El Partido de Futbol (The Futbol Game)

Hey errrbody!

It's been a while since I've written, so be ready for three new posts about what I've done over the last few days. On Friday, two friends from Finland (Markus and Niko) arrived to spend a few days here. They just left this morning, and now I'll update you on all of our activities.

First, you might be wondering how I know someone from Finland. Markus and I worked together at GE Nuclear over the summer in Wilmington, NC. GE hired international interns this summer, from both Finland and Poland. 15 international interns in total. Niko is Markus' friend, and a few years ago they made a pact to go to a Real Madrid futbol game in Spain. And over the summer, Markus and I discussed that I'd be in Sevilla in the Fall, and it worked out quite nicely for them to come to a futbol game while I was in Sevilla. So that's how two Finnish gents wound up staying at my apartment for the last few days.

So.. here begins the story of my weekend with my Finnish friends :) 

The guys arrived on Friday night, on a train from Malaga. They also brought a girl with them named Adrienne, who they met in Malaga and who happened to be staying in Sevilla as well (she's from Seattle, Washington, has been in Sevilla for 1 month, and leaves this Friday). The four of us went out to dinner, and afterwards went to a flamenco show at a bar in El Centro. We didn't know exactly where the bar was, but we had a good general idea, so on our way we got pretty lost in the winding streets of El Centro. It was kind of nice to be lost in Sevilla. 

I didn't like this flamenco show as much as the one I saw last Thursday. The setting wasn't as intimate, and the dancer didn't show the same passion at all as the others did on Thursday. I didn't feel nearly as moved by this show as I did by the other, because it felt too much like a performance. It was good to see a different type of flamenco dancing, but I definitely prefer the one I saw Thursday.

Flamenco show. The woman in black/gray is the dancer, and the men sitting behind her are the singer (far) and the guitar player.

On Saturday, Markus, Niko and I went to el estadio del futbol (futbol stadium) first thing in the morning to pick up our tickets. Until that point, I wasn't sure that the tickets we bought online were "legit", so we were all very excited when we finally had the tickets in our hands.

After that, we met up with Kaley and went walking around Sevilla for several hours to see some of the lovable things about the city, like la Plaza de España, la catedral, el torre de oro, el rio, etc. 

Me, my Sevilla futbol hat, and la catedral. and a horse.

In la Plaza de España

In el Parque de Maria Luisa

Finnish love in the park. Kaley and I thought this looked a lot like Tom and Huck.

After our walk, Markus, Niko and I returned to mi piso to have a siesta before the futbol game that night (at 10P). We then got some dinner with Adrienne, and headed over to the stadium. On our walk to the stadium, we ran into a big group of people crowding around the entrance to a hotel. We quickly realized that they were all waiting for the Sevilla futbol team players (jugadores) to leave the hotel for the bus (to go to the game). We joined the crowd, and go to cheer with the rest as the players got on the bus. It was really cool!

An excited fan waves at the players on the bus.

 After that, we walked to the stadium. We had some difficulties getting into the stadium, because the barcode on our tickets wasn't working (which made us all quite worried that our tickets were, in fact, not legit). However, after speaking to a lot of people, in Spanish (Markus speaks Spanish too), we were able to get the problem resolved and got into the stadium! We were sitting on a short end of the field, but kind of in the corner, so we had a pretty good view of the field. We were also very close to the field, so that made it easy to see as well.

When in Sevilla, wear the hats the Sevillanos do, no?

During the Sevilla "anthem", all of the fans hold up white and red papers and sing. It looked really cool with the whole stadium doing it. 

Markus, me, Niko

Hanging with my guys.

The game was amazing! I'm going to upload a few videos as soon as I can. Sevillanos seem very very proud to be from Sevilla, almost to the point of being insulting towards the Real Madrid team. A common chant for the crowd (which I admittedly joined in on) is "Punta Madrid, punta capital" which is pretty much just like "F- Madrid, f- the capitol". Sevilla scored in the first minute of the game, and then no one scored for the rest of the match (although there were many many attempts). The crowd went LOCO when we scored at the beginning. Sevilla wound up winning, which is pretty incredible since Real Madrid is the best team in the world. When we won the game, the crowd went crazy again. Everyone started hugging each other. I mean.. I thought the US had a pretty "touchy" culture, but it's way more here. Whenever I meet someone here, we always greet each other with one kiss on each cheek. It's different, but cool :)

It also became very obvious how much people smoke here. I felt like throughout the match, some people practically went through an entire pack of cigarettes. From my observations (and I could be incorrect), it seems like there isn't much of an anti-smoking campaign here like there is in the US. I see a lot of very young people (like young high school) smoking too, which I feel is pretty sad.

But yeah.. the game was awesome. It was definitely worth going to, and I had a lot of fun. I also felt I got to see more of the culture here, which broadened my perspective on Spain and Sevilla.