Moscow
The celebrated chef and world traveler, who died the same day at age 61, wasn’t into soccer. In fact, I seem to remember his hostility toward it.
“I ain’t playing no soccer,” he said during an episode of Parts Unknown filmed in Argentina. “Alcohol and meat in tube form, however, are more familiar to me.”
His disdain for soccer was a little surprising because no sport closer mirrored his sense of adventure and efforts to better understand the planet.
Just as Bourdain used food and culture to reveal a country’s identity, soccer opens a window into its soul. Food and futbol are Earth’s bonding agents, together shattering barriers created by geography and politics, language and class.
A ball, a field and a collection of ideas unite strangers the same way a steel tub of ice corralling bottles of cheap beer and meat dripping fat onto the orange embers of a wood grill.
You play, you eat. Country, color and creed are cast aside. Friends for life.
Bourdain would partake in everything from high-end cuisine in Denmark to a late-night Waffle House in the American South. He broke bread with President Barack Obama and Ted Nugent. He was egalitarian; so is soccer.
Bourdain saw the world like Lionel Messi saw the field: unlimited possibilities, a blank canvas (or in Bourdain’s case, a sharp knife and cutting board) to discover new paths, create art and promote the human spirit. One used a passport, the other a ball.
I suspect Bourdain would have loved World Cup qualifying more than the World Cup, which drowns in corruption and commercialization. The souvenir stand being erected at the base of Lenin’s statue outside Moscow’s Luzhiniki Stadium? He would have sneered, then dropped a profanity.
More to his liking would have been the U.S. adventures in qualifying over the years, to places such as Mazatenango, a town in Guatemala’s lowlands where kids selling newspapers along the side of the road didn’t know what to make of Anglo visitors.
Or to Kingston, the definitively non-tourist destination in Jamaica, where Bob Marley’s influence endures. To Port-of-Spain, where, one year, Carnival intersected with an American visit. Or to San Salvador, where a mountain road leads to a restaurant serving pupusas — hot, cheap and plentiful.
Here in Russia, despite a chilling global political climate, there is ample opportunity to learn and explore. My taxi driver at the airport was from Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic in central Asia. He has been in Moscow for a year. He once worked in Seoul and learned Korean.
His English is better than that of most Russians; my Russian is contained to a half-dozen words and phrases. Russians don’t expect visitors to speak their language fluently, but any attempt at a few words or phrases warms the exchange.
What the driver can’t articulate he punches into one of two smartphones attached to the dashboard of his Russian-manufactured Ford Mondeo and does well with pronunciation. We talk about life in America and Russia. He said he’d like to visit New York someday, but the cost and visa hurdles probably won’t allow it.
Like many here, he doesn’t think much of Russia’s chances in the World Cup. I ask him about ice hockey, hoping to stoke conversation about Russian superstar Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals winning the Stanley Cup. He doesn’t follow the sport, unfortunately.
We part ways in a section of the city neither one of us can afford, he in search of a new fare and me chasing another life experience — and a hearty bowl of borscht.
Bourdain would approve.