We had an absolutely crazy night.
As we were walking around downtown yesterday, Dan and I notice a sign at a bar advertising the Barcelona vs Real Madrid league game tomorrow night..which is one of the biggest soccer rivalries in Spain. Immediately I'm like, okay.. we HAVE to watch that game.
Flash forward to this morning: To get psyched for the game, I splurge 15 euros on some sexy FC Barcelona boxer-briefs. Hot. (btw I also love Barca because their colors are straight up Penn colors....beautiful)
Flash forward again to the night: We show up at a bar to catch the game. As we expected it to be, the bar was absolutely filled with people...standing room only. The following two hours was the most incredible football watching experience (in a bar) in my entire life. The whole place erupted every time Barca scored (which was quite often), and hordes of Spaniards would just break into chants and loud fight songs....it was absolutely incredible! If it weren't for the fact that I spent my three years in high school spanish either asleep or playing gameboy, I would have totally joined in with them and screamed my heart out.
The game itself was a blowout. Real came out first and scored fast, but then Barca totally ran off with the win. It was a 6-2 blowout, which totally reminded me of playing against Robby in WC'98 (just kidding, love you man). As the game ended, we left the bar and started walking. Then Dan and I started to chat about what we wanted to do tonight. After deciding that we were feeling cheap, we just started to walk around. Pretty soon we ran into a throng of Barca fans chanting and singing: "CAMPEONES CAMPEONES OLE OLE OLE!!"
Then it hit me. By beating Real Madrid so badly, Barca had practically won the league championships! And here we were, stupid foreigners who didn't even realize what was at stake in the game!
Soon people were climbing up lampposts, spraying beer everywhere, and burning Real Madrid uniforms. Right in front of our very eyes, a full-fledged riot was starting. Soon the crowd grew to at least a few thousand. It was a giant mob of red and blue jerseys and flags, and they were all singing and jumping and screaming. It was insane!! This one poor lamppost had at least 15 people swinging from it. Then it got absolutely CRAZY. They started firing fireworks. People started lighting red flares and running around. The absolute craziest thing was right in front of us, someone started a bonfire and everyone went bezerk. People were screaming and dancing around it and some dudes were even jumping across the flames. It was insane!! And it was amazing that no one got injured (at least from what we could tell). Pretty soon I was yelling and singing (incoherently) with all of them. Oh man, it was ridiculous.
Now I can say I was part of a riot in Barcelona, my life is now complete.
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