On Sunday I went to the soccer game between Tom' (Tomsk) and Amkar (Perm', which is in the Urals). It was a kind of cloudy, drizzly, ugly day, but I was pretty surprised to see a lot of people show up. In fact, I underestimated the amount of time it would take me to buy a ticket, and I was still in a very long line 5 minutes before the game was supposed to start. Luckily for me, some people came up and asked if I was alone, and when I said yes, they gave me a spare ticket they had for free. So that was pretty nice; even though the tickets are only 6 dollars or so, it saved me a good amount of wait time.

I got to my seat and the game started a few minutes later, after a bizarre full-length song-advertisement from RosGosStrakh (Russian State Insurance). Going into the game, Tomsk was 13th or so in the 20-team Russian Premiere League, and Amkar was 19th. And for the entire first half, it looked like Amkar really deserved that spot. Tomsk controlled the ball, stayed on the attack, and really should have scored several times, but at halftime they led only 1-0.

Nonetheless, based on the way the first half went, the crowd was pretty confident going into the second half. There were a couple guys behind me who I listened to over the course of the game, and they talked about the game as well as about WWII history, politics, and plenty of other things. The second half gave me the opportunity to hear some Russian cursing from them, as Amkar scored twice and really looked much better than Tomsk to come away with a 2-1 win. I guess it's a pretty devastating loss for Tomsk; they had to have expected a win at home over such a bottom-feeder in the league, but no luck. So everyone was fairly quiet leaving the stadium, and I went home quickly before it started to rain harder.

I've got some pictures, only a few, but I'll post them here in an album with some others that I've taken since the last time I posted any pictures.

Soccer and others