Dead and gone to -Euro 2012- heaven. Heaven!

One glorious April 2012 morning I checked my email while being in Sucre, Bolivia, and I read some news that made my heart start beating THAT strongly, that it felt as if any second then it would just... jump out of my chest. UEFA had approved my Euro 2012 accreditation application!! I was going to my first ever major tournament, I was going to Poland and Ukraine!!

Back in December, when I applied and chose the group games I would like to watch, I picked one at Warsaw, Poland-Greece, the first game of the tournament, and six in Ukraine. After that initial positive reply I had received from UEFA for the tournament pass, I started receiving every morning a new email, letting me know if my “match-specific” applications had been approved. One week, seven notifications, seven “yes”...

“Yes”, “yes”, “yes”, “yes”, “yes”, “yes”, “yes”. YES!!

Euro 2012 opening ceremony, the... “appetizer” before Poland-Greece

Ended up watching a total of ten matches, including a quarterfinal and semifinal in Donetsk, and the final in Kyiv. “Happy, happy, happy, 10-year-old opening his Christmas presents-happy, that much that if I have a heart-attack towards the end of the match, I will 'go' with a stupid smile on my face...”, I wrote on my facebook account that July afternoon, before kick-off. I guess I could have skipped the... macabre “heart-attack” thing, but... exaggerations-aside, the final was the pinnacle of a “beyond my imagination” month, final which, amazingly, was my “game attended abroad number 100”! Back then I had no idea. Only recently I realized it, when I counted the games I've watched outside of Greece. A Euro final, what a way to mark a... “century”...

Casillas, on his way to pick up the trophy

After that, I could afford the... luxury of sticking around Ukraine a bit longer, so I didn't miss the chance to watch two championship matches, in Dnipropetrovsk and Odessa. What's ironic today, as I'm writing these lines, is that I'm... torn, half feeling deep love for that country, eternally grateful for the -possibly unrepeatable- moments of utter excitement it gave me, and half terribly sad, heavy-hearted, because of what is going on there these days(...). Sigh... Deep one...

Football-aside, that Euro 2012 month was priceless for another reason, the people I met, people who opened their homes to me, people who hosted me, people who shared their life with me for a few (some even several) days, and played an “as major as it gets” role in my crazy “Euro 2012” dream coming true.

One of them is celebrating her birthday today, January 22, Agnieszka, my Warsaw host-companion-cook-caretaker-problem solver (astonishing in each and every one of those), and, ever since then, good-good friend, the kind of friend I expect-hope to still have in my life and be in close contact even when I'm in my late 80s and need someone else to write her my emails, typing my words... (unless she realizes way before that what I lousy friend I make, and stops wasting her time with me. Good thing is she's not THAT clever -come on Agnieszka, either way no one is reading this blog, so it's not like I'm bad mouthing you to anyone :-)- so chances are she's stuck with me for life -the poor thing).

91 to 102

91 Poland-Greece 1-1, Warsaw, Poland, 2012, June 8
92 Germany-Portugal 1-0, Lviv, Ukraine, 2012, June 9
93 Ukraine-Sweden 2-1, Kyiv, Ukraine, 2012, June 11
94 Netherlands-Germany 1-2, Kharkiv, Ukraine, 2012, June 13
95 Sweden-England 2-3, Kyiv, Ukraine, 2012, June 15
96 Denmark-Germany 1-2, Lviv, Ukraine, 2012, June 17
97 Sweden-France 2-0, Kyiv, Ukraine, 2012, June 19
98 Spain-France 2-0, Donetsk, Ukraine, 2012, June 23
99 Portugal-Spain 0-0 (2-4 pen), Donetsk, Ukraine, 2012,June 27
100 Spain-Italy 4-0, Kyiv, Ukraine, 2012, July 1
101 Dnipro-Tavriya 3-1, Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, 2012, July 15
102 Chornomorets-Volyn 0-2, Odessa, Ukraine, 2012, July 28