We watched the U.S. Open, at least what there was of it. I pinpointed a sports book (aka a gambling house) that shows sports from all over the globe. Primarily horse and dog racing, soccer, boxing, cricket...sports that people bet on. They claim to show professional American football, but no college football, at least not yet!
The U.S. Open start time was moved up to 11 a.m. in an attempt to beat the bad weather, but Murray and Berdych probably didn't start until 11:30. We had a hard time communicating we wanted to watch the tennis and that the match would start earlier than the sports bar's schedule indicated.
But since the match was postponed, no matter. It started later, and the bar played it from the get go.
At one point, right during a crucial point to be played, they switched it back to soccer! Thankfully, there was another gentleman who had come in, and he was watching the match, too. He went and told management of the problem, and tennis was returned.
I bought the guy a beer to say thanks. It turns out, he speaks terrific English (as well as Spanish), because he was a former Russian tennis pro who was sent to Valencia, Spain to train in a tennis academy at the age of 16. Sacha is now a professional coach for Russian youth tennis. He's also a huge Roger fan. The match lasted about three hours.
During that time, we engaged in a lot of conversation, mostly tennis-related, but interspersed with talk about life in Russia. Apparently, a lot has been changing here in just the last 5-6 years (a fact Andrea also learned on our train ride down here after talking to a Houston, TX-based gentleman who works in the energy sector and who has been traveling back and forth to Russia quite a bit for years).
What has changed, I can't tell you because I am having a hard time pinpointing it. Much of it is related to "commercialism," a term Sacha used a lot. Everyone is out for and after money for themselves.
One change, for example, casinos that opened in the early 1990s and boomed, were shut down in the last few years. There are some very rich people, but there are a lot more poor people struggling just to get by, raise a roof over their heads and put food on their tables. Kind of like what is happening in the U.S.A. and in all parts of the world -- the gap btween the haves and have-nots is widening. Without a strong middle-class, I don't think a free, open, democratic society can be sustained. And that is ultimately what we, the people, want. Right?
Anyway...we started to watch the Ferrer-Djokovic match. We were all rooting for Ferrer, who went up 5-2 in the first set when play was suspended due to very bad and potentially harmful weather moving in. They evacuated the stadium. Match play is set to resume at 11:00 a.m. DC time.
Unfortunately for us, this freaking apartment's "international satellite TV" has only 17 channels, all in Russian and no Eurosport channel, upon which we watched the Olympics and the U.S. Open in Petersburg!
Tomorrow, language school!
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