Barcelona after Spain wins the Euro2008

A little late coming, but here are some pictures and videos.
. . .
The UEFA Euro 2008 is a football (soccer) competition between European national teams. One team per country of the best players, and Spain won it for the first time since 1964. As you can imagine, the country is still exploding (literally...) with celebration.

Here are some really terrible night pictures. Sorry! Videos will show you better.

Spanish pride!

On Las Ramblas right after the game.

night videos!!

click play!


This is right after the game, when everyone spilled out onto Las Ramblas. People were climbing the light poles, waving flags, taking pictures...


And of course they had to sing!!

Here is a link to some professional photos of the team and Madrid after Spain won.
http://en.euro2008.uefa.com/news/kind=1/newsid=729558.html#worlds+best+bring+madrid+standstill

FOOTBALL!

Many of you in the U.S. probably know that the majority of the world does not care about "American football." Soccer (football, in Europe) is the prime sport for this part of the world.
Barcelona is no exception. F.C. Barcelona is a successful team that has a few of the best players from around the world. Unfortunately, we missed the end of the regular season, but on Saturday we were able to catch a friendly game between Catalunya (the region in which Barcelona and surrounding cities are situated) and Argentina. Why there would be a match between an entire country with some of the best players in the world and a region in Spain is beyond me, but it still made for a good game.
One of the best players on F.C. Barcelona's team, Messi, is from Argentina, so he was playing against some of his teammates on the Catalunya team. The game was dominated by Argentina as was expected, and was a great time for everyone (except for the old dude behind us who decided to start a fight, but that was even more fun for the crowd).
"Football" here is so much fun because people get into it even more than Americans do for US football. The Argentinians brought big drums, the Catalunyans brought flares that they shot off during the anthem, and almost everyone had a flag to wave.

Here are some pictures (maybe some videos later, too):



haha :) carlos with our souvenir scarf. One half is for Argentina and the other for Catalunya (the side that you can see here). The sun was so bright we had to use this as a hat..

Carlos in front of Camp Nou, the stadium.

Before the game had started.

We were so close! #19 is Messi.

Also, I finally got enough international postcard stamps so I can send out my thank-yous! woo!