Puerta del sol in New Year's eve

At midnight all the Spanish families are watching television and all the channels broadcast the same thing: The belltower on the Square of Sol in Madrid. Those who live in Madrid congregate in Puerta del Sol and eat the grapes before going partying until after sunrise. When I was a little child I always ate the grapes at home watching the people having fun in the Square of Sol. A couple of years ago I started to eat the grapes at weird times. At 18:00 in the afternoon when I was in Canada and early in the morning when I was in Beijing. But this year I was going to do it right. We went to Sol to have the grapes in the place where you are supposed to eat them.

It was quite an experience. A lot of people, yes, 20000 souls according to the newspapers. I’m quite used to that now that I’m living in Shanghai. Fortunately the people was not drunk and it didn’t look dangerous at all. Most of the people were foreigners but I could hear some Spanish voices. Maybe tourists as well. I doubt there are many Madrileños celebrating Nochevieja here, most of them prefer to have the grapes at home with their families.

The next night we went to a must-do tourist activity in Madrid. A Flamenco show. This was my second time in a Flamenco show and I must recognize I like it. This is a video you can see to have an idea of what Flamenco is about, but you need to be there to feel the waves and the special energy that the dancers and singers transmit to the public.

The passional dance show on the first room of the pavilion

The lines for all pavilions were amazing. Lines of 5 hours in most European pavilions and a 6 hours queue for Saudi Arabia Pavilion. We were lucky because CEIBS could gave us VIP passes for the Luxembourg, Italian and Spanish pavilions.

The CEIBS group that visited the Expo

The Spanish pavilion
The first room of the pavilion is amazing. The second room is very weak because the message is not clear and the third room has Miguelito. Nobody really knows what is doing there but it helps to create hype and attract media.

The best part of the visit, the restaurant in the Spanish Pavilion. I had amazing croquetas! Almost as good as the ones my mum cook.

My real passport with the stamp of the Spanish Pavilion

I flew to Barcelona because the World Mobile Congress and I stayed there for 4 days, time enough to get the work done, have fun with locals, explore the city and visit the Gothic quarter and the Gaudi monuments.

The entire city has a very special personality. This is not the introverted Spain I’m used to, but a international oriented city that sells itself as an European cultural and business center. Barcelona people mastered the touristic industry long time ago. It’s true that the city is beautiful, but similar touristic attractions are also in Castilla, forgotten, covered by thick layers of dust and on the verge of collapsing. Nevertheless Gaudi buildings are impressive. I really loved Casa Batlló and Park Güell. Hovewer I think Sagrada familia is overrated because it’s really small!

I met people trough Couchsurfing. We organized the first Couchsurfing meeting ever in the World Mobile Congress, probably one the few CS meetings where the people dress suits. I also went out for a picnic and partying on a packed club. Barcelona is a city that never sleeps, but not because the people is working late at night like in Seoul!

It was also my re-encounter with sunlight. One German winter is time enough to forget how bright the sun shrines in Spain. Barcelona is an amazing city, a cultural cross between Spain and New York full of interesting people proud to be living in one of the coolest urban environments in the world.

Paella!

What was interesting was my reaction to be exposed again to the language. I was completely used to live in countries where I didn’t understand the language. In this time I discovered I really like to be able to completely disconnect from what surrounds me when I’m in public spaces.

In contrast, in Spain my brain was constantly working, catching conversations I should not pay attention to. I got tired of understand everything. I was in the streets sneaking into other people conversations. I shared complete conversations on buses and trains. I got completely frustrated. I could’t switch off my brain and It was exhausting.

Another interesting thing was realizing that doesn’t matter what you do, the world change but only if you want to accept the changes. I changed a lot in this last year. I’ve been traveling and I had the opportunity to become influenced. I become a lot more open minded sharing pieces of my life with interesting, silly and funny people from all around the world. I’ve living immerse in a completely different culture and I’ve questioned lots of things that I usually gave for granted. All in all I realize we are small persons in a big world and each one of us have different dreams. Each one pursue they dreams in a different way and all of them are valid because there is always a reason behind. Looking back to how I was one year ago, I can easily see that I changed a lot. However all my friends continue being the same way. Of course this is not bad but I didn’t realize how much I really have change until I returned to my hometown.

In conclusion, I really like to be living in a place where I don’t really belong. Yes, you lose contact with your family and friends but It make you more conscious. It’s easier to question why the things are like they are. You become more critical about what it is around you. And I feel more positive and comfortable with myself.

