walkabout in london

As Wimbledon drew to a close for another year, I decided it was time to visit London. Touching down late on Friday night, I got the grand tour from Stansted in the North East to where Carmen lives, Wimbledon, in the South West. Similar to going from Melbourne Airport to Frankston, this took about an hour and a half.

After a justified sleep in on Saturday it was time to take "the tube" to see one of London's most famous sites: the Tower of London.

The Tower is not a single tower, rather it is a fortress (with 4 towers), surrounded by two defensive walls. The walls have many more towers.

The complex has plenty of strange, interesting and bloody-thirsty history to offer. Not only that, it also stores some impressive collections of historic weaponry: from suits of armour to bayoneted rifles.

A funny tradition at the tower, is that a minimum of six ravens need to roost in the grounds, otherwise legend has it that the tower will crumble and the monarchy will fall. Of course this is the first time I'd heard of ravens being crucial to the structural integrity of a building and the general well being of a family, but you never know I guess. Just to make sure the legend is never tested, they keep eight or nine ravens there. Not superstitious at all; just cautious. :-)

Of course to complete any self-respecting royal fortress, you require royal guards. The British have pretty distinctive royal guards too:

These lads were on their way to guard the crown jewels. And do the British royals have a lot of crown jewels? Yes.

That night it was time to change the scene a bit. From down town royal castles, to inner city Camden Town. We caught a Mexican wrestling (Lucha libre) show at the Roundhouse. Former railway shed, and then more famously, live music venue. These days it's been revamped into a theatre. The wrestling was a ridiculous, well choreographed show with oiled up men wearing masks. After the show we went back to the centre of London for a night on the turps.

We were supposed to have brunch on Sunday morning, but we scrapped that plan in favour of sleeping in again. Today was the main event: Wimbledon men's final. No, unfortunately I didn't have tickets, but being in London meant I could at least watch the final in daylight hours! True to form, it was raining by 1pm, and still raining at 2pm when the final was due to start. We headed into a sports bar, and settled for watching a very wet British Grand Prix.

Finally the weather cleared, and Federer and Nadal took the court for what was about to be an epic 5 set final. This being London on men's final Sunday, meant it wasn't going to be fine weather forever. Of course the match got interrupted again. When the weather forecaster said the delay would be at least an hour, we decided to head to Cynthia's, and watch the remainder of the final at her house. (We weren't even sure if it was going to be continued that day!)

The rest is history. The rain cleared, play continued, and Nadal broke Federer's five Wimbledon winning streak. We watched it in comfort at Cyn's place, eating some excellent sushi.

pong on berlin

Berlin has a crazy bar called Dr. Pong. Combining drinking with competitive sport. Awesome.

Basically everyone is in at the start, and you keep rotating around the table hitting one ball at a time until there are only 2 left. They then play out a game.

Does anyone think that the guy in the dark jacket and white shirt in the video looks like Roger Federer?

sport in göteborg

Back in Melbourne I don't shy away from playing a bit of sport. Usually tennis, more recently basketball, and when convenient (and not wet!) I'll ride to work.

Before I left for Sweden I was already thinking about Sweden's tennis heritage: Edberg and Björkman are the ones that come to mind. But there have been more recent Swedish players: Johansson won the Aussie in 2002, and Enqvist lost it in 1999. Most famously Björn Borg only played one Aus. Open because he's soft. Anyway... You'd thinking this great tennis playing nation might have a fair bit of tennis at the amateur (or more accurately: hack) level. Nup, it snows here so they play indoors - limiting the number of courts available.

This doesn't matter though as my work mates have taught me another game. Again, it's been influenced by the snow. It's called Innebandy (or Floorball in English), and it's basically indoor hockey, but also influenced by ice hockey too (you can go behind the goals for instance).

We play three on three, and with no goalie either. It's quick and scores come often.

The other sport I've taken up while I'm here is a bit more ridiculous... I've travelled 15,000kms to join a footy club! Mind you, they've got a cool name: The Göteborg Berserkers! Would you want to play a sword wielding Viking berserker? I haven't played footy in a good 8 years, and it's fair to say I haven't got any better since high school. Luckily, they don't seem to be much better ;-)

Funny thing is footy here is played properly: in the mud! No drought to worry about here, there's plenty of soft turf to land in. Mind you I was doing that on my own accord as I don't have studded boots. Volley's don't have much grip in the mud... actually they have none. Might be time for a trip to the shops.