Before heading off to England and Ireland for two and a half weeks over winter break, my personal voyage consultant, world traveler Serena Bolliger, had three pieces of advice for me: 1) Try to avoid getting deep vein thrombosis on the seven-hour plane ride to London, 2) Don't think the girls on the street corner are looking for directions 3) Avoid drinking with football hooligans. In fact, try to avoid football hooligans altogether.
I made it through the plane ride without incident and averted any embarrassing encounters with prostitutes, but I couldn't resist diving into the local fan culture of the 'football' we call soccer.
Despite the fact that it was winter in England, the Premier League football season was in full swing. I made the assumption that nobody in their right mind would be playing soccer in temperatures that regularly fell to the high 20s and low 30s (which I guess would be between about -4 and 2 degrees Celsius, to put it in their terms) and didn't plan enough ahead of time to get tickets to see a game in person. But I saw enough from the television broadcasts and extensive newspaper coverage: This country takes their football seriously.
On the train ride from Heathrow to London the first day of my visit, I picked up a discarded copy of the Daily Mirror and started leafing through the sports section. I was stunned to see 32 full pages of Premier League soccer coverage
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