** disclaimer - started writing this on Friday evening, but didn't have a chance to finish it until now **
To call today a full day would just about be the understatement of this trip. There's so much I'd like to tell you about, but I think I'm going to have to focus on what is most prevalent in my mind at the moment. Well, that sounds a little grave, which it really isn't at all - just a lot to absorb. Tonight was el final de la Copa del Rey, or the championship of the top tier Spanish professional soccer league (La Liga). My homestay is actually extremely close to El Estadio Manzanares, home of Atletico Madrid and host stadium for tonight's game. Unfortunately, the cheapest tickets for this game lay somewhere around 600 euro so attending the game was out of the question, but instead Caitlin and I had the opportunity to watch the game as I've never seen a soccer game before. About half a kilometer along the river from our homestay and in the opposite direction of the stadium was situated an ENORMOUS tent of wide red and white stripes. What should it be but la carpa de los aficionados de Athletic Bilbao. We've been running along the river most days this week, which had given us a chance to witness the construction of the tent. What is more, while watching the news with Emilio earlier this week, we heard that this tent would house 150,000 L of cerveza amongst other refreshments and food.
We went to check things out about two hours before kick-off and already could barely walk through along the paseo that is normally so spacious and quaint. Caitlin's convinced me to run with her a bit since we've been here and the paseo is about 7,60 km long in total. We live at the 2,70 mark and all along the way there are various riverside cafe's and restaurants, ingenious wood and rope playgrounds that remind me of low-ropes courses and lots of architecturally fascinating bridges that cross the river at various parts. To say that the place was packed would be to say that we have to wait in line for tickets to the Duke-UNC game. Everywhere I turned and as far as the eye could see were aficionados clad in the red and white stripes or green accents of Athletic Bilbao. Hands down it was the most incredible way to watch a game of soccer that I have experienced (and believe me, I've seen a remarkable number of partidos). People pushed back and forth as they tried to move throughout the crowd, but mostly they were respectful, everyone giving a knowing and apologetic or forgiving glance as they brushed into people. Even the drunk ones were nice about it!
But the presence of so many supporters of Bilbao had a greater significance - it was more or less a political step, a subtle way of showing up the Spanish government. Bilbao is located in El Pais Vasco, in English known as the Basque country. In recent years, what with the economic crisis and everything, this region has been talking of seceding and asserting itself as its own country to try to shed some of the pressures of Spain's collective debt. By so many flooding the streets of Madrid, Spain's gubernatorial capitol, for a game that they were pretty much guaranteed to lose the Bilbao fans of all ages and walks of life quietly demonstrated their presence. What is more, the Basques have their own language, the only sub-dialect spoken in Spain that doesn't really sound like what we normally think of as Spanish (Castellano, the language most popularly spoken in Spain) called Euskera. It was interesting, as we talked a bit with some chicos about our age that so ingrained in them was this more or less peaceful rebellion against Madrid that though they could speak and understand Castellano just fine, they elected to reply to us in broken English mixed with Euskera. We had a couple of kind of funny experiences with this language barrier, to be honest. One guy (25 would be a low estimate for his age, I think) told me he was in love with me and gave his number but not his name, at which point Caitlin and I decided to pretend to catch sight of a friend in the crowd and politely excused ourselves to find 'our friend'. Towards the end of the game we were having a rather broken and cyclic conversation with a couple of boys closer to our age (I'd say they were between 19-22). They kept saying something along the lines of "While you are in Spain, be careful of the Spanish boys. Basque boys are the good ones. Good Basque boys." I'm not entirely sure what they were trying to achieve with this, but we could share a good laugh and they taught us a bunch of the cheers for Athletic Bilbao, which unfortunately have two many maldicciones for me to want to write them out. Suffice it to say that the title of this post was the tamest of these cheers.
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