The Swiss Advance to the Quarterfinals

Zurich, Switzerland - Monday evening was one of jubilation in Zurich, and indeed, throughout Switzerland: the Schweizer Nati (Swiss National Team) advanced to the quarterfinal in the UEFA Euro 2020 championship (European soccer tournament). As you've probably guessed, this championship was supposed to be held last year, but was obviously delayed due to the pandemic. Despite that, the tournament organizers have persisted in calling it Euro 2020.

This is the first time Switzerland has advanced this far in the tournament. The victory came over a juggernaut, the reviled French. Sports books significantly favored the French in this match (a $100 bet on Switzerland would have paid out $550) and in fact the French were the favorite or among the favorites to win it all.

Indeed, the Swiss were down 3-1 into the later minutes of the game. The crowd gathered around our local bar, Le Calvados, was sullen and quiet. With ten minutes to go, the prominent cranium of Haris Seferovic, showing early signs of male pattern baldness, leapt out to convert a delivery by teammate Zuber with a stunning header. The lead was narrowed to 3-2. This being soccer - a sport characterized rather more by milling about than scoring - the odds were still long, and this seemed rather like a consolation prize than a path to victory. But then, just a few minutes later, Mario Gavranović scored again for the Swiss, this time using his foot and thus sparing his precious remaining brain cells.

After 30 minutes of overtime, which mostly consisted of winded players jogging up and down the pitch half-heartedly, the game was decided by penalty kicks (PKs). Each team traded turns shooting 5 PKs. With each agonizing shot, the tension of the crowd around Le Calvados increased. Cortisol steadily mixed with alcohol in our blood streams brought us all closer to a collective heart attack. France took the 10th PK after they had scored on their first four and Switzerland had scored on all five. France's Kylian Mbappé, their star, faced up against Switzerland's devastatingly attractive goalkeeper, Yann Sommer.

Mbappé missed! The neighborhood erupted! People were dancing and chanting things that Hannah and I could not understand. Motorists driving through the neighborhood honked (a most unusual thing in Switzerland) in celebration as they tried to avoid drunken revelers wandering across the roads. The proprietors of Le Calvados carried cases of free beer out to the platz for the unlikely celebration. All-in-all, it was an excellent evening.

Comments

Italy

Dear Reader: We visited Italy twice in two weeks in November 2021. This blog has been sitting in my drafts folder since then. I am publishing it now because my family will shortly be arriving in Rome and I have little confidence that they will manage this trip successfully without my guidance. Without further ado: -------- Our first trip was a weekend jaunt to Milan and our second trip was a weeklong sojourn to Rome during the week of Thanksgiving. Over the course of our several travels, we've developed a sociological theory: the triangle of rules. We believe that rules can roughly be arrayed in a triangle, with the points being actual rules, aspirational rules, and inscrutable rules. Societies can be positioned in the triangle based on the extent to which certain types of rules dominate the social contract. Actual rules are written rules with prescribed penalties that are respected and enforced. In Switzerland, there are many of these: trash may only be disposed of in specially m...

Amsterdam and the Netherlands

Amsterdam, Netherlands - We enjoyed ourselves on our recent jaunt to the Netherlands. Below is a disorganized jumble of the many and varied things we learned. Names of Things Amsterdam Let's start with an easy one. I had never taken time to think about the name Amsterdam until I got here, but the origin of the name is rather literal - it refers to the dam of the river Amstel, the river on which the city was founded. When you arrive here, you'll notice that many places in the Netherlands are named similarly: Edam, Monnickendam, etc. Controlling the flow of water is, as it turns out, very important in a country where a third of the land area is below sea level and the average elevation is 98 feet. The Netherlands vs. Holland The Netherlands means the Low Countries and it refers to all twelve provinces. People, particularly English speakers and sometimes the Dutch (particularly those who live in Holland), often use "Holland" to refer to the whole country. But ...

We're Back!

Paris, France - We've returned to Europe for a three-week sojourn in France, Switzerland, and the UK. We're obviously very excited. We arrived in Paris Sunday around 11AM. Our approach to jet lag is akin to tearing the bandaid off quickly: We purposely sleep little if at all on our transatlantic flight (below is a photo of Hannah, trying not to sleep on the flight), consume copious amounts of caffeine after we land, slowly descend into irritability and mild delirium, and then collapse after staying up as late as we can on our first night in Europe. Our body's, overcome by shock from this maltreatment, eagerly accept a full night's sleep, even if it's offered at an hour that's entirely out of keeping with our normal schedule. Works like a charm. After depositing our things at the hotel, we aimlessly wandered around Paris for a few hours before meeting up with Maggie, an acquaintance of Hannah's from work. Maggie took us to the wine bar Delicatessen where we ...

The Neutral Zone

Search This Blog