A Little Piece Of Heaven With A Hole In The Middle

I love bagels. I loooooove bagels. They serve as the lifeblood to millions up and down the eastern seaboard. But why, oh why, can't I find a good bagel in the Northwest?

Top reasons that Northwesterners who don't love bagels, should love bagels:

1. Made well, they're delicious. Elitist Foodies be damned. (Apologies to readers that might be restaurant critics.)

2. Bagels fit nicely in one hand, and possibly more importantly, travel well. One can be consumed easily on a crowded morning bus ride with hot cup of Starbucks riding shotgun in your other hand. The ultimate grab-and-go food.

3a. You can slice it and put on it pretty much anything you can put on a sandwich made from an overpriced boulangerie. Save some money in these hard economic times. And don't forget to lightly toast the two sides first.

3b. A favorite of east coasters (including myself, and especially those of Jewish descent (me) -- I'm not sure how this came to be, and will require some history/culture research if I want to know) is cream cheese and smoked salmon, usually known as nova or lox. Alaskan salmon (best in the world, I'm convinced) isn't exactly hard to come by in the Northwest, so this should be a no-brainer.

3c. Variety is endless. Sesame, Poppy, Cinnamon Raisin, French Toast, Pomegranate, Blueberry Muffin (what?!), and whatever else you can think of to put in the dough, someone's probably done it, somewhere. And of course, the Everything bagel. (Well, not really everything.)

4. There's a neat little hole in the middle. How many other things you eat can you say that about? So you like those fresh donuts from Pike Place, hmm? (Bagels and donuts are closely related: the dough recipe is slightly different, and bagels are boiled while donuts are fried - see next point.)

5. Bagels - good for you. Not the leanest food around, but covers enough bases (if you put the right stuff on it) to provide a good meal any time of day, and certainly not unhealthy.

So, all this said, where can a east coaster in bagel withdrawl find himself a decent bite to eat? The only place I know so far is near Pike Place market in Seattle, on 1st Ave., I think. This lack of satisfaction feeds an occasional desire to take my eventually-minted business degree and open a bagel shop of my own. I will do this with the simple mission to spread the word of perhaps the greatest food ever invented.

(Okay, so ice cream is pretty close, cut me a break?)

The Act of Being a Fan

(Warning! Sports-related post ahead. Sonics-Fans-In-Mourning read on.)

So I got my real induction into British culture on Tuesday night - my first football (otherwise known as soccer in the US) match. I was offered a ticket to the Arsenal vs. Porto FC match in Champions League group play. (Explanation: Porto FC is a Portuguese team, and this match was being played as part of the tournament that comprises the best teams from the individual .) Arsenal plays at shiny new Emirates Stadium in Northeast London, and the place is truly massive, say, NFL stadium huge. 60,000 showed up to watch Arsenal dispatch the defending Portuguese league champs by a score of 4-0. And it was great.

We had seats that were way, way up near the top of the stadium. At any American sports venue, you'll need binoculars to even see what's happening at that height. But due to the shape of a soccer field (about as long as an NFL field including the end zones, but much wider - NFL: 120x53yds, Emirates: 114x74yds) and an intelligently constructed stadium, you can see everything, from anywhere.

What really shocked me was the atmosphere as the game went on. Soccer is played over two continuous 45-minute halves, with discretionary time added by the referees at the end of each one. The clock, once started, does not stop at all until it runs out. This completely constant action is completely absent from American sports, which all stop and start with regular frequency. Aside from the occasional rousing chant or insulting (and usually a bit salty) song aimed at the other team, and cheering in reaction to play on the field, the place is otherwise comparitively silent. I go to sports games in the US and carry on conversations and hear the call of beer men walking the aisles, and so on. There's that dull roar of conversation. None of that here - everyone, and I do mean everyone, is totally dialed in to the action on the field. (No beer men either - I didn't even see people drinking in the stands, but I think that might be because it simply isn't allowed.) The tension was palpable, despite the dominating play by the home team. (It may have also been a byproduct of the very embarrassing home loss dealt to Arsenal last Saturday.)

Oh, and everything you hear about English soccer fans having sailors' vocabularies and not being afraid to use them is completely true. (Perhaps this is why there were no traveling beverage salesmen.)

I didn't sing a whole lot during the match - my clearly American accent stuck out like a sore thumb. It would have sounded wrong to me, and everyone else around.

