2. Seeing a soccer game at Camp Nou, where FC Barcelona won 4 -1 and Lionel Messi scored a hat trick and set a record for the most goals ever scored by a player in a European season, and getting to watch along with 90,000 other singing, chanting, taunting fans, was very, very cool. I was surprised though, by Messi’s playing style, which – other than when he’s scoring – is pretty subdued. In warm up, he kind of just slowly jogs around behind everyone else, and he looks, well, a little lame. I have to admit I was way more impressed by Carles Puyol, their 34 year old defender and team captain, who tries so hard in every single play and looks like a 1980’s headbanger. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d bite the heads off bats like Ozzy Ozborne if he thought it would help him win. Hell, after watching him live I believe he’d bite the head off Ozzy himself if he thought it would make a difference. Unlike the beautiful city of Barcelona, Puyol himself is gloriously unattractive, with a face that looks like smashed Gaudi ceramics that have been put back together in a mosaic, and his hair is long and sweaty, and very badly permed- but when he went off the field after an hour of play I stood and repeatedly chanted his name and bowed down to him, like everyone around me.
3. Yes, Barcelona is beautiful, and inexpensive, and full of football, but my favourite new thing I learned on my trip is that the Catalans have an extra figure in their Christmas Nativity Scenes that we don’t have in North America. In addition to the usual Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus, they always add a figure of a man pulling down his pants and, uh, defecating. No kidding. He’s called ‘the caganer’, and apparently it’s a fun tradition for kids at Christmas time to search for this special guy whenever they see a manger scene. When their city council recently created a large public nativity scene, and did not include a caganer, the people of this city protested so vigorously, that one was added. Now that is a passionate city. What’s not to love?
