasing enough: 3-0 in our favour. Beforehand, a draw was considered an optimistic prediction. Our squad played their best game in years, Italy their worst. And yes, I watched it in its entirety, and I wasn’t bored. (Well, perhaps a little bit at some point during the second half. I continued to watch with one eye, while reading a magazine with the other.)

Of course, I didn’t have much else to do that night. I was visiting my thesis advisor in Garching this week. That’s a nice little German town. Nice, and very quiet. I thought I might as well watch the game for a while.

Yesterday, during supper, Croatia were beating Germany. That was fun as well, if for a different reason. The German commentator was so terribly desperate that I almost felt sorry for him. It’s only a game!

The Netherlands’ second game is on right now, against France. It’s two thirds through the first half and, much to my surprise, we’ve got a 1-0 lead. Perhaps I should turn on my television. I might enjoy it
again…

[Update: We beat France 4-1 to secure first place in Group C, the "Group of Death" with World Champions Italy and WC runners-up France, and we haven't even played the third and final game yet. Group of Death indeed! It'll be the death of Italy or France, or both if we let Romania win on Tuesday.]

Updated travel map

This map shows the countries I’ve visited over the years (click the image for a larger version), colour-coded according to the reason I went there. Gold stands for business, blue for pleasure, and purple for both. In case a country consists of disconnected pieces of land, I only painted the area or areas I actually went. The list currently stands as follows:

Austria
Belgium
Chile
China
Czech Republic
Denmark
France
Germany
Italy
Luxembourg
Mauritius
Netherlands (yes, really!)
Norway
Portugal
South Africa
Spain
Swaziland
Sweden
Switzerland
Turkey
United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland)
United States

Third weekend: Columbus, Cleveland and the countryside

I’ve been involved in an online writing community since 2000. Two of the friends I’ve made there live in Ohio: T. some distance south of Columbus, and A. in an eastern suburb of Cleveland. I had the great pleasure of visiting both of them this weekend.

Steve was kind enough to drive me to Newark on Saturday, where I picked up a rental car. I met T. and M., a friend of hers, at the Franklin Park Conservatory. This is a botanical garden, but they also have several indoor biomes. (Given the time of year, there wasn’t anything of interest to see in the outdoors part.) The place is set up really nice and it’s very diverse. I’ll add a few photos to give you an idea:

When we’d seen everything at the conservatory, we drove to the North Market for lunch, and to a Starbucks afterwards for tea. We pretty much spent the rest of the afternoon there, chatting about everything and nothing that’s connected us for the past seven plus years. T., thank you again for the great time we had.

I drove up to Cleveland on Sunday morning to meet A. and her husband R. at a local restaurant. We didn’t have anything specific planned to do in Cleveland, and we didn’t need anything. We had such a great time chatting that we spent several hours at the restaurant (extending lunch into tea), simply talking. A. then invited me over to her place for supper and to watch the Super Bowl. That was an invitation I couldn’t pass up! A. prepared a very tasty meal, which we ate in front of the television. As a bonus, the game turned out to be a very good and exciting one. A., thank you again for your hospitality and a great day.

I spend the night at a nearby hotel and had all of Monday to do some sightseeing and get back to Granville. I started out by driving up to Lake Erie, which brought me past the North Chagrin Reservation. This is one of sixteen parks in the Greater Cleveland area and it has a number of trails set out. At first, it looked a bit tricky to go hiking, as the paths were covered with a thin layer of snow and ice. However, it wasn’t slippery at all, so I did two 1.6-mile walks. The snow and ice made for some beautiful scenery:

I spent the rest of the day driving back to Newark and Granville, avoiding the freeways as much as possible. With its rolling hills, the Ohio countryside between Cleveland and Newark is actually quite beautiful. Of course, it’s also Amish territory, and indeed I encountered several horse-drawn buggies on the road.

After dropping the car off at the rental company, Steve brought me back to Granville for the last night of my stay in Ohio. It’s been a very successful visit scientifically and a wonderful experience overall. Steve’s input on my research was invaluable and his untiring efforts to make sure I enjoyed myself were very much appreciated. I’ll be flying back home tomorrow a very happy person.

Invited talk

The dean of Denison University’s Physics & Astronomy department was so kind as to invite me to give a talk about my research. The audience was a mix of undergraduate students (Denison doesn’t have graduate programs) and faculty members, so I had to include quite a bit of simple introduction (for the undergrads) before diving in deeper (for the faculty). Also, my current project is very much a work in progress, so it was a challenge to make a coherent whole out of all the loose parts. Based on the reactions afterwards, I did quite well. No one fell asleep, there were a few good questions at the end, and I got several compliments on both my research and the talk itself. That’s one to put on my CV!

