Europe Trip, Part 6 - Leeds

I'm now on a bus between Taxco, Mexico (insanely cool city) and Mexico City, so it's time to continue the blog with Operation England. The reason for this off-the-tourist-trail destination was simple - my brother Terry lives there. He and his family were nice enough to put me up for a couple of days, which is always a plus.

After my flight into Manchester and a short train ride, I arrived in the Leeds train station. Terry said to meet him in the pub there, so that's what I did. I was pretty hungover, but I figured a pint or 2 would make me feel a little better.

It did. But that's not exactly how it went down though.

After Terry arrived, we went on a pub crawl through the center of Leeds. A similar one to the one we went on 6 years ago when I was there, but there were 2 major differences. I wasn't brutally hungover then, nor did I have to drag a suitcase into every bar. If you ever wanted to announce yourself as a liquor pig tourist, try wheeling your suitcase down a bunch of narrow alleys into pubs...at 1pm. I got some great looks of amusement. It was a lot of fun. The two trips did have one thing in common though:

This was my second time not remembering a damn thing about most of these pubs.

I think we ended up going to 5 pubs total...maybe 6. It's a little foggy because we were just mainlining pints and bullshitting about everything. Terry's a super intelligent guy and despite growing up in different worlds, we have a lot in common so I always enjoy getting to hang out with him. So after a few hours of that...yeah, I was pretty drunk. I don't think he was too far behind either. We headed back to his place so he could have a nap before we headed out that night...to a soccer game.

I probably should have slept at that point too, but instead I played on their computer and listened to my ipod really loud like a moron in their kitchen. So loud that I didn't even realize it when Shelly and Ryan got home. Shelly is Terry's super-nice girlfriend, and Ryan is their 16 year old son. They walked in to see me swaying around like a retard and singing along to something terrible, which is always the best way to re-introduce yourself after 6 years or so.

By the time we headed out, I had sobered up pretty well (surprisingly). I had always wanted to go to a real live English football match, and this was my chance since Shelly had grabbed some free tickets from work for the game. Leeds United used to be an elite team, but had fallen on hard times both financially and on the field in the past few years, and had plummeted down to the 3rd tier of English football (somehow called League One - yeah, I think it's dumb too). Shelly drove us over, and Terry, Ryan and I went up to our seats in one of the ends behind/above the net. Folks, it was a trip.

The ends are the cheap seats, where all the rowdies hang out. Terry had told me not to bring my camera to the game because of where we were sitting, and now I knew why - these guys were NUTS. First off, they never sat down. They paid for seats (I think), but everyone stood up for the entire game. Odd, but whatever. Then they started chanting.

For the entire game, we were surrounded by fanatical fans that chanted about everything. They had their usual Leeds United chants and songs, along with some pretty impressive improvisations. For example, a player for Oldham named Chris Price did something...oversold a tackle or something, can't remember. Right away, about 1000 people started chanting "CHRIS PRICE IS FUCKING SHITE!" Over and over. No, I didn't spell shit wrong Canadians...that's how they were saying it.

After a pretty pathetic first half, Leeds scored 2 goals in the second half and looked pretty impressive. What wasn't so impressive is that they don't sell beer at the games anymore, but I could deal with that after epic last 24 hours of beer consumption. Either way, the crowd went home happy (well, as happy as those crazy fuckers can get) after a 2-0 win. I was certainly impressed...it was a shitload of fun. Leeds has since been promoted to the 2nd tier of English football, and hopefully someday soon they can get back into the Premiership so I can go see a top-flight game back in Elland Road. Awesome, awesome experience.

Shelly came back and picked us up, and we headed back to their house for a chilled out night. Couple of beers, watched some TV, and got a good nights sleep. The next day was the perfect day for someone who had been on the road non-stop for 2 weeks at that point - we did pretty much nothing. Terry made me breakfast, I did my laundry, and we watched gameshows and other awesome English shows on TV for most of the day.

For those that care, British TV is waaaay better than American TV. The gameshows rule, and they have some killer comedy/variety shows like 8 Out of 10 Cats and Never Mind The Buzzcocks, which had me in tears from laughing. Between that and bullshitting with Terry about all sorts of things all day, it was exactly what I needed to recharge a bit for my last week on the road.

After Shelly and Ryan got home, we headed out to a pub to grab a great dinner (turkey, beef, veggies, you name it, all buffet style for like 6 bucks) and had a couple pints and talked for a while. The last time I saw Ryan he was only 10, and he was hilarious. Not much has changed except for the fact that he's a lot bigger and a pretty talented singer now. He's still super funny.

I tipped the bartender after grabbing a beer, and he pointed out that they don't tip in the UK. I had been in so many countries that I couldn't keep track of where to tip and where not to. I won't forget again though, because the kid did an excellent job of teasing me about it. He recently posted a facebook status concerning the vuvuzelas at the World Cup, with something along the lines of "I'm not donating to those African charities anymore because instead of buying food, they're spending the money on annoying trumpets!" Hilarious. Between that and his mom's video of him passing out in their dog kennel in the backyard after a night of drinking...the kid's given me more internet laughs over the last few months than anyone I know. Great stuff.

So after another chill night and a good sleep, I had to get up at the dreaded 5am to head back to Manchester to catch my flight to Copenhagen. Canada was playing Russia in the quarterfinals that night, but the game didn't start until 1:30am UK time, so there wasn't any real way for me to watch it and be able to make my flight. I tried to find out the score on Terry's computer when I got up, but my cab arrived before I could boot it up. I'll save the story of how I found out for the next blog.