I read the newspapers in the last days before the match and I saw that the entire country was together encouraging the national team. This is important because in Spain is very difficult for the people to identify with the national team. Furthermore we always had a lot of hope in the championships but we always had have very bad luck. I still remember when South Korea stole the semifinals in the Korea & Japan World Cup. Anyway, the good news is that the wait is now over because at last, Spain won something and now all the country is enjoying a huge party.

I feel bad because it’s the first time since I was born that the Spanish soccer team won something and I can’t really celebrate it because I’m in the other side of the world. I can picture my kids asking in the future, “Daddy, where were you when Spain won the Euro2008?” I’ll answer “Watching the match in Seoul, surrounded by a bunch of German people while the sun was rising!

Spain is becoming a superpower when speaking about sports. We have top of the world teams and sportsmans in soccer (Euro 2008), basketball (World championship 2007), tennis (Nadal), cycling (Contador and Freire), handball (World Championship 2005), car racing (Alonso) water polo and lots of other sports. We only miss a great swimmer and performance in winter sports. We will see what happens in Beijing’s Summer Olympics later this year, maybe we will also have lots of great moments there!

Today Google have also joined the Spanish party

]]> http://www.davidgrajal.com/life/spain-have-won-the-euro2008/feed/ 0 http://www.davidgrajal.com/life/valladolid-seoul-stage-3-seoul/ http://www.davidgrajal.com/life/valladolid-seoul-stage-3-seoul/#comments Sat, 24 May 2008 02:29:02 +0000 David http://en.david.grajal.net/?p=153 ...Read the Rest]]> This was the longest flight of my life. 11 hours seated in a plane without nothing better to do than sleep, watch movies, and eat the occasional snack the plane crew gave to us. I saw 2 movies including The rocky horror picture show. A must-see-cult-movie that I never saw before. Pretty bizarre and original, and a very strange selection for a flight Does really Lufthansa think this freak movie is appropriate in a plane?

I had a very strange Korean seatmate. She was a young girl, married to a French guy. She spoke perfect French, good Korean and very bad English, so it was pretty boring for me because I don’t know anything about French, less about Korean. Nevertheless I tried to speak Korean with her with my overwhelming skills, which are basically the phrase “You are beautiful”. She understood it though

Incheon Airport
Seoul airport is really cool. They show proudly all around the airport that it had been declared worldwide best airport 2005,2006 and 2007. Looking at the cluttered departures and arrivals panels, you can see that the airport has lots of traffic but surprisingly everything runs smoothly. And everything is close, I didn’t need to walk for 20 minutes, take a train and walk for another 20 minutes to arrive at my gate like in Madrid!

Tip-of-the-day: It’s possible to travel with banned food in baggage. I was told that nothing was going to happen, but I was a bit afraid that my suitcase wouldn’t appear in the luggage reclaim area because I was carrying a small quantity of Spanish ham. Custom’s guys didn’t even ask me anything, and that means that if you pack ‘jamon’ very well it’s not detected in customs. Very well is precinct storage wrapped several times in plastic film.

Next time I will come with several kilos of jamon!

This guy made my day, I’m happy because of him.

About the plane, nothing really speciall. I had the tipical ultra serious executive I_read_the_economist_but_I_travel_in_tourist_class seatmate and we didn’t really speak about anything.

I needed to wait for the plane in Frankfurt around 2 hours, time I spent trying to find german beer in the various duty free stores. But there isn’t beer, none. Zip. Zero. There were only spirits. I should had bought pacharan in Madrid!

I’m so happy

Spanish ‘Pato’ bullet train

I’ve come to Madrid on AVE (the Spanish bullet train) in one of the nicest trips of my life. I took the train and I started to explore its cool features, specially the bar because it has huge windows and the speed sensation is amazing. The train was not full and I took advantage of that sitting for a while in first class. When I returned from my small walk we were already crossing Guadarrama!. I arrived Madrid soon after, so it was a 200km, 51 minutes trip that usually takes close to 3 hours in the regular train.

In the afternoon I’ve been having dinner and saying goodbye to some good friends. Leticia, Diego, Maria and Gonzalo, who just returned yesterday from his Rumanian erasmus (It’s funny, he come back the same week I’m moving away)

Crushing into pieces South Korea soccer team