Have You Ever Taken a Ride on a Russian Mountain?

How's about that for a weird question?

This is maybe old news to every student of Spanish other than me, but the name for a roller coaster in Spanish is una montaña rusa - a Russian Mountain!!!

Apparently the Russians were the first to invent rides similar to roller coasters. In the seventeenth century they built ice slopes for sleds to ride down. That, in turn, led to people in warmer climates developing cars with wheels that ran on tracks down steep slopes. When the idea spread from Russia to France, the French called the rides "Les Montagnes Russes" and I guess the name stuck when they eventually made it to Spain. 

According to Wikipedia, the following languages all use their equivalent of "Russian Mountain" to refer to roller coasters - Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French and Danish.

What Does Cement Have to do With Soccer?

OK, so I grew up watching soccer as a kid in England. I went through the excitement and the heartache of following my favorite team's every game as if it was a matter of life and death.

Since I moved to the states I haven't really followed soccer much, only really paying attention to World Cup games, and becoming an NFL addict and die-hard Packer fan.

However, I figured that a good way to understand more about México would be to get to know something about the Primera División Mexicana.

 

I was reading an article on-line about a recent game between Cruz Azul (Blue Cross) and Toluca (Los Diablos Rojos - "The Red Devils"). The article made reference to the Cruz Azul fans as "aficionados cementeros" and I found lots of other references to the team and their fans as "cementeros" (cement makers) and "la maquina cementera" (cement making machine). I was confused - I didn't see the connection between soccer and cement.

The answer was simple, but shows how we sometimes need more context to undserstand things like this. It turns out that "Cruz Azul" is the name of one of the biggest cement manufacturers in México!

So my favorite NFL team, the Green Bay Packers,  share something in common with the Cruz Azul soccer team - they both got their name from the company that originally sponsored them.