Manchester. Football and youth

Even if you don't like football, it's worth going to at least one match to see how seriously the English take the game. It's even usually passed on as an inheritance - once the father has supported a certain team, the son very rarely changes his tastes. Fans may even become depressed if they are not happy with the final score.

The National Football Museum was founded in 2001. It was originally located in Preston, but moved to Manchester's Urbis building in 2012. Here you can get into the English Football Hall of Fame, which is dedicated to British coaches and players.

Adjacent to the museum is the Northern Quarter neighborhood, a center for alternative and bohemian culture, with a host of music stores such as Piccadilly Records, Vinyl Exchange, Eastern Bloc Records, for example.
There are also a lot of bars (as much as a whole street) in the Northern Quarter. So if you want to drink and have fun and you don't find anything in the city centre, you can go to the Northern Quarter, it will be a lot of fun.

A famous club whose fans wear branded hats and scarves is Manchester City. The team appeared in 1880. It was founded by a priest's daughter Anna Connell, who decided to help her father open a canteen for the local poor in one of the most deprived areas of the city. To reduce crime and keep the bums busy, she set up a football team that won the English Cup in 1904. In May 2019, Manchester City won the 2018-2019 Premier League season and the players, along with the trophy, travelled through the city centre on an open bus. They were greeted by hundreds of fans who hugged and kissed each other. At times, it even felt like the fans, not the players, had received the trophy. It was a real celebration. It was moments like that when you realise that football for the English is a sacred thing.

As well as football, clubs and bars, Manchester is known for its students. The city is home to three universities, so there's always a lot of life here. The most famous of these is The University of Manchester. It was founded in 1824 and is still famous for its academic heritage. In different years 25 Nobel Prize winners have studied and taught here. Incidentally, in 2010, the award went to local residents and part-time Russian physicists Konstantin Novoselov and Andrey Geim for "pioneering experiments with the two-dimensional material - graphene". Today they continue to work at the University of Manchester.

Another famous club Manchester United was founded by a group of railway workers in 1878, and in 1908 the team won the English Cup. Its home stadium is Old Trafford, or "Theatre of Dreams", as the English call it. Before the pandemonium, I'll be honest, I even grew fond of this stadium as my university friend Ben was a Manchester United fan and never missed a match. We went to see the game in all kinds of weather, we queued among the crazy fans, we were freezing in the stadium (yes, it was very cold), but it was still an incredible experience.