Wembley vs Assembly

Transcript: Wembley vs Assembly

If you’re planning a journey by rail, it pays to know that trains in Britain basically all travel to London and back. But there’s one company whose trains run directly from north to south without going near the capital: Cross-Country Trains. It means, for example, that if one of Manchester’s football clubs plays an away match (UK)Auswärtsspielaway match on the south coast, at either Bournemouth or Southampton, its fans can take a direct train to go and see it.

This recently happened and, just by chance, the other south-coast team was playing the other Manchester team in Manchester on the very same day. So, a train travelling north full of Bournemouth supporters on their way to see their team play Manchester United must have met the train full of Manchester City supporters heading south to see the match against Southampton.

Did the fans have time to wave and exchange a friendly greeting as one train sped past the other? Not really. They would have had to break their journey and to stretch one’s legshier: einen kleinen Spaziergang machenstretch their legs. Where, though? I’d recommend Leamington, a beautiful town not far from Birmingham. It’s halfway on the route from north to south. True, it looks like the sort of place where more time’s been spent playing cards than football — especially in the days when it was a fashionable spaKurortspa.

The middle classes arrived there in the early 19th century to play whistWhist (ein Vorläufer des Bridge-Spiels)whist and to bathebaden (gehen)bathe in its salty mineral water. Even Queen Victoria visited when she was a princess, so the full name is Royal Leamington Spa.

It’s full of elegant Regency buildings that would be quite at home in a novelRomannovel by Jane Austen. She certainly knew what spas were like. She lived for a while in Bath, and wrote with a critical eye about the lifestyle of its middle class in the pages of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

Would it take a lot of persuasionÜberzeugungskraft, gutes Zuredenpersuasion to get football supporters to spend an hour or two in a spa town on match days? They often have a couple of drinks in the pub before kick-offAnpfiffkick-off. It might be a nice change to take afternoon tea in the gracefulelegant, ansprechendgraceful Georgian atmosphere of the Pump Room or the Assembly Rooms, eating delicateköstlich, leckerdelicate cakes and little sandwiches.

After all, a number of Britain’s Georgian towns and cities, such as Bath, Norwich, Newcastle and Edinburgh, still have their Assembly Rooms, a place where balls were held as an opportunity for visitors to dance and to socializeunter Leute kommensocialize.

Leamington also has a lovely hall called the Assembly, thoughaber, allerdingsthough it was built rather later. It’s mainly used for pop concerts, but I’m sure they wouldn’t mind holding a ball for the fans.

To be honest, I think the fans would probably ra­ther be at Wembley than the Assembly. Wembley Stadium: the proud home of English football, where all teams dream of winning the FA Cup Final.

Of course, you can’t hold a ball at Wembley; there’d be loud cries of protest, and the ref (referee) (ifml.)Schiri, Schiedsrichter(in)ref would to awardgeben; hier: entscheidenaward a free kickFreistoßfree kick against you.