Like many a Yank before me, I have tried to explain to European friends that Americans actually know soccer quite well, that many of us played it in school and college, but that, well, we just don't find it quite as exciting as, say, what we call football.

Serge Schmemann

Categorized in : Me School Football Friends

Soccer is a great game, and the rich variety of styles and passions that come with being truly global makes the World Cup a nonpareil event in the universe of competitive sport.

Serge Schmemann

passion soccer sports

The art of reading between the lines is as old as manipulated information.

Serge Schmemann

reading book art

In some circles Stalin has in fact been making a comeback. His portrait hangs above the dashboard of trucks, a symbol of blue- collar nostalgia for a tough leader.

Serge Schmemann

circles leader blue

Newspaper reporting is really storytelling. We call our articles 'stories,' and we try to tell them in a way that even people who don't know all the background can understand them.

Serge Schmemann

stories trying people

Every time some spoiled European soccer millionaire complains about the blaring vuvuzelas, I want them to blare louder.

Serge Schmemann

complaining want soccer

What Paris has done right is to make it awful to get around by car and awfully easy to get around by public transportation or by bike.

Serge Schmemann

paris car done

Back when George W. Bush was identifying his Axis of Evil, it struck me that a longer and more instructive list could be compiled of the Axis of the Humiliated (or Insulted and Injured, to borrow from Dostoevsky).

Serge Schmemann

axes back-when evil

A history of perceived humiliation, after all, lurks behind many acts of terror. And competing narratives of victimhood and insults sustain conflicts in the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East and many other regions.

Serge Schmemann

insult middle-east narrative

Our daily life is filled with electronic pianos, ring tones, the disembodied voice giving you your bank balance over the telephone. Even silence can be electronic, courtesy of sound-canceling headphones.

Serge Schmemann

daily you silence life

Recorded engine sounds, however, are a deliberate deception. They're like going to a concert and listening to a recording. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind buying a BMW recording and installing it in my '96 Jeep Cherokee.

Serge Schmemann

concert like listening mind

My own kids were with me in Berlin when Germany was reunited, and they were with me in Moscow when the Soviet Union collapsed. We talked about these things at the dinner table, at their schools, with their friends.

Serge Schmemann

me dinner friends my-own

Bus routes reach the most obscure corners of Paris. There's also the Metro - and especially the great Line No. 1, which runs on tires under the Champs-Elysees and beyond.

Serge Schmemann

reach great bus paris

Parisians overwhelmingly buy small cars. And it's not because people are petite, but because fuel is drop-dead expensive. Gasoline costs more than twice as much in Paris as in New York.

Serge Schmemann

new small car people

The lesson for the next U.S. president: Raise the taxes on fuel. A lot.

Serge Schmemann

lesson next fuel president

There are many roads to journalism. My feeling is that your best bet in college is to study the subjects you will want to write about, whether politics, the environment or the law.

Serge Schmemann

roads best you politics

Definitely read a quality daily paper regularly, and use the Internet to check out the press around the world as often as you can.

Serge Schmemann

daily you quality world

We all know that much of what we hear in life is not really so. Canned laughter and 'sweetened' applause have been TV staples for decades, and all the slamming doors, breaking glass and squealing tires you hear in movies are sound effects.

Serge Schmemann

movies you laughter life

Buyers of powerful cars place a high premium on the exhaust note, and manufacturers spend a lot of money getting it right. At the same time, high-end cars are expected to filter out the sounds of the mundane world.

Serge Schmemann

car money time world

I guess what I'm really saying is something obvious - that there's a unique pride in watching a home team from rival turf, especially when we're not supposed to be any good.

Serge Schmemann

good team unique home

The fall of the Berlin Wall is very much a sequel, a continuation of the story about Eastern Europe emerging from war and Communism. The notion of presenting history as a story also appealed to me very much, since that is the way I look at the events I cover as a reporter.

Serge Schmemann

look me war history