Walked off the
metro last night, in past and the gates, and right into a dream…
our tickets to the FC Barcelona match were acquired through family friends and Chad, Xenia, and myself made our way down to field level to get our seats. I was a little boy in a candy shop and couldn’t believe I was where I was…17 or so seats back from arguably the best team in the world, in the worlds biggest stadium, the best player in the world on the pitch….i really considered jumping the barrier and joining Lionel Messi out there… but then I thought id rather stay in Spain a little longer. Maybe ill give it a go on the tail end of the trip. During the 17th minute and the 62’ (17 minutes past half) the crowd symbolically sang their independence song. On September 11 1714 Cataluña lost their independence and with Spain’s economy not looking so hot, the Catalans want out even more. Culture and football clash quite well, they always have. I am still blown away that I got to sit that close, writing the family a letter after this post. Goodness me it was a lot to take in. You can probably tell I was over the moon. To top it off we snuck down to 5 seats away from the action for the second half…
our tickets to the FC Barcelona match were acquired through family friends and Chad, Xenia, and myself made our way down to field level to get our seats. I was a little boy in a candy shop and couldn’t believe I was where I was…17 or so seats back from arguably the best team in the world, in the worlds biggest stadium, the best player in the world on the pitch….i really considered jumping the barrier and joining Lionel Messi out there… but then I thought id rather stay in Spain a little longer. Maybe ill give it a go on the tail end of the trip. During the 17th minute and the 62’ (17 minutes past half) the crowd symbolically sang their independence song. On September 11 1714 Cataluña lost their independence and with Spain’s economy not looking so hot, the Catalans want out even more. Culture and football clash quite well, they always have. I am still blown away that I got to sit that close, writing the family a letter after this post. Goodness me it was a lot to take in. You can probably tell I was over the moon. To top it off we snuck down to 5 seats away from the action for the second half…
Another recent
happening, which is worthy of reporting on, was the karaoke place that some
friends ventured to. Amidst all of the Spanish and Catalan songs being sang it
felt a bit out of place to bust out the Maroon 5…. But we did anyway. American
songs kicked off with “Party in the USA”, which we made our Catalan friends
sing up on the stage… priceless. The other Spaniards in the bar actually
started selecting some of the English songs on the list and they actually did
fairly well! Possibly they just needed someone to break the American ice… if
so, you are welcome. Upon finishing my duet with Chad to Gabriel Iglesias’ “Do
you Know”, I threw a “Gracias España” out there as I exited stage right… bad
call. A corrective echo of… “CATALUNA!!” was my response. Like I said, they
take a lot of pride in being Cataluña. I apologized sheepishly as I got off
stage.
Before I got into
bed tonight I wiggle my toes and out popped off a shell looking thing off my toe. As I looked at all my toes I seemed to have developed little
pads between all my toes, presumably from walking so much. I do that a lot
here. About 5 miles a day, sometimes 10, I enjoy it and it has helped me get a
grasp for the town and I can easily navigate my way around my usual routes now. Believe it or not i have found two routes to class...yes indeed. The callouses that are lonely are the ones on my fingertips. I miss my guitar
back home and I have visited over a lot of guitar shops here in search of a
little travel guitar, nothing worth buying and hassling back to the states, I think my Martin back home has
just spoiled me…
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