Old friends and old friends

Wednesday night was the long-awaited FC Barcelona football match. We started the evening drinking our liter-bottles of beer on the subway, attracting countless stares and mutterings that can only be assumed as "stupid Americans". Fortunately, both of my two roommates had purchased Barca jerseys, so our intentions were obvious and for the most part I think we were absolved. After arriving at the stadium, we picked up our tickets, and went around in search of a bar. Tailgating, apparently, is a very American phenomenon, and the real Spaniards go to any of the local dive bars to get trashed before the game. We went to one such bar, and sat down at a table with two older men. Scott started talking to them, and before we knew it, we had our first genuine Catalan friends. Aged 66 and 81, respectively, we communicated haphazardly about important topics such as football, travel, and George Bush. They were season ticket holders, and had probably been going to games forever. We left to run over to the other bar that was selling bocadillos para llevar (sandwiches to go), and immediately regretted not snapping our photo with them. However, seeing that "they're old; they probably walk slowly", we easily caught up to them in the parade from the bars to the stadium and took a quick snapshot.

Getting into the stadium was quite an adventure. Mind you, I was about 5 beers deep, and apparently had lost some of my usual prowess with regard to technological devices. The entry turnstiles were similar to those at the Phillies stadium, where you hold the bar-coded side of the ticket under a little reader, and it allows you to pass through. I was not quite patient enough to wait for the green light to flash, so naturally, the turnstile didn't allow me in. The green light went off a second later, but in my confusion, I didn't attempt to walk through the turnstile until the next second, by which time the green light was off, and there I was outside the stadium with a ticket that has already been used. In a panic, I tried going to the turnstile next to me, but of course, I was rejected as having a ticket that was "repitido", and the light remained red. I appealed to one of the guys working there, who tried to make what he could of my story ("It was green, but I didn't walk through in time!") and appealed to his manager. Fortunately one of the other employees had seen my original debacle, and told the manager ("dio prisa, he visto" or "he was in a rush, I saw") and I was permitted to enter the stadium. Crisis averted, although I couldn't help but wonder what they'd do in the US.

The game itself was very exciting, with a high score of 5-2 in favor of Barcelona over Getafe, a team from near Madrid. We had seats in the first row of the highest section, behind the goal that Barca was shooting on. I don't really know much about soccer, so I couldn't really tell you the details of any exciting plays, but suffice it to say, it was exciting. What was also exciting, however, was when I realized that the person sitting right behind me (in a 100,000 seat stadium) was Jamie Brod, a very close friend of two of my camp friends. We'd met years earlier at NFTY events, and you can imagine my surprise when I saw her right behind me. She, of course, has been studying in Barcelona since January, in the same building that I have my classes in. So we took a picture of us together, and now I'm just waiting for her to tag me on facebook.

At halftime we moved over to the other side and lower, into a rowdier and more crowded section. This is where I learned a few of their cheers, which mostly aren't more complicated than "Barca, Barca, Barrrrrca", and also increased my profanity vocabulary. Most of what was said that I could pick up was along the lines of "cabrón, maricón, and puta"; which if you don't know what they mean, your life is none the worse.

Thursday night, we had a little all-male dinner party, that included four of us from the program, one of Scott's friends from school who was in town, and two of my grade school friends, Sean Comroe and Zach Kramer. I don't think I'd seen Zach since about 8th grade, the last time we went to school together, which is somewhat surprising considering he lives in my neighborhood. But they're both studying here, and are leaving with the rest of the semester kids in about a week. It was nice to catch up; hearing about who has changed, who hasn't, and who got knocked up (no one I really knew that well).

Tomorrow morning David and I fly to Morocco. We tried to get a free place to stay by using this website called CouchSurfing, which didn't exactly work. If you're not familiar with the site, people post profiles and their ability to have travelers crash on their couch. Neither of the two guys we messaged were able to host us (or thought we looked sketchy and opted not to), but we did find a Stanford alum in Marrakech who posts his hosting availability as "coffee or a drink". He wrote back with his cell phone number, so hopefully we'll meet up with him upon our arrival tomorrow to get our bearings on the city.