Early January 2009, right after returning home from a three weeks' vacation at Australia and New Zealand, I made a choice which today feels like THE most important I have made in my life up to now, the one that turned out to change my life more than any other. I left the newspaper I had been working for for years, accepting an offer/invitation from my ex boss, who was setting up a team to start a new paper...
The project looked promising, and even though I knew how competitive the environment was/is, with too many sports papers in Greece trying to lure a very small reading population, I thought the new paper would do more than just “well”. We never found out. Before the end of February, I, and everyone else at the paper, people some (several) of who had left other (better paid) jobs to move there, were left unemployed. The two people who were backing the project financially, “had changed their mind”(???!!!).
It was Monday afternoon when we were told, Monday nights were the nights I used to play mini football with colleagues and others, so I did that night too, thinking “now what?” I had an idea in the back of my mind, I had been toying with that idea for some time then, I slept on it, and in the morning I knew how I wanted to spend the next few months... Studying Spanish in a Latin American country, and traveling around at least three countries practicing what I would have just learned.
After doing my... research online, I decided that the country that suited me best to have the classes, was Guatemala, and the city, Quetzaltenango (also known as Xela). During my time there, I got to watch two games of the local Xelajú, loving not so much what was going on on the pitch (the level of football was so low that I honestly felt if I were a few years younger not only I would be good enough to play there, but moreover I would be a local star -I and my big mouth...), but the whole atmosphere, the A+++ people-watching opportunities, plus, the view of mountain/volcano peaks all around. Xela feels... encircled by towering mountain peaks, as if cut-off from the rest of the world, a cut-off place in the middle of a mountainous nowhere, where on a gloriously sunny midday, families, young couples, friends, people of all backgrounds and different skin shades, even blonds (foreigners who are spending months there either studying or volunteering at some local hospital) gather at the stadium. You've got to love it...
Xela, Guatemala, beautiful May 2009 Sunday
As for what I mean by “A+++ people-watching opportunities”, I could dedicate a whole entry to what I saw at Xela's stadium, but I'll just share this: a young indigenous (you could tell by her facial characteristics and by what she was wearing) woman, who to me looked like a little girl, was going up and down the stands carrying a little wooden box full of little things, cigarettes, matches, gums, stuff like that. On her back, she had one of those typical “manteles” the women there use, to carry stuff, and, occasionally, their babies :-). So, the little shorty girly was going up and down, with the wooden box in front of her, and two little-tiny-small baby feet hanging from the “mantel” on her back. At some point, she just sat at some stair, put the wooden box aside, brought her baby in front, and just like that, in the middle of a packed stand, started breastfeeding the baby. Go figure...
After four i n c r e d i b l e months in Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba and the US (where I got to watch baseball games at Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington DC), I was supposed to return home, look for a job, settle down again, blah-blah-blah. Eeeeeeh, nnnnnnno.
The truth is, I got greedy, I told myself “it's now or never. I always wanted to travel long-term, but I always lacked either time, or money, or both, so... it's now or never. Four more months won't hurt”. So, late August I was in Brazil, Salvador da Bahia, to study Portuguese (and basically enjoy life. I had been to Salvador before, and it was -still is- my favorite city in Brazil), before moving slowly south all the way to Buenos Aires, and then “up” to Asunción, finishing at São Paulo.
Brazil-Chile, World Cup 2010 qualifiers, Salvador da Bahia
It almost... hurts :-), not writing a single word for at least some of the games I watched between September and December 2009, most of them deserve (I reckon) a separate blog entry, but since day one of this blog I have come to terms with the fact that very soon (January 23) I'm leaving again, and I will have new football (and not only) stories to share, leaving hardly any spare time for “yesterday”...
What I find comfort in, is that sooner or later I will go back to Brazil (soon), Uruguay (later), Argentina (went back already, but I'm not... done with the country yet :-)), and Paraguay, so at some point I'll find the chance to include some “flashbacks” to older games I watched there, not because... millions of blog readers are holding their breath waiting to read how I managed to... for example, get one of the last tickets for Newell's Old Boys-Rosario Central, but because I feel I need to take those stories out of my chest, I feel I owe it to myself to do that. So I'll do that (even... excruciatingly slowly).
Newell's-Central, Rosario, the... epitome of local derbies
19 to 33
19 Xelajú-Municipal 1-0, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, 2009, May 24
20 Xelajú-Suchitepéquez 3-1, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, 2009, May 28
21 Brasil-Chile 4-2, Salvador da Bahia, Brasil, 2009, September 9
22 Atlético Mineiro-Santos 3-1, Belo Horizonte, Brasil, 2009, September 27
23 Flamengo-Fluminense 2-0, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, 2009, October 4
24 Flamengo-São Paulo 2-1, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, 2009, October 10
25 Internacional-Grêmio 1-0, Porto Alegre, Brasil, 2009, October 25
26 Peñarol-Defensor Sporting 1-1, Montevideo, Uruguay, 2009, October 31
27 Nacional-Cerro 2-0, Montevideo, Uruguay, 2009, November 1
28 Boca Juniors-Colón 0-0, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2009, November 8
29 River Plate-Atlético Tucumán 3-1, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2009, November 15
30 Newell's Old Boys-Rosario Central 2-2, Rosario, Argentina, 2009, November 22
31 Nacional Asunción-Sportivo Luqueño 1-0, Asunción, Paraguay, 2009, November 28
32 Guaraní-Olimpia 3-1, Asunción, Paraguay, 2009, November 29
33 São Paulo-Sport Recife 4-0, São Paulo, Brasil, 2009, December 6
No comments:
Post a Comment