I was out to dinner with my wife and parents the other day and we started talking about the daughter of a family friend who is in the process of opening a bar in Boise. I mentioned a Fun Fact (tm) that I know, which is that Boise is the primary home of the US' Basque-American population. Asked how I knew that, I was forced to ramble about how there's this Spanish team called Athletic Bilbao that only signs Basque players, and one time they came to Idaho to play a friendly which I thought was bizarre, so I looked into it and found out about Boise's Basque connection.
I think I've learned an amazing amount of random stuff like this through soccer. I've learned about Catalonia's role in opposition to Francisco Franco. I know that Livorno, Italy has particularly left-wing politics. I know that the geographic distribution of Bundesliga clubs is yet another reminder of the significant economic divide between the former East and West Germany. I know that possibly the only functional national institution in the DRC is their soccer league, which has produced TP Mazembe, who have won the CAF Champions League a bunch of times. I've seen the legacy of communist-era leagues and learned what all those widespread prefixes mean (CSKA, Dynamo, Torpedo, Lokomotiv, etc).
I've learned about the lost history of the (largely immigrant) professional soccer leagues in the US in the 1920s.
Then there's this recurring conversation:
Me: "So where are you from?"
European: "Oh, a small city — you wouldn't know it"
Me: "Try me."
Me: [knows the city]
Me: [tries to brush off how I know it b/c it's weird to talk about that time I went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole and was reading about second division clubs in Sweden.]
What have you picked up along the way?
I think I've learned an amazing amount of random stuff like this through soccer. I've learned about Catalonia's role in opposition to Francisco Franco. I know that Livorno, Italy has particularly left-wing politics. I know that the geographic distribution of Bundesliga clubs is yet another reminder of the significant economic divide between the former East and West Germany. I know that possibly the only functional national institution in the DRC is their soccer league, which has produced TP Mazembe, who have won the CAF Champions League a bunch of times. I've seen the legacy of communist-era leagues and learned what all those widespread prefixes mean (CSKA, Dynamo, Torpedo, Lokomotiv, etc).
I've learned about the lost history of the (largely immigrant) professional soccer leagues in the US in the 1920s.
Then there's this recurring conversation:
Me: "So where are you from?"
European: "Oh, a small city — you wouldn't know it"
Me: "Try me."
Me: [knows the city]
Me: [tries to brush off how I know it b/c it's weird to talk about that time I went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole and was reading about second division clubs in Sweden.]
What have you picked up along the way?