We All Sat Down

I haven’t ever purposefully watched a sporting event with my family.  OK.  The Olympics.  Other than that?  Never.  All year I had planned a trip to Russia.  “Oh.  Going for the World Cup?”  “Most assuredly not.  Looking to avoid it, actually.”  In Moscow there was a traveling circus of fans from many of the participating countries.  Standing there in line at the ATM with Colombians.   The Swedish father and son who sat next to us on the train with their yellow and blue shirts.   I bought us tickets for Bolshoi.  But uncharacteristically, I began during the same search to look into what it would mean to get tickets for the World Cup soccer games. 

Ahh, look, there is one where you can enter a lottery and possibly earn tickets.  I fiddled around and just about pressed “send” when I realized that the match was is in Nizhny Novgorod, two-hundred and sixty miles away.   Right.  The one in Moscow, the one in which the Russian team was going to play Spain was, sold out.  Of course it was.

Long walk to find our restaurant.  Kids not happy.  Wife not happy.  Where is it?  Out at dinner that night, we went to some fascinating locavore restaurant, Lavka-Lavka, and I purposefully asked to sit outside in what was a lovely table so I could avoid having to watch the game.  This was fine with the staff.  But the wife insisted we go in.  “It will be a good experience or the girls to see it.  Why do you avoid this?”  Fair enough and in we went.  Inside, it was, indeed high drama, which reached a wonderful peak, when Russia . . . won.  The streets were riotous with celebration. 

And from then, we watched every game we could on TV.  And tonight, as a family, in a purposeful way, we all sat down and watched Croatia play France.  We'd seen each team play before in an earlier matches.  Knew some of the relevant players.  And they both played hard.  Croatia was ferocious.  They pushed so relentlessly and drove for the goal like barracudas.  But France played the field more effectively and by the end they were up by three points before ceding one goal to make for a 4: 2 finish.  It felt like the logical end of something we'd inadvertantly  started in Russia.  

Sunday 7/15/18