Beating the Dutch Masters

Author’s note:  This post covers the day of July 12^th.  I wrote it on the train to Brussels on July 13^th.

At this point I figured I’d seen most everything I wanted to see in Enschede.  Smith and I planned to see the market that evening before going to play soccer at his club.  So I was once again lazy for an hour or two in the morning before getting on my bike and riding in to his university.  On the way I went by the FC Twente stadium and bought a sweet jacket that you have seen pictured in my photos of me on my tiny bike.

 I got to the university for lunch.  Then I went by Smith’s lab to take pictures of the equipment and watch them do some experiments.

Then I went back to his office where I’d planned to write up and post my blogs, but I forgot the European plug adapter, so I couldn’t plug in my laptop to get anything done.  So, I read.  I finished Life of Pi with a couple days left in the Brazil trip.  So now I’m reading The Inheritance of Loss, another Man Booker prize winning book.  I’m enjoying it, but so far it has seemed to primarily be character development, even though I’m over a third of the way through it.  I want to include this one passage because it is so amazingly descriptive.  It’s describing the sound of a rainshower from the monsoon that just began in this village in India.

“The sound of water came from every direction: fat upon the window, a popgun off the bananas and the tin roof, lighter and messier on the patio stones, a low-throated gurgle in the gutter that surrounded the house like a moat.  There was the sound of the jhora rushing and of water drowning itself in this water, of drainpipes disgorging into the rain barrels, the rain barrels brimming over, little sipping sounds from the moss.”

Anyways, after a lot of reading, I went back to Smith’s lab and helped him and his labmate put together an insulating box around one of the parts of the machine so that they could heat it up to get rid of any water inside it.  This process is called a “bake out”.

We finally left his work around 6, rode straight to the center of town, but unfortunately there was no market happening as we’d hoped.  We grabbed kebab for dinner and raced back to his place to pack our soccer gear and off to his club.

Soccer clubs are a little different here than in the US.  In the states we would almost naturally assume little kids playing soccer or youth travel teams when someone mentions a soccer club.  Here, a club is just that, a club.  Adults pay to join.  It’s main purpose is social, but you get together with members of your club to play soccer.  The club puts together teams of varying skill levels and age groups so that everyone can find their own competition level.  They may or may not organize youth teams.

The club that Smith is a member of has some amazing history.  It’s name is the Enschede Football Club Princess Wilhelmina.  It was founded in 1885, making it the 9^th oldest soccer club in Holland and the oldest in Enschede.  Until 2003 they had played in the Volkspark, but had been moved.  The city government basically owns all the fields and decides which ones the clubs can rent.  In 1926 EFC PW played against Ajax, but I haven’t been able to learn what the result was.  Their uniforms still look remarkably similar to the ones in black and white and grainy color photos on the walls of their clubhouse.  They have a special plaque reserved for their most exalted members, the ones that continued to play and meet from 1940-1945.

Their field and clubhouse is at a complex that has many fields and buildings belonging to several different clubs.   We ended up playing our pickup game on another club’s field because it was field turf and they wanted to save their grass fields.  They pump the balls up to ridiculous pressures here.  The ball was a rock, the field was turf, and I felt a couple steps slow because I hadn’t played a true game of soccer in probably a month, but I played decently well.  I scored a couple goals, including a shot from distance, and had a few assists and nice entry passes that led to goals.  I did miss a 1v1 with the keeper though.  I always feel a special pressure when playing with people of other nationalities as if the glory and respect of the US as a soccer nation lays on my shoulders.  Overall, I think I did us Yanks proud.

We showered in their locker room and then headed to their clubhouse to drink some post-football Grolsch.  One of the older guys in the club joked that they were going to offer me a contract.  Then he did something even more awesome.  He gave me a series of Grolsch beer glasses that were designed to commemorate the club’s 125^th anniversary and a patch of their official insignia.  Yeah, that was sweet.

After a bike ride home, I crashed into the bed at home and slept til 9 the next morning.