Barca Barca Baaaaaaaaarrrrrca

When your boss is a football fan, and by fan I mean obsessive, and you live in Barcelona, there is no escaping it. And so it was over 2 weeks ago that I knew where I would be watching the Champions League Barcelona vs. Arsenal Final. My boss has been reserving a table at the bar next door to work for most of the matches of the season with 2 places always saved for myself and the pumpkn (my Swedish work colleague )

Having seen the mayhem that ensued after the semi final win, it was clear that if Barcelona won this game then there would be one hell of a party to be had in the city, perhaps the biggest ever seen.

At 8pm my boss left to take his place at the bar and psychologically prepare himself for the match leaving me to lock up the school. The bar was full when I arrived although the members of our table were still to arrive and every new entrance was greeted with chants of Barca Barca BBBaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrca. With 2 of the usual suspects having obtained tickets for the actual match it left and unlikely troop of expat Barcelona “supporters” including 2 australians, 2 south Africans, 2 danes, 1 german, 1 french, 1 english, my boss (dutch), me and one solitary catalan.

The papers had already been announcing the victory with headlines such as “The Day of Glory has arrived” and such like and the atmosphere in Barcelona was buzzing if a little tense.

Sitting at the middle of the table I had the southern hemisphere crowd on one side of me and my boss and real followers on the other. Note: that the southern hemisphere crowd tend to come to every game but seem to have no real interest in football, the current match or who wins, they just like to enjoy the ride and tend to spend the vast majority of the match chatting about anything, everything and where they should go for dinner after the game.

At half time with only 1 (allowed) goal for arsenal in the first half, there was a nervy yet confident air in the place. I admittedly was torn, on one hand a win for arsenal would mean a good 9 hours sleep on the other hand a win for Barcelona and there would be no better place in the world to be than the city I was in.. no contest really!

45 minutes, 2 goals and a victory for Barcelona later we emerged out of the bar onto the streets of Barcelona already to find the mayhem beginning. Thousands of people had begun to pour into the streets, on foot, mopeds and in cars to join in the celebrations.

I saw something similar last year when Barça won something or other but this was even crazier, I walked down to Plaza Catalunya with Chuck and it was chaos. Thousands and thousands of people, drinking, smashing stuff (weeey). Walking down my street the roads were gridlocked with cars, mopeds, people, bikes all singing Barça Barça .. It was mad and extremely noisy. I could see that my bedtime would be postponed and it was .. until 4am..so unsurprisingly today I am sehr tired.