Joden! Joden! (Jews! Jews!)

Europeans are pretty serious about soccer.  Thursday night, Carmen and 29 other NYU students attended the Florence Fiorentina v Amsterdam AJAX calcio game.  Escorted by the Office of Student Life's Marco, a character that can only be described as pugnacious, who spent the entire match rolling and smoking cigarettes and calling the opposing team schiffosi (roughly translated dirtbags), the students braved the frigid temperatures and saw Florence fall ONE TO NIL to the opposing Aryan force.  Carmen saw an army of Dutch fans nearly flip a bus.  Carmen saw a busful of Dutchmen shell a bus-stop with eggs.  Carmen saw a 20,000 person bleacher section sing complex and well-intoned battle songs and wave flags the size of ranch-style homes.  Carmen saw the cages that separate the teams' fan sections.  Alcohol was not served, to prevent riots.

Beyond Fun Fact:  Ajax fans have developed the tradition of using Jewish and Hebrew symbols to express their allegiance.  Although the fan-base is almost entirely Gentile, die-hard fans refer to themselves as Joden or "Jews."  This, not strangely, has resulted in opposing teams resorting to anti-semantic cheers and paraphernalia when playing AJAX.  Enemy chants including and not limited to: "HAMAS, HAMAS" "JEWS INTO THE GAS" and a collective hissing sound that is meant to express leaking gas, as in leaking gas from gas chambers, as in gas chambers from the Holocaust.  

Inspired by Ausar but not brash enough to assert his own musical tastes onto the unsuspecting masses a la Ausar,  here is a list of what's oozing out of Carmen's speakers as of late:

1. DLZ by TV on the Radio

2. Highway 61 Revisited by Bob Dylan

3. Blood and Thunder by Mastodon

4. Guys Eyes by Animal Collective

5. Shrinking Universe by Muse

6. Cowgirl in the Sand by Neil Young

7. Northern Sky by Nick Drake

8. Hopeless by The Wrens

9. Let Down by Radiohead

10. Starship Trooper: Life Seeker/Disillusion/Wurm by Yes