TechEd Party: Like An Atheist in the Vatican

A lot of people loved the party location choice for this year's TechEd: Boston's Fenway Park. For anyone even less familiar with the sport that is so American that the Americans run the World Championship every year without even bothering to ask anybody not from North America whether they'd be willing to participate in it: Fenway Park is the home of the Boston Red Sox Baseball team.

Anyways ... I felt like an Atheist in the Vatican. Even though I've already lived in New York for two years, which might be the best place to come as an foreigner if you want to be opportunistic and adopt a local team as your favorite (however, Steve Forte, a big Mets fan would not speak to me if I'd root for the Yankees) I couldn't bring up a lot of interest for the sport and I doubt that that will change a lot in Seattle where I'll move some time this summer. The Green Monster meant nothing to me ("How can you not know about it!?"), sitting the visitor's dugout didn't do much for me, and so on. I mean, my only distant relationship to Baseball is that I am battling for a higher search rank on Live, Yahoo and Google with baseball super-star Roger Clemens. ;-) The concert with the band Train was very cool.

Now, I hear that there are discussions about getting rid of Fenway Park for a new stadium, and given that it is obviously such a historical site, I hope it's spared the fate of my home town Mönchengladbach's Bökelbergstadion, home of my team Borussia (Wikipedia) and the site of 5 German Bundesliga championships, which was recently replaced with the (great!) new stadium Borussia-Park. (To turn things around, I wouldn't forgive Forte if he rooted for Bayern).

While I am at it: Great performance yesterday at the wild Italy-USA 1:1 World Cup game by our Borussia goalie Kasey "The Wall" Keller.