Blog 35: When in doubt, make it up.

So soccer (futbol) is clearly the most important thing to Europeans. And I cant say I disagree, ranking as my favorite sport, I always enjoy watching a good soccer game. The past two world cup tournaments have faithfully been watched by Chris, Ethan and I in our living room on the projector. Life size world cup, what could be better than that? Stocked up with snacks, we set up the living room after dinner and went straight to bed. Why? Well, in America, the live games broadcast around 3:30am. So we would sleep until 3am and get up and watch the games for the rest of the night. When our parents would rise around 7 or 8, they would find us still up, camped out in the living room. Needless to say, im always up for a good soccer game.

So what could be better than to be in Europe not only during soccer season, but the year of the world cup?? (World Cup 2009 takes place in South Africa, and it is 100% my goal to attend…) So the other night the Czech Republic team played Slovakia, a heated match. We went to our local beer garden (the biggest one in our neighborhood) and filed in with the other Czech futbol fans. The garden was overflowing with fans ready to get rowdy and support their team. As a good play was made or a goal was scored, the garden would erupt with cheers. Hugging, glasses clinking, yelling, clapping, and running laps around the tables were common ways of expressing their excitement. This one guy at the next to our table (we referred to him as Kobe, seeing as he was wearing a Kobe Bryant shirt) proceeded to jump on his table and pour his beer on another fan after the CZ scored. Pure madness.

It was quite a sight to see and I loved seeing everyone so happy and excited after a great play was made. Naturally, my friends and I wanted to get in on the excitement. There was a table of around 15 of us, all American. Seeing as how none of us can speak Czech, we couldn’t jump in with the excited yelling, as everyone around us was. So, we decided to yell the Czech words that we did know.

[CZ team make a great play and the crowd gets excited] “Těší mě!!”
(translation: nice to meet you!!)

[CZ team scores a goal and the crowd erupts] We jump up and as we high five we shout “Decet deca šunky !!!!!”
(translation: “[I would like] ten ounces of meat!!!!” )

The funniest part? The Czech people were so excited about the futbol game, they didn’t even find it the slightest bit odd that we were yelling pleasantries and ordering meat. They were loving it and would cheer even louder and high five us when they saw our excitement. I guess the moral of the story is no one really cares what you are yelling about, as long as you are rooting for their team :)

Love love love from Prague!