Second weekend: bodies, ballparks and buildings

After visiting the Air Force Museum last weekend, Steve wanted to take me (and his son Matthew) out again this Saturday. His first idea was to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY, to indulge our mutual love for baseball. We quickly agreed that, unfortunately, Cooperstown really is too far from Granville (over nine hours if we’d drive non-stop) to do this. Some of the more feasible suggestions included Cleveland and Pittsburgh. For reasons that will become apparent in a moment, I opted for Pittsburgh.

Steve and Matt picked me up around 8.15am for the three-hour drive to the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, PA. We split up after getting our tickets, because I wanted to see BODIES… The Exhibition: one of several exhibitions around the world of preserved human bodies dissected to show the interior workings. BODIES… was nicely set up and certainly interesting, but not quite as spectacular as it’s been said to be. It was very crowded, making it impossible to study all the displays and read all the descriptions. Besides, the descriptions didn’t mention anything you can’t find in a high-school biology book. In fact, the entire exhibition contained very little I haven’t seen elsewhere.

To continue on that negative note, the rest of the Science Center was a bit disappointing, too. (Steve agrees with me there.) It’s not a bad place, but it’s much more targeted at kids than we thought it was, and even then, it was more of a small theme park than a science museum. (For the Dutch readers: think NEMO, but with less science.) It was fun, but it wasn’t what you’d expect of a place called the Carnegie Science Center.

Still, our visit to Pittsburgh was worth every minute of the six hours we spent on the road that day. Right next to the Science Center stands Heinz Field, the American Football stadium for the Steelers (NFL) and the Panthers (college). A few hundred meters further east stands PNC Park, the baseball stadium for the Pirates. Now, as far as Major League teams go, you can’t get much worse than the Pirates. The last season where they won more games than they lost is 1992. Nevertheless, they have a beautiful ballpark, which actually was rated the best MLB park last year by ESPN.

The waterfront promenade behind the stadium was freely accessible that day (I suppose it usually is when there’s nothing going on inside), so we could get pretty close to the outfield wall. At one point, the only thing between us and the field was the bullpen. Even if the Pirates continue to play poorly, they’ll always be special to me for their ballpark being my first American baseball stadium to visit.

The Pirates’ field seen from almost dead center. Separating the snow-covered warning track from one of the bullpens is the outfield fence.

The scoreboard in left field keeps everyone informed of what goes in in the Pirates’ games and in other games throughout MLB.

Crossing the Allegheny River behind PNC Park is the Roberto Clemente Bridge, leading into Downtown Pittsburgh.

Part of Pittsburgh’s Downtown business district as seen from the promenade behind PNC Park.

But wait, there’s more! Take another look at the picture above. The tall glass building in the center, with the spires on top, houses the headquarters of PPG Industries, a worldwide manufacturer of glass and chemical products. They recently acquired the SigmaKalon Group, a paints and coatings producer based in Uithoorn, the Netherlands. This is the company my father has been working for for more than 25 years. When its acquisition by PPG was completed on January 2nd, SigmaKalon ceased to exist and PPG is now my father’s employer. The proximity of PPG’s headquarters to the Carenegie Science Center provided an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

PPG’s headquarters are located at PPG Place, a set of seven office buildings of the same glass design. The main tower was completed in 1984, has forty floors, and rises 194 meters (635 feet) high.

PPG’s headquarters as seen from the base of the building.

We got back to Granville around 6pm, right on time for Steve and his wife Sandy to treat me to great T-bone steak (grilled by Steve) and side dishes (cooked by Sandy). We rounded off the day with a game of Scrabble–the first time I’ve played that in English. Steve beat Sandy and me by a good margin, but he clearly got better letters than we did. Besides, he had Matt to help him.

Updated travel map

This map shows the countries I’ve visited over the years (click the image for a larger version), colour-coded according to the reason I went there. Gold stands for business, blue for pleasure, and purple for both. In case a country consists of disconnected pieces of land, I only painted the area or areas I actually went. The list currently stands as follows:

Austria
Belgium
Chile
Czech Republic
Denmark
France
Germany
Italy
Luxembourg
Mauritius
Netherlands (yes, really!)
Norway
Portugal
South Africa
Spain
Swaziland
Switzerland
Sweden
Turkey
United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland)
United States

Snow on the porch

It’s remarkable how many people were cleaning the snow off the sidewalk in front of their home this morning. For whom? Outside of the immediate surroundings of the university, the supermarket and some coffee shops, I’ve only seen four pedestrians since I got here. Judging by the foot steps in the snow on my way back this evening, the sidewalks really do get used very little. So why do so many people go through the trouble of removing the snow?

Weekend: birds, blues and ballgames

My computer is running two models and while I wait for the results to roll out, I’ll grant myself a moment to write about the weekend.

