Rain in Spain
Taking a walk last night through Barcelona’s old town, we stopped outside a bar and, along with a small crowd, watched through the window as Spain beat Italy on penalty kicks in the Euro 2000 quarterfinals. Exciting! No one had scored in the standard time, so they settled it by taking turns on five sudden-death goals each (I note this for readers who, like me, are ignorant of the fútbol), in which the Spanish goalie came out as the hero. Then there was a lot of shouting “¡ESPAÑA!”, honking horns, running around in the street, fireworks going off, people hanging from the backs of scooting Vespas with enormous Spanish flags in their spread arms. Why did it make me so happy? Something about the fiction of community—or maybe the real community, how do I know—that you get with sports, the sense of being part of the thing you’re looking at. We’ve been here about four days and are just starting to figure out how things work. Today I finally intuited that our little stovetop coffee machine is an espresso machine that employs the upward pressure of steam rather than the downward pressure of water. I don’t even want to tell you the contortions I’ve been going through to make it work the wrong way.
way peripheral, but the shootout wasn't sudden death; it was best of five, so that fourth spanish goal sealed the deal.
