I survived to last weekend's party in Bilbao and I am back to continue talking about the Easter holidays, a bit late but as we say in Spanish, better late than never. On Easter Sunday we were thinking on going to Amsterdam but we thought it better and we decided to go to the south. Raffaella Carrá taught us that to make love properly you must go to the South, so there we went, to Noord Brabant, that even if is the North Brabant (there is a South Brabant in Belgium) it is in the South of The Netherlands.
Again here to talk about other thing not directly related to the topic of the blog, that somehow I don't know anymore what it is. Today is the final of the Spanish Cup (Copa del Rey is called -King's Cup-, I prefer to call it Generalisimo's Cup, so funny I am) and I am in my beloved Bilbao to enjoy the atmosphere.
I have gone out to hunt a suit for a wedding I am assisting this summer and the city is just great! It is sunny and warm and there are tons of people dressed in red and white, the colors of the team. We are playing against FC Barcelona, they are supposed to be very good, let's see what happens! I hope we win but I must admit that is pretty difficult.
Monday! And I haven't posted these past days not for laziness but because I had been on Holiday in Italy. In Florence more exactly. Despite the weather -some times warm as hell's fire and some times rainy as Indian monsoons-, the earthquake that hit the north of the county, mafia's terrorist attacks and my expired passport we made it to go and get back. We didn't feel the earthquake because it hit at night and we were too tired to feel anything but a friend that lived next to the B&B we were staying at said that she woke up really frightened as the house was shaking violently. We had a really great time and I will post about it in the future, I am still busy with the Easter holidays!! I hope this week I can spend some time writing about it to get up to date as soon as possible.
Monday! This week Thursday is public holiday in The Netherlands and my company has given us for free also Friday which makes me very happy! It is some kind of Catholic day that I don't really care about, for me it is enough to know that I don't have to work :)
This song brings me back to the end of the 90s, when I was a little guy discovering the wide world of Bilbao. I remember going with some friends to a pirate radio station in the city, the Irola Irala Irratia (Radio Irola from Irala more or less). Some Sunday afternoons we went there and saw how people did their programs, mostly talking about punk, anarchism and other stuff like that, with lots of music on them, and there is where I discovered great bands such as this one.
It could not be. Athletic was not strong enough yesterday night. We missed a lot of passes giving away the ball lots of times while Atletico de Madrid was very strong in defense, in midfield and in attack. So they had everything to win and so they did. They scored pretty early a brilliant goal and a bit later the second one that was a dead warrant for us, nevertheless we tried thousands of times to break their defense but was like waves hitting the cliffs. The 3-0 came at the end of the match when everything was already decided.
Well, I can only congratulate Atletico de Madrid for their great match and the title. Also for the great gesture they had when they made a corridor for the rival players. I think that in any sport players should be gentlemen, specially footballers, as thousands of people watch them all around the globe and children take them as example.
Corridor that Atletico de Madrid did to Athletic's players after the match. Picture taken from elcorreo.com
In two weeks we are playing the final of the Spanish Cup against Barcelona, another very difficult match so I hope that players learn what they have to learn from this last match and forget what they have to forget.
Tonight Athletic Club Bilbao, my beloved football club is playing the final of the Europa League against Atletico de Madrid in the National Arena in Bucharest. It is the second time Athletic goes to the this cup's final, last one was in 1977 (when it was called UEFA Cup) against Juventus of Torino and we lost, tonight I hope we do not.
It's going crazy these days in the town, I am not there but for what I can see from here through the net the town is fully dressed in red and white, the colors of the city and the colors of the team. Atletico de Madrid is also dressed in red and white, it makes sense as it was founded by students from Bilbao a bit more than a century ago.
Athletic Club only plays with basque players or players that have grown up in Basque teams, which I think it is a pretty good philosophy to promote local football, also it is one of the teams with less money debt from the Spanish league.
I would like you to see a short video made by the club for this final. Red and white, black or green shirt, tonight we go for the cup! (Actually I think tonight we play with the green shirt). I hope we can take out the gabarra, the boat where Athletic celebrate the titles, it hasn't seen the river in the last 28 years. There was a joke in Bilbao that said that Bin Laden was hiding in the gabarra so nobody would find him, well, I guess we arrive a year too late to find him as Peace's Nobel prize winner Mr. Barack Obama killed him last year, but he could not hide anymore in our boat. Enjoy the video!
Delft is an historic city in the middle of the province of South Holland. The city was the Headquarters of William of Orange, the prince of Orange that leaded the rebellion against the Spanish occupation during the war of the 80 years. This happened from 1568 to 1648, when the Dutch provinces won their independence, since then the Orange family has been governing almost continuously.
It's Monday and I have been extremely lazy lately, also that I have been busy in the office doing boring things and that means that I arrive home bored and I don't feel like writing anything, some times it's pretty frustrating these things, but you don't always have all the fun you want in the office, right?
Also last Monday was bank day in The Netherlands, it was the Queen's day, when the Netherlands go crazy and drink beer as if there were no tomorrow, so I told myself that I totally have to integrate myself in the local culture. It's already the third time I integrate in this party :D Every year goes a bit better than the year before. Anyway others have talked about it better than I could, and I am not really in the mood of extending myself very much. So maybe next year I talk about it.
