Friday 2 May 2014

Down Goes Dijon

Tonight the Baguette-Winner took me to see some French pro handball. It was a delightful exercise.
A few thoughts on Paris St-Germain vs Dijon:
-     There were probably about 1000 people there. Considering this game featured some of the greatest handball players on the planet (admittedly, they all played for one team, PSG), it was strange to be in a crowd smaller than the average Wellington Saints game.
-     Daniel Narcisse is the starting centre for PSG, and is very good at the handball. He is followed on Twitter by Ronny Turiaf, which will be interesting to fans of weirdo NBA players.
-     AD/DC’s global ubiquity was made brutally clear. After every single goal, we were treated to “TNT, I’m dynamite…” There were a lot of goals. AC/DC will always be overrated.
-     PSG were clearly the better team, and it felt as though both teams knew this before the opening whistle. PSG looked lazy and disinterested (Mikkel Hansen, especially), and Dijon really struggled to score for long stretches.
-     A lazy and disinterested PSG team is still capable of some pretty amazing handball. Their two starting wings, Luc Abalo and Samuel Honrubia (new favourite player, FYI), were sharp and fluid, and pivot Igor Vori was utterly unstoppable on attack. Even while barely breaking a sweat, they handily dispatched the Mustard Boys.
-     The cheap seats clearly have the most fun. We were right at centre-court, in essentially the front row, and it was far too dignified for my liking. Of course, the view was pretty great (we were too close, if anything), but all the action seemed to be coming in the back row behind the goal (ie, worst seats in the house). There were a lot of flags flying, and a lot of young children cheering. A mental note has been made to at least consider those seats in future.
The game was in the 13th Arrondissement, right on the edge of central Paris. For dinner, the two of us found a charming little Vietnamese restaurant. I was hugely relieved to find that Vietnamese food in Paris is essentially the same as Vietnamese food in Wellington (and Vietnam, for that matter). This is in stark contrast to the abomination that French consider to be Chinese food. The only Chinese restaurants which we have stumbled across (and regrettably eaten at, in one case) have involved cold, pre-prepared plates of various gelatinous goop. These are then selected by the customer and promptly microwaved for 2 minutes by the proprietor. Awful.
The Vietnamese was pretty much as I had hoped (pretty good), fresh, and very cheap. The Baguette-Winner says there are a few Vietnamese places near us in the 11th, so we will be sure to try some of those.
Overall, we had a splendid time on our Friday night excursion. There are very few handball games coming up (getting towards the end of the season), so we are going to have to wait awhile for part 2…

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