Back to the Future

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Back to the Future

Last day in our Barcelonian/Birthday trip. Finished our Spartan breakfast, left our small luggage at the storage facility of the hostel and made our way for the 2nd most visited site in the city, which is also the 2nd largest soccer stadium in the world. None other than the legendary Camp Nou, home to Barcelona F.C.

The football club has become a Catalan institution, hence the motto Més que un club (More than a club).

They were founding members of La Liga in 1928, and, together with Real Madrid and Athletic Bilbao, they have never been relegated from the top division.

The club were also the first La Liga champions, winning a total of 18 La Liga, 24 Copa del Rey, 7 Supercopa de España, 2 UEFA Champions League, 4 UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, 3 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup and 2 European Super Cup trophies.

In Catalonia, about 55.7%!o(MISSING)f the population are said to be Barça supporters.

In June 2007, the number of socis (club members/owners) reached 156,366, while in June 2006 the number of penyes (officially-registered supporter clubs) reached 1782 worldwide.

This is a particular important point. You see the club is not owned by an American businessman (see Manchester United) or a Russian plutocrat (see Chelsea F.C.). No sir, Barcelona F.C. is actually owned by its members who are the shareholders of the team and make the decisions democratically.

So imagine this. When the country was ruled by the dictatorship of General Franco, the football fans actually got the opportunity to practice democracy. Finally, something good and honest out of football.

At the height of Franco's dictatorship, match results were pre-ordained so that Real Madrid would win and the teams were made to share their best players.

During the last years of oppression, the club came to symbolize freedom.

Thousands of fans would assemble to wave the blau grana flag as a substitute for their own banned Catalan flag.

Every goal scored was an assertion of the Catalan identity, and its players and supporters were an unofficial "army".

The above should explain my interest for the visit.

Even though I am not by far a football fan, what I support without question or discussion to the contrary, is freedom and the protection of individual rights and unless I am going to the U.S. or visiting the site of the Magna Carta signing in Runnymead, near where I live in England this is as close I am going to get to a place of actual significance in Europe.

Support for the club is undiminished as loyal Barcelonans of all ages crowd to Camp Nou stadium for every match.

Whenever they play Real Madrid, all of Spain is gripped by football mania, and when Barca wins, the streets erupt with excitement to the sound of car horns and fireworks.

This fervor explains the huge success of these two clubs.

You see, its not about the sport with them two, it's all nationalistic which in turn is tight back to economic reasons, since Spaniards do not want to loose the fat gold goose from their socialistic grip.

Only countries which support and protect individual rights (including the right to one's property) will never see nationalist secession tendencies by any minority group (see China, Tibet and Taiwan to understand further).

We went (by mistake) on the Tour plus and thus got to see pretty much everything on a self guided route.

We made it into the player's changing rooms, press conference facilities, player's restaurant, TV press rooms etc. we even got outside at pitch level unlike the ones who didn’t got the plus tour and had to overlook us from the seats above.

With around 98.000 spectators the stadium is only second to the chaotic Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro which is double in size.

Camp Nou is a UEFA 5-star rated stadium, and has hosted numerous international matches at senior level, and UEFA Champions League finals, the most recent being in 1999.

Its official name was Estadi del FC Barcelona (FC Barcelona Stadium) until 2000, when the club membership voted to change the official name to the popular nickname, Camp Nou, Catalan for "new field", often called the Nou Camp in both Spanish and English.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the stadium, the club issued an international tender for architects to develop a project for re-modeling the stadium.

The aim of the project was to turn the stadium into an integrated and highly visible urban environment.

Whilst not aiming for a substantial increase in seating capacity, proposals must accommodate a minimum of 50% of seats to be under cover.

You would think that in a city with such importance in the world of architecture, that a Catalan architect or maybe a Spanish one like the famed Santiago Calatrava (Athens Olympics stadium refurbishment) would win the competition.

But no. On September 2007 it was announced that the competition was won by the greatest architect of all times, the British architect Norman Foster and his company (Foster and Partners, London) was selected to "restructure" the Camp Nou.

The plans include an extra 10,000 seats to be added and the estimated cost is €250 million.

The museum inside the stadium was really massive and comparable in size to a modest archaeological museum, was spread over a couple of floors with everything a football fan would ever want to know about his club, all laid out in a smart and informative way.

I think we spend more time in the museum than the rest of the tour combined.

We then took a metro back to downtown in order to sight see around the magnificent gothic quarter. Whilst at the quarter we made a quick pit stop in a nice tapas bar.

Eating in a tapas format is a major tradition in Spain.

Tapas is the name for a wide variety of appetizers in Spanish cuisine.

They may be cold, such as mixed olives and cheese, or warm, such as puntillitas, Andalusian battered, fried baby squid.

According to legend, the tapa tradition began when Castile's King Alfonso the Wise recovered from an illness by drinking wine and nibbling small dishes between meals.

After regaining his health, the king ordered taverns to serve their guests food along with wine and the tapas became a kind of loophole in the law to allow drinkers to drink

Another story talks about slices of bread which sherry drinkers in Andalusian taverns used to cover their glasses between sips.

This was a practical measure meant to prevent fruit flies from hovering over the sweet sherry.

But soon, enterprising bartenders were putting small snacks on the bread, and the lowly tapa (from tapa derived the verb tapar, "to cover") became as important as the sherry.

In Spain, dinner is usually served between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. leaving significant time between work and dinner.

Therefore, Spaniards often go to bars and eat tapas in the time between finishing work and having dinner.

Since lunch is usually served between 2 and 4 p.m., another common time for tapas is weekend days around noon as a means of socializing before lunch proper at home.

