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EuroCup 2008

It has been a while since my last post and I apologize for that. I know that many of y’all were begging me for new material so here ya go…

This past week was a vacation week for all of us on the program. I elected to stay in Barcelona for the majority of the week (except for the impromptu trip to Andorra). I decided to stay for a few reasons. First of all, I felt like there was a lot going on in Barcelona that I hadn’t been able to experience because I had been so busy taking trips to Italy, France, etc. and I wanted a chance to experience BCN without the business of classes. Secondly, and most importantly, traveling is expensive. Enough said.

So this past week was full of a lot of downtime, relaxation and a few crazy highlights that I am about to catch you up on. First of all, there was the festival of Sant Joan on Monday night (which I have already told you about). Then a good friend turned 21 on Tuesday so we went out to a nice dinner to celebrate.

Wednesday and Thursday were spent catching some rays and visiting the Joan Miro museum up on Montjuic. The Joan Miro museum had a temporary exhibit from Olafur Eliasson, an artist who specializes in light and they cool ways that it can refract. Pictures should be up on Flickr soon. 

Friday was a catch up on work day and then my parents came to town on Saturday! I spent all day Saturday and Sunday with my famliy. Saturday we just walked up and down Las Ramblas and did some people watching (Las Ramblas has some of the best people-watching I’ve ever encountered!) A group of people from my program came out to a nice dinner with my family and I in Placa Reial and we all got helado for dessert. Oh, and my dad, Stephanie and I bought Spain jerseys in anticipation of the next day’s game. 

On sunday, we woke up early and headed out to Montserrat. Montserrat is a mountain about an hour by train outside Barcelona and it sticks up like a giant serrated knife from the green countryside. It is also the home of a very old Benedictine monastery. It houses the oldest printing press in operation in the world and a statue of the Black Virgin Mary. According to legend, this statue was carved by St. Luke and brought to Montserrat by Peter in the year AD 50. Although other accounts which are fairly well documented claim the statue arrived at Montserrat around the year 700. Carbon dating suggests that the current statue in the basilica dates from the 12th or 13th centuries. No one knows the true story of the black madonna, or even exactly why she is black. All they know is that she has been in the mountains in northern Spain for a very long time. The monastery itself was very cool. It is even one of the most likely candidates for hiding places for the holy grail during the Middle Ages (Indy was wrong!) Anyways, we had a great time walking around the monastery and enjoying the incredible views of the countryside. For more info about Montserrat legends and the black virgin Mary, check out these links (you know you want to…) 

After we got back from Montserrat, we got cleaned up just in time to head to a bar to watch the Eurocup2008  finals. Spain thoroughly trounced Germany 1-0. Because Spain had not won any major title in 44 years, this marked a pretty historic occasion and the people of Barcelona took to the streets to celebrate. I promptly left the bar and went with a group of people from Tech to Placa España which was completely overrun by people already. I walked off the metro to the sound of fireworks (which sounded more like cannon shots!) and people chanting and singing. There was hardly room for cars to drive and by the time we left, traffic had completely stopped on the 4 lane road. There was no room to stand on the inner courtyard of the plaza, the streets were completely flooded with people and were impassible, and the outer walkways were jammed full as well. Red flares were being lit, fireworks were going off just overhead, people were running, singing and dancing in the streets. It seemed like everyone had a red and yellow jersey or flag they were either wearing or had removed to wave around. Things started to get a little crazy as more and more people flooded the plaza. People climbed the huge statue in the middle of the plaza. I tried to get a picture last night but my flash would only reach so far. I’ll have to get a picture during the daytime so I can give you an idea of how crazy these people were for climbing the tower. Some people did fight their way through the crowds in cars. Some on purpose and some on accident. Many people got into their cars and drove around honking and waving flags out the window as a form of celebration. If the people in the car had their windows rolled down and would stop and sing along with the crowds, people would often part and let them through easily. If people tried to muscle their way through the crowds or seemed like they weren’t as happy for Spain as the crowds were….. well, they often got their car rattled a little. I saw very few instances of actual damage done to cars but I was only a foot away from the rear bumper of a car when its rear windshield was broken out. Luckily the driver was a good sport about it all. One of the city bus drivers decided that he didn’t want to fight the crowds so he just stopped the bus and lit up a cigarette. Well, the crowds took advantage of the sitting duck and proceeded to break out every window on the bus. Any vehicle that came along with a flat surface (such as trucks, vans, buses or fire engines) also got completely covered with people as they were driving. This whole time, I’m trying to not get hit by weaving motorcycles while jumping in front of every news camera that I can find. I took a few pictures that turned out and you can expect them on flickr asap. Wow, this town really knows how to celebrate. It had been a whole week since Sant Joan and I suppose they were ready to hit the streets again.
Check out some great pictures of EuroCup (I’ll have my own up later).
Wow, I know that was incredibly long but for those of you who made it this far, that was my week in review. I picked a great week to stay in Spain. 

This entry was posted on Monday, June 30th, 2008 at 11:51 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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