What Americans call "soccer"

It’s early 2002 and it had been several months in our rented room a stone’s throw from Dublin, Ireland, days spent searching for work every morning by going to our favorite internet café named Right-Click. We were beginning to feel less like tourists and more like locals.

Not having watched much football, I didn’t have a clue as to the enormity of the fact that Ireland had qualified to be in the World Cup. However, since it felt like something I should be interested in, our plan was to go to a nearby pub and watch them play Germany in their second match. It’s happening late morning and there’s not much else that needs to be done.

We walk up the street and it’s barren. Not “light traffic” barren, more like “ghost town that is going to spew forth vampires as soon as the sun goes down” barren. Shops are closed, streets are empty, and barely any cars are on the main roads. It was eerie.

We open the door to the closest pub with a TV and freeze – we can’t even cross the threshold it is so packed with people. The thing about pubs in Dublin is there are a lot of them; it’s a well known puzzle to try and figure out how to cross the city without passing in front of a pub (I suspect it’s impossible, they are everywhere.) We shrug and go toward the next pub.

We walk up the block a bit and open the door – same thing. Wall-to-wall people. After a couple more tries we change our strategy: in the center of downtown Dublin there is a magnificent Westin hotel which has a pub downstairs called The Mint (it used to be a huge bank vault a long time ago.) The staff are great and since tourists want to walk outside and go to an “authentic” pub it’s usually empty.

We walk downstairs and it’s extremely crowded but we can at least walk in. We slap our hands down on the bar to hold a space large enough to set our drinks. We flag down Carl the bartender who brings us pints of Guinness and gives us status of the game: “We’re losing 1 to nill. We knew Germany was going to be tough, though, for as many times Ireland has qualified to be in the world cup, Germany has won it.”

The mood is energized but somber. I look around and think that it’s a good reflection of the Irish culture. No matter what comes at them, they’ll keep fighting through it by finding strength in their ancestors doing the same for generations. British rule, potato famine, you name it – they’ll write a poem or song that will break your heart and then drink and dance because that’s how it is done on that island and how it always will be done.

The official 90 minutes are over and a few minutes are tacked on to the end to account for time spent dealing with injuries. Suddenly, an Irish player breaks past a defender. A surge of energy goes through the crowd, and then he breaks past another defender and sprints toward the goal. Everything went silent, employees stopped working, everyone held their breath save for one man in the far corner that screams “Off you go, lad! OFF YOU GO!” The player (Roy Keane) fires and scores, tying up the game. Everything erupts, people scream for drinks, an old woman wearing a hand-knitted cap with the colors of Ireland’s flag starts crying, an old man grabs me and hugs me tight and I start to tear up as well.

One minute later, a German player breaks past a defender and there is a collective gasp. I hear a woman say “Oh, sweet Jesus.” Fortunately, the next Irish player knocked the ball back up field and the game ended in a tie. Drinks are raised, people start singing, and we head outside to look for lunch.

I did not expect the scene waiting for us outside – complete chaos and celebration. I counted about 30 people with their arms locked, dancing in a circle in the streets. We walk past a store that had televisions in the window and we saw an interview of random people in a pub near where Roy Keane was born. I heard the phrase “We always knew that boy would grow up to do something special.” My wife is snapping pictures as fast as she can take them to record the storm before it passes. She aims the camera at three young men leaning out a railing a few stories up. One of them yells, “Wait! Wait a second!” We assume he is going to grab a flag or cap or something, but instead reverses his now naked backside out the railing and yells, “Ok! Go ahead!” At that point, there’s not much you can do but take the picture, so she does.

I spend the next several days caught up in World Cup fever and, despite having an American accent, feel that I am starting to really be accepted as a Dublin Man from south of the river. I learn the life lesson that it’s not about winning, it’s about celebrating life win or lose. Sing your heart out, cry if you have to, but be sure to have a drink and make some friends, because that’s how it’s done on that island.

Not Constantinople?

I regret my decision to decline a hotel driver to pick me up at the airport. After the exhausting jump from San Francisco to Istanbul it seems to me very worth the extra cost to not have to find a cabbie that was free and try and communicate our destination. My heart leaps when, despite my instructions, there is a man standing there holding a card with my name on it. After confirming the price of the drive, we begin the winding path toward the Goldenhorn Hotel while I try to take in as much as possible of the place I had only ever dreamt of seeing.

I absorb the rapid-fire images of modern mixed with ancient – a billboard selling electronics, a tower on the edge of the water hundreds of years old, a Chinese food restaurant, silhouettes of minarets, Annie Lennox playing on the radio. I glance at Wife and see she is already frantically snapping pictures. As we turn up cobblestone street I see a street vendor selling food next to a sign reading misir. I ask him what it is and he repeats the word over and over as if that it’s self-explanatory, “Misir! You know! Misir! It’s misir! In English it would be, you know, um, misir!” We chuckle and get out when soon after he stops the cab in front of the unassuming hotel.

Our next destination was an authentic Turkish bath. I had a couple candidates that I had researched ahead of time, but the hotel had a relationship with one named Suleymaniye to which they would provide drop off/pick up service and once again, simplicity wins the day. After convincing him that it is ok to leave his techno music blasting we ask him to teach us some Turkish words. “Ok, repeat after me,” he says, “ Tea. Sugar. Dream. That’s ‘thank you’! Easy!”

I quickly lose my bearings in the thin twisting streets. Almost all the storefronts are closed with thick metal bars or an entire sliding metal door. We stop in front of a dimly lit wooden door set in an ancient stone building. My wife shoots me a nervous look and we go in with our guard up. In movies, when the adventurer enters a room with vast treasure he will have a blank overwhelmed expression while the lighting on his face grows brighter and brighter. I suspect that if I had been filmed at that moment that is exactly what would have happened.

The interior was modest but comfortable and much larger than the nondescript entry would have you believe. We each buy a massage as well as entry to the hammam (€35 per person) and they give us clothes and explain to us that this is the only co-ed hammam in Istanbul so we would be able to stay together through the experience.

We change into a red plaid outfits that consist of shorts for me and shorts and a top for her. We balance precariously on wooden sandals as we are led through a series of small rooms leading to a massive domed marble room with a gigantic marble circular slab in the middle. Alcoves in each corner house some sort of sink and platform built into the wall. There is another couple lying on the central slab but there is room enough for twenty so we plop down, close our eyes, and listen to the sound of dripping water echoing off the walls.

After we have broken into a sweat two men enter and proceed to splash water on themselves in one of the alcoves. We recognize them as employees and soon they call us over to lie on the platforms set into the wall. They alternate sloshing us with hot and cold water separated by a brisk scrubbing with what I can only associate with a rough inflated pillowcase filled with bubbles. Their singing in Turkish while they work adds to the ambiance and I am hesitant to ask what the song is about in case the topic is completely discordant with the feeling of ancient place and time.

Our driver is waiting for us after we cool off, sip on some fresh squeezed pomegranate juice and change back into our clothes. We feel exhausted, excited, refreshed, content and overwhelmed. We feel reborn.