It is very common for a bar or a small local restaurant to have 8 to 12 different kinds of tapas in warming trays with glass partitions covering the food.

They are often very strongly flavored with garlic, chilies or paprika, cumin, salt, pepper, saffron and sometimes in plentiful amounts of olive oil.

Often one or more of the choices is seafood, often including anchovies, sardines or mackerel in olive oil, squid or others in a tomato based sauce, sometimes with the addition of red or green peppers or other seasoning.

It is rare to see a tapas selection not include one or more types of olives, such as manzanilla or arbequina olives. One or more types of bread are usually available to eat with any of the sauce-based tapas.

The tapas bar we went to was very typically, smart decoration, extremely small, maybe it could fit a total of 20-25 people, various tapas were arranged in a display but the menu came with photos of the food on offer, which is always a welcomed idea, especially for touristy areas.

We had a selection of tapas based on bread slices and had a glass of Brut each. Brut, is the traditional sparkling wine of Spain.

Rejuvenated by our quick "pick me up" we ventured into the Gothic quarter proper and made the magnificent cathedral as our first stop.

The Cathedral of Santa Eulalia is the Gothic cathedral seat of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Barcelona, Spain (Though sometimes inaccurately so called, the famous Sagrada Família is not a cathedral).

The cathedral was constructed throughout the 13th to 15th centuries on top of a former Visigothic church.

The Gothic-like façade is from the 19th century which unfortunately we could not see this time as the whole facade was covered in scaffolding for restoration works or to annoy tourists.

The cathedral is dedicated to Eulalia of Barcelona, co-patron saint of Barcelona, a young virgin who, according to Catholic tradition, suffered martyrdom during Roman times in Barcelona.

One story is that she was exposed naked in the public square and a miraculous snow fall in mid spring covered her nudity. The enraged Romans put her into a barrel with knives stuck into it and rolled it down a street. The body of Saint Eulalia is entombed in the cathedral's crypt.

Inside, the building dates back to the 14th century. The huge space is divided into two broad aisles, nearly as wide as the central nave.

Immediately to the right after you enter is the baptistery, where, as a plaque records, the six native Americans (Indians) brought back from the New world in 1493 by Christopher Columbus were christened.

Can you imagine how they felt emerging into a space like this? There they were, living in North America in Spartan, barbaric conditions in their tents as nomads, when the first humans to evolve from this kind of lesser existence emerged in Mesopotamia almost 10.000 years prior.

They must have thought the Spaniards as superhuman if not Gods.

We then made out way towards the enclosed choir where there are exquisitely carved 14th century stalls.

This was the place where the Chapter of the Order of the Golden Fleece, a kind of early European summit meeting, was convened by Emperor Charles V and attended by England's King Henry VIII and a host of European monarchs back in 1519 C.E.

Unfortunately, the entrance to the crypt was closed but we could still look over and see the sarcophagus of St Eulalia.

But for me the best part of the cathedral were the lovely cloisters.

Various orange and medlar trees dress the cloisters alongside glossy magnolias and shaggy palms which blend marvelously with the iron and stonework.

In the middle of the garden, a fountain, sheltered by a stone tabernacle is decorated with a carving of St George and the dragon.

A few steps away are the famous white geese originally 13, one for every year of st Eulalia's life.

Legend has it that they either hark bark to Barcelona’s roman past (since geese guarded the Capitol in ancient times), or that their pure white feathers symbolize the martyr's virginity.

We also took the lift to the roof top of the cathedral and enjoyed views of the medieval district and the beautiful 19th century bell towers.

Following our look into the cathedral we went on an hour long guided walking tour around the quarter which is a maze of dark, twisting medieval streets and sunny squares lined with venerable churches and lavish palaces spread out around the cathedral.

The quarter was extensively restored in the 20's and has now regained much of its former splendor.

On our way back to the hotel to pick up our luggage from the storage area we finally went into this amazing tapas bar which we used to pass by every day and vowed to visit before we leave. The reason? Get this!!! The place is called "el petit Apollo" and alongside the typical food arrangement in tapas bars they provide individual beer taps on each table!!!

Oh yes, you read that correctly. What a genius idea? Apart from the bar area, there are around 10 tables which sit around 4 people each and contain a beer tap. Two TFT monitors are hanged from the ceiling and display the volume of beer that is flowing out from each tap. Not only that, but the table that is first and second are highlighted on the top thus (and this is the brilliant part) forces the patrons to consume ever increasing amounts of beer in order to be on the top, who knows? maybe they will even win something, small price for the owners to pay for the huge increase in profits from this marvelous idea.

Of course, I wouldn't recommend installing such a arrangement in an Anglo-Saxon country because a massacre would surely ensue (especially if there are TV's with sports involved). However, for constrained societies like the Mediterranean ones such a place must be a treasury. I wonder why more managers haven't picked up on this goldmine of an idea?

We picked up the luggage from the hotel, had a quick coffee and made our way back to the bus station, where a bus left for Girona’s airport every 15 minutes. Had dinner at the airport, quick flight over to Stansted airport, amazingly fast connection to the long stay car park, an hour and a half drive away and we were safely reunited with our cats and our familiar bed. Its one in the morning and I have to wake up in 6 hours and go to the office for invoicing. Oh well, it was surely worth it. Happy Birthday to ME.

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Photos

Camp Nou
The chilling phrase "More than a Club" written across the seats.

Camp Nou
whilst "enjoying" the worst 3D film of all times during our tour of the stadium

Catedral
The crypt, with the sarcophagus of the Saint

Individual Tap
What a genius idea?

Camp Nou
showers
whatever you do, DO NOT drop the soap