Tour Stop 4: Damian’s in Dutch Now!

Games 6 & 7
My living room and The Cambrense Cafe in Hartford
June 11, 2006

Day three of the World Cup had another 3 matches on tap, two of which I planned to take in. After yesterday’s indoctrination, Damian was ready to roll again today. The Netherlands were matched up against Serbia and Montenegro. Two on one again I see. No fair! For those of you familiar with soccer or speed skating, you know the Dutch are INSANE when it comes to cheering for boring sports. They all dress up in orange and sing songs for hours and drink a lot of beer and blow loud horns and other crazy stuff.

The Montenegro-ans and the Serbians? Who knows. And quite frankly, who cares as my son picked his team and went all the way with it from the opening kick-off. How far? Oh, you’ll see. Perhaps it was the cute fans dressed up like orange lions that did the trick:

Whatever it was, Damian was hooked on Orange. (I did explain this doesn’t count for Syracuse.) In fact, those of you with TiVos or DVRs, perhaps you noticed when they scanned the crowd…

Didn’t catch that? Zooming in further… who’s that the arrow is pointing at?

Can’t make it out? Using my CTMQ Photo enhancement tool, I was able to pick out one fan in particular…

He’s positively rabid for the Dutch! (Look at those big toes!)

After the morning session, we drove out to Cheshire to celebrate our friends Kevin and Jenny’s daughter’s birthday. It was a beautiful day and there was great food and fun was had by all. Everyone, that is, except for Damian. He was a fussy-Gus all day long, crying and whining. We couldn’t figure out why but determined it must be because he was missing the Mexico-Iran match.

Damian got his way and we hit the road after 2 and a half hours. This left enough time for me and EdHill to pick up our Tour again; this time to a Portuguese bar in Hartford. We sped over to the Cambrense Cafe at the corner of Park and New Park. But hey, if we survived Nazis on Friday, how bad could a bunch of Portuguese people be?

As it turned out, not bad at all. The Cambrense (This word means something to people from the old country) Cafe is a nice little sports bar that shows all the Portuguese and Brazilian soccer matches on satellite feeds. They serve food, but the menu was in Portuguese and, well, I was afraid to ask. We got there at half time with the “good guys” up 1-0 over Angola. Wait… Angola made the finals? Yup, and what’s more, Angola just got its independence from Portugal about 30 years ago. See what you learn with this soccer stuff?

The bar was crowded but actually somewhat subdued. I learned that this was because despite the winning tally, they played like bums and everyone was upset about it. Eh, what the heck. After the game, we mosied up Park Road to O’Porto, an upscale Portuguese restaurant which I highly recommend. (Closed in 2013 or so) Ed and I ordered up some delicious appetizers (squid, shrimp, and clam dishes for me) and called it a day.

On our way out, we talked to the owner who mentioned that today was tough for him because, get this, he was Portuguese, sure… but he was born in Angola! You see people, all you have to do is talk to random people and you learn the coolest things.

The first act of true insanity I’ve seen so far in this World Cup Tour…