To see ourselves as others see us

In France for a conference, and reading the paper on the way, I see le Figaro has a special feature on English football in its sports section. The general tone is summed up by the headline “L’Europe du football aux pieds de l’Angleterre”, and the three-page feature has profiles of Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea in advance of the Champions League semi-finals.

Extracts after the jump.

Continue reading “To see ourselves as others see us”

Former Exeter board were indeed useless criminal bastards

Apologies for a parochial post, but the following can’t go unremarked. The former board of Exeter City Football Club (of which I am an owner, kind of) have pleaded guilty to fraud that left the club on the brink of extinction. They are also the people who brought Michael Jackson and Uri Geller to the club, but regrettably it is not a criminal offence to make a football club a laughing stock. If it were, more than a few managers might be behind bars.

When no means yes

Jean Quatremer at Coulisses de Bruxelles discusses an interview with Tony Blair in Le Monde, and sums up better that I could the results of those French voters who voted ‘no’ to the European constitution in the hope of something better later on:

Le message envoyé par la France a été compris par ses partenaires comme étant un “stop” et non un “encore”. C’était prévisible. … En votant pour des partis extrémistes en juin 2002 (13% pour l’extrême gauche et 19% pour l’extrême droite) et contre le TCE en 2005, la France a envoyé un signal de repli sur soi. Nicolas Sarkozy et Ségolène Royal, en faisant campagne sur l’identité nationale, en ont tiré les leçons, surfant sur cette vague nauséabonde au lieu d’essayer de la contrer. Dommage.

A dose of reality

Just back in England after a trip by train to Tallinn via Berlin and Warsaw. Faultless journey at every point, until now. National Rail have decided that we have no business travelling when they don’t want us to, and have shut the railway between Three Bridges and Brighton. So my welcome home is a 45 minute bus ride with loads of luggage and two exhausted kids.

Britain’s railways: the envy of the world (except every other country in Europe).

Tallinn

So, a few days in Tallinn with Daryl’s stag party, and I’m not sure what to make of it really. The Old Town has lovely architecture and has been well restored. Particularly worth visiting is Toompea – the historic fortress hill at the centre of the city – with its two viewing platforms looking out over the lower town.

Overall, though, I didn’t find Tallinn as appealing as Rīga, perhaps because Tallinn’s centre of business activity has moved outside the old town, leaving the old town as a fairly quiet place of restaurants, cafes and souvenir shops. In Rīga, the main business of the city still seems to take place in and around the old city centre. This means that Tallinn is a bit EveryHansa while Rīga has more of a spirit of its own.

Another factor may be that the Latvian language, though very different to Polish, is still marginally more familiar-looking than Estonian. I find it quite discomforting to be in a country where I don’t speak a word of the language and can’t even recognise words on signs.

Of course, experiencing a city with eight other blokes is different from wandering round on your own (though I did a bit of that). We had the main formal dinner of the trip at Karl Friedrich, a “pepper restaurant”, on the Town Hall Square. I assume that pepper is their main ingredient, although in the set menu we enjoyed there was not that much of it: smoked salmon (far too salty); pork (with chopped red peppers, in a perfect delicate cream sauce), and finally some sort of ice-cream that was more vanilla than pepper. The interior was very elegant and comfortable but the music (including a rasping cover of Atomic) didn’t really go with the setting.

Otherwise, we did some usual stag weekend things: shot guns with the friendly and amusing Mr Death Shooting Academy, played poker (very successfully from my point of view), and had a cultural walking tour in the freezing cold wind.

Where has all the Cyrillic gone?

One last thought on Latvia. I wasn’t there for long, but in all that time I saw 1 (one) sign in Cyrillic, a modern sign on some sort of educational institution next to the hotel. Given that the USSR annexed the country for 50 years from 1939, and Latvia had been under Russian imperial control from 1720 to 1918, I was amazed that there weren’t any inscriptions, old signs or public pieces of writing in Russian, particularly since (as mentioned in an earlier post) Latvian is still a minority first language in Rīga. There was one in German – which must have dated from before 1700 – but nothing in Russian. I wonder how prevalent Russian was pre-1991, and how quickly the language moved over to Latvian primacy. I remember reading that there was a controversial law mandating Latvian-language signage a few years back, but as far as I’m aware that didn’t mandate the removal of Russian signs.

Arrival in Tallinn

Into Tallinn by coach, and there was some fantastic domestic architecture on the way in. A couple of great modern houses, one with a glass front wall with bookshelves, so the view from the street was the stairs up and the pages of the books. I’ll have one like that please (I may try and get back there for a photo while I’m here). For anyone else visiting Tallinn, the area I’m talking about is on Vabaduse pst., out of town from number 113 or so.

The centre of Tallinn, at least the part I’ve seen so far, is a bit less impressive. More ringroadery than I saw in Riga, but that’s just the very first impression.

Arrived in the hotel – the very Soviet-looking Reval Park – to find that there had been a problem at the tour operator’s end and they’d upgraded me to a big corner room in the very swish and capitalist Radisson SAS overlooking the old town. If you are ever staying there, I heartily recommend room 922.