Thursday, October 18, 2007

A Tight Place

Wow. Last night is a total blur. After I finished my business at McClean's (note to all those lactose intolerant: steaming milk does not prevent milk from destroying your insides), we headed to the Rathaus to take some pictures before heading to the meetup spot to get matchfit. We did a quick interview predicting a US win and shared in on some of the journo's chestnuts while Luis ate gelato for the neunzenth (19th) time. Roasted chestnuts taste like butt, but are apparently not so bad if you dip them in ice cream.

We met Erin (who existing readers will remember missed the Venezuela trip), Mark and Mike. Mr Pickwick's proved to be a suitable drinking establishment as they were very agreeable to our desires to drop some pre-match car bombs, and shockingly, they were not outrageously priced.

We stopped off at home on the way to the stadion and were pleasantly surprised to learn that Mick's luggage had finally arrived from Paris. Upon arriving at St. Jakob Park, we were greeted with shouts of "Oooooooh Esssssss Ahhhhhhhh!" Several young swiss offered us beers, taught us swiss songs and taught us some swiss drinking customs. Apparently, the way to cheers is to hold your beer out, at which point your cheersing buddy smacks your beer, then you take a swig, pass your beer to your buddy, then you smack the beer, then he takes a swig. Awesome.

The stadium was spectacular and there was a large contingent of Americans, prolly students, confined to the upper deck. Fortunately we were seated in the VIP section which meant that we could drink in the stadium. The match itself was crap, but due to Clint Dempsey's deft touch, die US Boys clinched a rare win on European soil.

Post match, we head back to Pickwick's where we met up with Alex from nyc and more carbombs were dropped. Pickwick's has a yard long glass hanging behind the bar which they'll fill with beer. If you finish the beer within 3 minutes, the beer is on the house. It's called "the Challenge.".They basically could have hung a sign up with my name on it. I knocked the yard down with at least 20 seconds to spare. Luis has video proof.

After we shut down Pickwick's, the USA drinking team marched on to the late night haunt called Red Rocks, stopping for donner kebabs on the way. We were soon joined there by several members of the US team. Props to Jay, Heath, Seitz and Benny for joining in for a few rounds of car bombs. After we shutdown Red Rocks, we embarked on a questionable Bataan death march to get home.

In jollly ol' London now. Hopefully will hit the Hard Rock tonight. Apparently the alcohol of yesternight did not impair my memory that much.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

2 comments:

ekescher said...

Dammit. Wish we didn't need to get up so damn early Thursday so we could have done car bombs with the boys at Red Rocks. Thanks to the unknown USA fan who bought us our doners after we ran out of cash. Incidentally, we got on the tram going to wrong way to go home and end up waaaay out in the Basel 'burbs. Had to flag a cab and pay with a credit card. The whole ordeal took over an hour, so we probably would have been better off going to Red Rocks and doing shots. On second thought, probably not.

Erin

americanfooligan@gmail.com said...

Erin,

the night was legendary. I have no idea who bought the doners either. The yard of beer erased much of my memory. We almost made it out of Basel wallets intact. The last stop really put the hurt on though. Oh well, it was an awesome night.