On Saturday, my host, Steve, took me to the National Museum of the United States Air Force near Dayton, about two hours from Granville. Along for the ride was Steve’s son Matt, who knows an astonishing amount about military aircraft for someone who just turned five.

The museum hosts about 400 vehicles, ranging from the earliest World War I open-cockpit propeller planes through modern-day stealth fighters. The collection includes several aircraft that played a key role in history, such as the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki to end World War II. There are also a number of prototypes, including several X-planes.

The Boeing B-29 Superfortress “Bockscar” that ended World War II by dropping the atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

The Consolidated B-24D Liberator “Strawberry Bitch”. An American heavy bomber, the B-24 was produced in greater numbers than any other type of aircraft used in World War II.

Curtiss P-40E Kittyhawk at the United States Air Force Museum. This American fighter was used extensively in World War II, by the Americans and their allies alike.

Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk at the United States Air Force Museum. This American ground attack aircraft from the end of the Cold War was the first plane initially designed around stealth technology.

Steve and his wife invited me to a concert by Scott Ainslie in Granville that night. Ainslie is a blues and folk musician, a musical historian and a great story-teller. I’ll admit that blues and folk are not high on my list of favourite musical genres, but that didn’t keep me from enjoying the concert. In fact, it wasn’t just a concert, and that’s what made it so much fun. Ainslie told as much stories as he played songs, and he spoke with a passion that made it impossible not to appreciate his tales.

I spent Sunday evening watching part of the first NFL semi-final and the entire second semi-final. Yes, that’s American football: a sport I never understood and never saw more than a few minutes of. (It’s easy to go without American football in the Netherlands, because there are only a handful of clubs and it’s hardly ever shown on tv.) It turns out that the rules are quite simple and once I knew what they were doing, I actually enjoyed watching the games.

The NFL regular season runs from September to early January, followed by a series of play-off games and the big finale, better known as the Superbowl. The Sunday games were effectively the semi-finals, and the winners will play in the Superbowl on February 3rd, the second-to-last night of my visit to the US.

A great fuss was created by the media over the cold weather in which the second semi-final was played. At -1 °F (-18 °C), it was the third coldest game ever in NFL history. However, the only people that were affected by the low temperatures were the FOX Sports reporters. Many of the players only had short sleeves and some didn’t even have gloves. Except for a few instances of cramps, they were doing just fine. The spectators were doing fine, too. I mean, do these women look like it was actually that cold?

Random observations

• One prejudice about the US seems be true, at least in Granville: everyone has a car. During my 90-minute walk yesterday morning, I encountered a grand total of two other pedestrians. Both were elderly people.
• Cars here are less noisy than in Europe. Could it be the automatic transmission?
• I underpaid at the supermarket Thursday night! Not on purpose, obviously, and I only noticed it when I was back at the B&B. I had to pay $15.50, so I gave the lady a $10 bill, a $5 bill and what I believed to be a 50-cent coin. However, I later realized the coin was a quarter.
• Winter weather comes everywhere I go. In November, early snow showers hit Heidelberg during my visit. The temperature never got above freezing while I was in Garching in December. It’s the same in Granville so far: sub-zero (or sub-32 on that other scale) since I got here. It’s -7 °C (20 °F) at the moment and the temperature for tonight is expected to drop down to as low as -18 ° C (0 °F).

Breakfast and a first look around town

Shortly after yesterday’s post, the owner of the B&B came in to cook breakfast. I’m the only guest at the moment and it felt a bit weird to have someone come in just to serve me breakfast, but it was a good meal and we had a nice chat. Of course, it was a rather different breakfast than what I’m used to. At home, I typically have two sandwiches and a glass of milk. Yesterday’s breakfast consisted of tea, some fresh fruit, an omelet, crispy bacon, baked potatoes, some tomato and two pieces of toast. Not something to start every day with, but I definitely enjoyed it yesterday.

Steve was teaching until 10:30am, so I had about two hours to myself between breakfast and his picking me up. I grabbed my camera and went for a walk around Granville.

The B&B is called The Porch House, a description applicable to the majority of the houses in Granville. The first house on the left is where the owners live, the other one is for the guests. Both are from the early 1900s and were built in Victorian style.

Most of Granville looks like this: free-standing houses with front porches and lots of green.

Downtown Granville. This is the crossing of the main east-west and north-south streets. A church stands at each corner of the intersection. Granville was originally founded in 1805 by people from Massachusetts, who moved out of New England to have greater freedom in how they practised their religion.

The two churches at the other side of the intersection.

A memorial for the original settlers of Granville, located in a small park on a hill. The plaque reads, “In grateful remembrance of the members of the Licking Land Company who came from Granville, Massachusetts and founded this town ‘in the wilderness’ November 17, 1805. ‘They builded better than they knew. To God be the glory forever and ever.’”