Saw the UAE’s final friendly match tonight, ahead of their going to England for the London 2012 Olympics, and wrote about it for The National. The UAE football team reaching the Olympics … a very big deal. Not that anyone with much experience following soccer likes their chances, especially in a group with Uruguay, Great […]

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A fun discovery at the breakfast spread, here at the Grandhotel Lienz in Austria: The Kleine Zeitung. That translates as Little Newspaper, and nothing could be more direct. This is a quarter-size newspaper, in one section. Like a tabloid, except about half the sheet size. (I placed a Bic pen on the paper, in the […]

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In the vein of “when in Austria” … I could not, of course, pass up the “wurst” stand across the street from the train station, here in Lienz. Nothing says “central European eating” quite like a plump and piping-hot tube of mystery meat. Of the sort you find at Stoana’s Wurstlstandl. And if my German […]

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When I got to Lienz, in the southwest of Austria, I had no real mental image of what it would look like. Mountains, probably, sure. Maybe a wide valley. Maybe something more like a plain. Possibly denuded hills, from logging. Maybe a dump or a belching factory. But I got far better than that. I […]

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I didn’t think they existed — Lutherans in Austria. But when I was walking back to the hotel from the soccer training ground a few days ago, the bells were banging, on the stroke of 7 p.m, at a church across the street, and I decided to take a closer look. The ivy-covered church (interior, […]

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Not sure, I really believe that, but I can run with it for a few meals, anyway. For example: My dinner tonight at the Terraserincafe Bierbistro (above), in one of the main squares of Lienz. I wanted to keep it real, Osterreich style, and this is what I had:

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So, the UAE Olympic team, mostly guys 23 or younger, played a team from Hungary the other night, and crushed them, 5-0. UAE football officials were not pleased that the Hungarians put up so little resistance — though it was 0-0 until the 40th minute. (Less than two weeks ahead of their London 2012 opener, […]

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I have spent very little time in five-star hotels. Actually, I can’t remember the last time I slept in one, before getting to the Grandhotel Lienz, here in Austria. Part of what five-star hotels do, to justify the prices they charge, is to kill you with little kindnesses and services.

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I know that the William Tell Overture, the introduction to Giaochino Rossini‘s opera on the Swiss hero … is set in Switzerland. But after a few days here with the UAE Olympic team, in Austria, also in the Alps, I have been reminded of the William Tell Overture … and feel as if I am […]

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