Watching the flow of a well-played soccer match is nothing short of exhilirating. Back and forth, closer and closer, until that gorgeously placed cross into the box gets the diving header and is sent straight past the opposing keeper and into the net. The whole place then erupts. They sing, they cheer, they have merriment. (See: Seahawks' 12th Man for inspiration.) They live and die by their team. It's not unlike being a die-hard for an American sports team, but the act of being a fan in Europe has a slightly different job description.

All in all, loads of fun. More adventures to come.

Lazy Saturday (Some random notes.)

So, life in London has settled down some after a week of orientation and generally getting my bearings down. It's really a wonderful city, but that flushing noise you hear off in the distance is the sound of my bank account draining - ouch. The people are generally nice, if hardened city-types: iPod rocking, walking quickly, make no eye contact, and so on. I'm having trouble with the not-exactly-subtle fact that Brits drive on the wrong side of the road-- not because I have to drive, but because I keep looking the wrong way before crossing the street.

(I never want to drive in London. Ever. The whole of the city becomes quite literally one gargantuan parking lot and street-level transport becomes a guaranteed impossibility. It's difficult to describe the complete and total mob scene this city becomes during rush hours. Rail advocates, sing your hearts out. Metro/Pierce/Community Bus riders, I feel your pain, and then some. Sound Transit, get your act together and build some reliable trains already. But I digress.)

As I've written about before, I've grown fond of professional socc-- football. Now that I'm in a country that seems to take it seriously, I can fully indulge my fledgling passion for the sport. I've been offered tickets by some wonderful family friends to an Arsenal FC match, this coming Tuesday. I'll have pictures and a post about the (so I'm told) singularly unique experience of attending an English sporting event. I'm sure that I'm going to get a crash course in culture not soon forgotten.

The Days Are Just Packed.

So, I haven't had much time to do much of anything lately. This, however, isn't unexpected; it's the week before university classes start.

I'll have something substantial up this weekend. (I've got a few topics.)

I've Been Here Before...

Greetings from across the Atlantic, where it's....raining. Sound familiar?

No in-flight movies (overnight flight, so I wasn't too annoyed) because the system was broken, but the food was passable by airline standards (there aren't too many ways to screw up pasta) and we got in early.

And, predictably, unlike Northwesterners (and the rest of Americans), English folk drive on the wrong side of the road. Just as slowly, though.

Travels, or You Can Go Home Again But Everything Goes Haywire When You're There

So today is the big day - after a ridiculous week at home (more on this in a sec), tonight I cross the Atlantic and live it up UK-style for a few months. I've been sitting on my hands for weeks (months, even) waiting for today. And I'll come up with plenty of new material as I explore. I won't do a heavy travel log/journal thing, but I'll stick with what I've been doing (unless someone wants me to write something else?).

Back to the absurd week I've just lived. The best overview is by the numbers:

8 days
6 stores visited
3 power outages
1 fried circuit breaker panel (in its entirely)
1 tropical storm
1 oddly-behaving fox scared out of the garage


Here's the details:
I needed a wool coat for London, otherwise I'd look far too much like the foolish American that I am. (Subtlety works for me.) I went through stores all over my county until I found one. The power outages were caused first by an overheating main circuit breaker (the big one that shuts off power to the entire house), which melted some of the panel and caused a partial power outage for two days and required the entire panel to be replaced. Then the tropical storm caused another one. And another thunderstorm caused another brief one. Then the fox starting slinking around. Foxes are nocturnal, so seeing him out in the morning was slightly off-putting. Then as I was taking out the trash, I step into the garage and the fox bolts from a crawlspace and out into the yard. All I know is that I want nothing to do with that fox.

So, I guess you can go home again. But it's just not the same. Seriously. Now I'm going to find an apartment back west and never return. (Well...)

But in any event, it's off I go. More to come from far side of pond. Cheerio!

A Long Trip

So, now that summer is winding down, it's time once again to make preparations for that dreaded return to school in September. In the past, that meant packing up my things over the course of a week and then dragging those things across the full length of the country. The whole trip is usually a bit depressing. The worst moment is right after getting completely settled in at my seat and realizing that I'm basically on my own glorified flying school bus. Once the flight gets underway, I forget such things and zone out to music, watch a movie, or do a crossword. Once I land, however, I remember that I'm going to school, but that means I get to see my friends, and our de facto family will reunite.

Not this year.

After spending the summer in Washington, I'll soon be traveling home for a few days before leaving for a semester in the United Kingdom.

I'll still be blogging, at about the same frequency (I hope), with new material about how the New Northwesterner lives on the far side of the Atlantic.

And while my friends settle in on their very first morning of classes, I'll be on an airplane, headed home, depressed to leave my friends but excited to see my real family for a little while.