A terrific weekend!

This weekend, Trond, Odd, Roald and Håkon (in descending age order...) came to London for their annual football trip to London. I was lucky enough to roam the streets of London with them almost all weekend. On Thursday we had some drinks and a pleasant meal in a small restaurant in Shepherd's Market before we moved on to a Mexican-Polish (!) bar in the same area. After that, the young and promising continued the journey to Piccadilly Circus and the bar / night club Cheers, while the not so young but still promising ended the evening with a night cap in the apartment in Mayfair. A good night indeed!
The day after, on Friday, we went to the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane to see the hilarious musical "The Producers" by the genious Mel Brooks.



The plot is in short about a Broadway producer who, with help from an insecure accountant, discovers that a musical can actually give him more money as a flop. What they only need is the worst play ever written, the worst actor and the worst director. And believe me, they find it... I won't reveal any more, but the name of the play they find is "Springtime for Hitler"...
On Saturday I spent most of the day doing a bit reading and doing the laundry, while the guys saw Arsenal beat Blackburn 3-0, undeserved... But I think the food was good. Later in the evening we had some drinks and then off to Neverland again, preparing ourselves for the biggest moment in my football watching history: To see Manchester United live. And I don't think I could have found a better match to do that. Roald, Håkon and I had seats in the away supporter's section on Upton Park, the home ground of London team West Ham United. Trond and Odd had "borrowed" some season tickets, and discovered to their disappointment tat they had been ripped off, and that someone else had entered the ground with the same tickets. Well, at least they got good seats in a bar near Soho, and good seats on the tube on their way back...
Back to our position in the away section. I'll give two good reasons why that was so brilliant:

1) The Man Utd supporters there were mainly Die Hard supporters, those who sing the most and spend all their money travelling to away games.

2) The atmosphere was really special because it was a ceremony honouring the late George Best, one of the greatest attackers of all time, who passed away on Friday. I'll get back to how great he was in another post.



The game itself looked pretty bad, considering the goal West Ham scored after merely 50 seconds. Terrible defending and a good counter attack by West Ham. The Man Utd players really tested the ex-Man Utd goalkeeper Roy Carroll (as Håkon put it: "Typical... His first brilliant performance in a Man Utd game, and it's against us...") but no more goals were scored in the first half.
In the second half the game turned in Man Utd's favour during the first twenty minutes, when Wayne Rooney and then John O'Shea scored one each. It might be a bit early to compare Rooney with Best now already, but he was still magnificent. Ruud van Nistelrooy had a brilliant chip that hit the bar, a stunning performance. All in all a great match to see. And all the goals were scored right in front of us as well!



Today is monday, and I can feel that the weekend has been busy. The exams are approaching quickly, and there's still a decent amount of knowledge that has to be hammered into my head over the next two weeks. And then comes Christmas with the delicious food, seeing family, meeting friends and in general have a great time. In addition I'll have to read for the January exams. So sleep is a luxury I cannot afford in the next month... All in all I have a great time here in London, but I look forward to returning.