But our Euro 2008 experience actually begins in Barcelona. We made sure to get to the city by the start of the tournament and stayed with our friend from home, Sean, who was living there and teaching English. We also met up with Ilan as well as Rosanna and her boyfriend, Gabriel. We'd already been to Barcelona so we didn't worry too much about sightseeing, plus I had some sort of killer parasite that kinda cramped our style.
But we still made it out to Ryan's, an Irish bar, pretty much every night for the games. A great place to watch 'em - though they did look at me a bit funny when I ordered a tea. Anyway, games were good - especially the Sweden game as Gabriel is Swedish and he got all his fellow Swedes to pack into the bar for one of the best atmospheres we had at any of the Euro Cup games: people up on tables, chanting, singing, drinking, etc... plus, Sweden won.We did do some other stuff in Barcelona that I'll quickly list: ate a bunch of delicious Que Bo sandwiches, hung out at the beach,
played cards and soccer at the park, went to the huge mercado, saw some Roman ruins, played a bunch of Civilization IV, made fish tacos, and toured La Sagrada Familia, which was easily the touristy highlight. The church is already amazingly impressive, but it still has another 60 years or so of construction. And the sketches for what it will look like are simply awesome. I will say, however, that the interior was pretty underwhelming as it took about 5 minutes to walk through the whole thing. But still pretty cool.Oh, and one more thing... we happened to be in Barcelona not only at the same time as Rosanna, Sean, and Ilan... but also our old friend Robbie who was there as he now manages the band Feist and they were playing Barcelona the second night we were in town.
This was pretty ridiculously fortuitous as we not only got to have a mini San Diego reunion, but also got to see a pretty rocking show for free. Then go backstage and hang out with the band. That was, however, until one of the roadies dislocated his shoulder and had to be rushed to the hospital in an ambulance as the band was moving on to Madrid a couple hours later.After Barcelona, we did head to the first of the Euro 2008 host countries - Switzerland. Basel to be exact, where we met up with my old friend, Sarah, from French school in Cannes 8 years ago. We stayed with her family in their beautiful house and were treated to some first class hospitality. Sarah showed us all around the city as we reminisced about old times and met some of her new friends.
The Fan Zones in Basel were just OK, but good atmosphere for the games was to be had in some of the pubs and, luckily, we had a local. A lot of Portuguese were in town as they were about to play Switzerland and they were all great fun in the nightlife scene. Our first night there, we went out to Paddy O'Reilly's, another Irish pub, and ended up dancing all night, which was definitely unexpected. We went back both of the other nights we were there but it never quite lived up to the first night out - not to say it wasn't fun the other nights either.We also saw the tallest building in Switzerland, went to the beautiful Bayeler museum of modern and contemporary art, walked through the old town, and, at one point, got some Swiss flag tattoos in what was, upon reflection, a really bad, really drunken decision.
But while they may be permanent, at least they're neutral. At one point, we stopped in a cafe where we met both a Swiss woman and some Portuguese guys who each gave us paraphernalia for their teams; we made off with a scarf for Switzerland plus a scarf and a flag for Portugal - one of the guys even picked Kate up and started dancing. So all in all, definitely a great atmosphere and it was nice to see Switzerland beat Portugal even though Switzerland was already out and Portugal had already qualified.After a delicious dinner with Sarah's family to send us off, we packed our bags and trained on over to Innsbruck, Austria to meet a friend we'd made in South America: Helga. Astute readers may recall Helga from our Northern Peru blog -
we met her, ironically enough, in the Casa Suiza hostel in Huanchaco and she invited us to come stay with her when we swung through Austria. So we did. And again, really incredible hospitality - Helga gave us her room in her incredible ivy covered apartment and slept on the couch. This was, of course, after we intimidated her with our knives and tattoos... but hey - all's well that ends well is what I say.*Anyway, Innsbruck was really, really beautiful and the Fan Zone atmosphere was unmatched. This may have been because it was the most lax security by far of anywhere we'd seen - you could bring your own drinks in, there were no checkpoints, etc... The first game was Austria vs. Germany and Austria put up a great fight but lost in the end.
