Torsten Frings is standing around trying to find out if tickets for the Leafs game of the season are good.
"Section 101?" Frings wonders, delivering some of the prints and would like a visual interpreter. He is taking them out of the Toronto FC team-mate Stefan Frei, who is not a lot of hockey fans. Frei shrugs.
I'm sure all you got is good enough, I suggest. It's probably a box.
"No, no," Frings said with a heavy accent, but quickly
English better. "I buy these themselves. This is a normal ticket. "
It is the suggestion that the light sitting on a box can be abnormal.
It is not a hockey fan. Not yet. This becomes the second NHL game, he has never seen. He went to a Rangers game on holiday in New York a few years ago.
After the break, you are looking for something a free add-on. "It 'very fast'
Do you think I could have played?
"No," said Frings, taken aback. "I can not skate."
If you are familiar with the style of the muscle Frings' play, which could hit that may not be an obstacle.
Frings, 34, was a midseason addition to the city obsessed with football.
He is probably the highest quality Toronto FC player has ever had. Because of his decade of the German national team, has without doubt the greatest overall evaluation Q of each athlete in Toronto. Among Raggedy Andy and the furious combing a scar on his left cheek, as a result of motor vehicle accident during childhood, the face Frings' is instantly recognizable as a couple of billions of football fans.
Most athletes are changing jobs for better pay and greater accolades. Frings took a pay cut to come here. The movement was met with skepticism in his homeland.
For the most part the show, went on the mainland are looking for something that had eluded him his entire adult life - the anonymity.
"It's a great city," said Frings admiration of Toronto. "We're not in Europe."
What is not entirely true, but you can understand why he believes.
Frings played most of his professional career in football-mad northern outpost of Bremen, Germany. The city has about a quarter of Toronto. The pedigree football event is exponentially greater.
For 10 years, with some interludes Frings was the biggest star in town. He recalled that the normal things in life - shopping, playing outside with her two children - was impossible. Wherever he went, it was invaded by fans. In Toronto, it has space. He can walk. The environment must naturally feel larger.
Among the things he lists as his favorite pastime is here "kaffeetrinken" and "Yorkville."
He was a baseball fan in recent months. It was about 10 Blue Jays games since he arrived. It has already become the best baseball good faith that the rest of us, and it still does not understand the game a local friend who acts as his mentor.
And no, it requested that the Blue Jays tickets either.
"Here, people notice me, but they are more reserved," said Frings. He mimes popping open a cell phone. In Toronto, all trips to the grocery store is not a solicitation for a photoshoot.
England, as above, is a work in progress. Frings out almost perfectly, but he wants to speak German through his Schweitzerdeutsch PAL, Frei. Often, he took himself begins to respond directly.
His relations with the media that has historically characterized. You can always know the type. He spends most of the interview trying to look up and the top of my laptop to see what I write.
The last time we dealt with the German media, which gave him the hairy eyeball in his decision to leave Europe.
"Everyone asked, 'What do you want here?" The press was shocked. But I'm not one of the spotlight, so I did not care. I thought it would be quiet here, easier to live, "he says.
As Frings notes, was the week before the Bundesliga season last year, when he heard the first Toronto FC Deutsch fixer, Juergen Klinsmann. Frings was the end of his contract with Werder and is considering retirement. Klinsmann offered him an alternative. He continued to Frings, calling him several weeks. They discussed their options.
"I decided I wanted an adventure," said Frings. He seems to enjoy everything that makes Major League Soccer seems awkward for other European stars - travel, outsider status in the league, new towns, little interaction with people who do not know and can not speak their language.
I put it to him, that a cynic might think that he came here to finish his career at a slow pace while pulling in seven figures.
Frings understand the question. Spits out something in German that I suspect would make me cringe if I understand. Frei snorts in response. What was left out of the loop.
"I had offers in Spain and Scotland," said Frings. "Money is not a factor. I could make more money in Europe."
She still has a competitive objectives.
"I'm not here for fun," Frings said sternly in English. For a while, it feels great sympathy with his teammates after Frings missed a pass or a motion pooch. Once you catch a glance, you feel very good rabbit watching the snake.
It is, he says, taking advantage of the physicality of football in North America, its rhythm.
"I do not think (MLS) is as bad as people would be," said Frings, with a nod to politics. "It is based largely on the strength and resilience of permanent, rather than the skills."
Frings is a shortage that has all three in abundance.
He has little interest in being a "face" of the MLS. It would be another reason to join Toronto rather than, for example, LA
"There are other players - perhaps (David) Beckham -. That may have gained financially or advertising to come here in Hollywood, etc. For me, it was never the case."
So, Toronto is an anti-Hollywood?
Frei explains the concept.
"Something like that," said Frings, so that even a smile.
There is no hint of melancholy, as he says.
Rather, that was the point.
