First derby

Jennifer Last Wednesday night, 1 april, we went into Stockholm to go to a soccer match. Our local team that we cheered for last year is no more. They had such a bad season that they were relegated to the lower division, and I would have supported them there, but then the team went bankrupt. Therefore, if I am to get my football fix, we are going to have to go into Stockholm a little more often than we did last season. The stadium of the Stockholm team we've picked, Hammarby, is quite easy to get to, despite the little adventure we had last year getting to this very same game.



The game was a derby between southsiders Hammarby (it pleases me a little to be cheering for the working-class southside team—oh, and their colors are green and white, which I'm also used to) and rivals AIK (whose colors are navy and yellow!) from the north. The game was a really good one—I wrote a summary for it if you're interested—but I do want to mention something funny that happened. On our way in, I noticed the coach of the Swedish national team hanging about... of course it's not cool in Sweden to notice people, so I ignored him (well, I took a picture when his back was turned). It was harder to ignore him when he sat right in front of us in the stands... I kept ignoring him, of course, although I couldn't help smirking at Joe... however, it became really hard to ignore him when he turned around, seemed to look right at me, and said "Jennifer!" It turned out he was trying to get the attention of his daughter, who was standing behind the bleachers. It's a very strange sensation, when someone that you consider famous, looks at you and says your name.

In my post about the month of mars, I said that here april is considered the month of big weather swings, and by gosh this very first day we experienced aprilväder. When we left Uppsala it was warm and sunny; by the end of the game we were nearly frozen, and the 40-minute train ride, which had seemed stuffy on the way into the city, was most welcome for the ride back. Here's Joe at the end of the game, thankful that I had remembered to bring the team scarf, which is quite lightweight and I suspect is meant more for display than to provide warmth.