It was surprising, however, to see how little team spirit the country had relative to Switzerland, especially as Austria actually had a slim chance of qualifying. We watched the first half at a really crowded Fan Zone where you could barely see, then moved to a ridiculous sports bar that was basically an indoor stadium set up around a movie screen. Most excellent.The city was full of Swedes as they were playing in a couple days so there was blue and yellow everywhere and lots of blond people shouting what translates to "We are Sweden fans, every one of us!" from every corner and every cafe. The town had even set up a huge Fan Camp where all the spillover fans were sleeping on the floor of a giant warehouse.
Basically, it seemed like the center of the city was always packed with frolickers. The Fan Zones had things like radio station promotions to award tickets to the best costume - in which one of Helga's friends participated - and the touristy things like the Golden Roof were usually crowded by a few tourists at any time of day. We even got into the craziness, dressing up for Sweden's rather disappointing defeat to Russia (who way outplayed them).And we were interviewed on Austrian radio as football supporters! OK, so it was the local college radio station where Helga's friend is a DJ... but still. We'll try to get a copy of the interview to post on here at some point...
But when we weren't jumping around in drunken crowds or being interviewed, we were mostly just walking around the truly beautiful city. Innsbruck is pretty incredible - set in the middle of snowcapped mountains with great hiking in every direction. We took one such hike the day before we left and wound up the mountain, down through the woods, over streams and under funiculars...But then it was time to move on... to Vienna. We'd been planning this Vienna apartment rendezvous for about a year but only just managed to fill it up a couple weeks before the actual event. I was really looking forward to partying with all the old friends; the lineup was: Aaron, Kate, Sean, Gabriel (these four were there for all 10 days), plus Rosanna, Avi, Asher, and Pargol (these four came for the last 5 days).
The apartment was incredible and huge and the location was great. The only thing that was wrong was that I got really sick the day we arrived. Man, it sucked. I should have been bedridden for most of the time there but powered through and tried to make the most of it. We still watched the games in the Fan Zones, still played some soccer in the park, and still toured the city, seeing the gorgeous St. Stephen's cathedral complete with cool modern art installation of angels inside.But we did feel that the Viennese Fan Zones were lacking some atmosphere. No outside booze for one, but more importantly, there just weren't that many people. We spent a few games just trying to locate the best place to go... then realized it was just down the street from where we'd been going.
And it was crazy. The entire platz in front of the Rathaus was packed with people with screens set up on either end. The first game we made it to there was the Germany vs. Turkey game... and then it started to pour rain with hail on its way and lightening crackling behind the towering spires. This would have been a lot more epic if we a) all had raincoats and b) I wasn't still sick. So we found shelter at a bar to finish out the rest of that game.But we returned for the final between Germany and Spain and got to use our Fernando Torres chant that we'd picked up on the subway to great aplomb (the chant is just singing the player's name to the tune of "I Love You, Baby").
Apparently 70,000 people packed into that Fan Zone for the final - and I'd believe it. Still, we managed to throw some elbows and carve out a most excellent viewing space for the 8 of us... This was, of course, after playing some drinking games in which we drank some really foul, really warm beer (Austrian Gambrinus, if you're interested) and I hope you can see the disgust on our faces here.But lest you think watching football was the only thing we did in Vienna, think again. We also played football. We spent many an afternoon training hard in the park down the block, running drills, juggling, scrimmaging, trying out new formations, and generally excelling as what can only be described as paragons of teamwork and sportsmanship. Our team - me, Avi, Sean, Asher, and Gabriel - was so dedicated to our training that we almost called off a visit to the Schonbrunn Palace gardens when we saw an immaculate pitch nearby.
But we needn't have worried - when the time came to perform - when the pressure was on and the stakes were high - all that hard work, teamwork, and sportsmanship really shown through. We played 5 vs 5 against an international squad in the park and, to make a long but beautiful story short - we slaughtered them. I think the final score was 10-5, but it was 7 or 8 to 1 before they started going for really cheap, long distance shots every time they got the ball and occasionally getting lucky. But what a glorious day that was for champions of teamwork and sportsmanship everywhere...That about sums up our time in Vienna. The last night was spent (after the final) at a bar called Wuk with one of Asher's friends from couchsurfing, but then it was time to clean up the apartment and get out the next morning. No one really had thought too far in advance as to what the next step was and, united as we were by bonds stronger than blood (ie. the bonds of teamwork and sportsmanship), most of us ended up going together to Bratislava...
*I never say that.
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