Kegs, eggs and a soccer game

Kegs and Eggs

The "tyranny of distance" that separates New Zealand from the rest of the world has been considerably reduced by new technologies. But time is still time, and when something happens in Europe it happens at an inconvenient time in Wellington.

Luckily for us soccer fans, Wellington institutions - read pubs - rose to the challenge and provided an outlet for the Champions League final between Chelsea and Bayern Munich. True, that outlet involved us being in the bar by 6 a.m., but what's a fan going to do? I swear to God, when I got my job in St. Augustine, Fla., I had to drive an hour to an Irish bar in Jacksonville to get two-week-old newspapers to find out how my Glasgow Rangers had done. Long distance calls were expensive and, in any event, my grandmother had no idea how the Gers were doing.

Yes, that's the primitive time I grew up in. There was no internet, no texting, and the wires just plain didn't cover British soccer. That's all changed of course and nowadays I have the ability to follow my Rangers in real time, even if real time isn't convenient. But when it comes to a European Cup final - the tournament that matches the best teams from the continent - you need visuals and you need company.

Even if it's at 6 a.m. So I invited some friends to join me at a local pub in downtown Wellington at that incredibly antisocial hour on a Sunday morning. What are you going to do?

I booked a table and invited some friends. Having been breathalyzed an extraordinary amount since arriving in New Zealand, I hated being out with the drunks and took a circuitous route to the bar. I just didn't feel like the hassle this morning. It's awesome in a very creepy way to go to a bar and await the sunrise, especially a bar that is packed to the rafters. It's like life got turned upside down.

But we do what we have to do. We watched and extraordinarily thrilling game and, for a few hours, those of us in New Zealand felt a part of Europe. And we got beer with our bacon and no one judged us. That's worth something.