On the Road ... Tour de France

Sand, sunbathers and soccer 

Before I get too far into my point, let me just first offer this disclaimer: Here in Spain the Internet is not nearly as widely available as it has been in both Europe and the Netherlands. As a result, I´ve had to use Spanish cybercafes instead of my own personal computer. That has forced me to use strange computers that have slightly different keyboards, which in turn cause some odd marks in my blogs. So bear with me until I am able to use my own computer.

Now, to my point...

A few days ago I wrote about how I was surprised at the lack of passion the Spanish showed for their national soccer team. I later learned that part of the reason for their behavior was because I was in the Catalonya region, a part of Spain that makes Quebec look like a ultra-nationalist region of Canada. I was hoping to get a better picture of how the Spaniards felt about their team when I visited Valencia.

Unsurprisingly, I learned that the Spaniards have plenty of passion to spare.

Even though Spain was essentially playing a meaningless game -- since it had already won its World Cup group -- and was facing uninspiring Saudi Arabia, I was impressed to find thousands of young Valencians gathered at Malvarossa Beach to watch their team on a big screen that was set up right in the sand.

The crowd was admittedly a little restrained and many of them seemed to be there mainly for socializing purposes, but still, I can´t imagine anything like that happening in the United States.

While I have still yet to witness any of the debauchery one of my colleagues encouraged me to unearth, there were definitely good-looking girls in bikinis and some of them didn´t bother wearing the top half -- this is Spain afterall.

Most of the crowd headed for the water at halftime, but the vast majority returned for the second half. Amazingly, they all seemed to have impeccable timing.

But more on topless sunbathing...

It´s a very interesting phenomana, and I don´t mean that in a perverted way. I´ve been here three times, and each time I´m left wondering what the mindset of one of these people is. Obviously, the very young have no problem running around naked on the beach -- that´s no different than how it is in our country -- but somewhere around 6 or 7, they turn considerably more shy. It is almost unheard of for anyone between the ages of 7 and 16 to be found on the beach topless, at least in my experience. But then girls start losing them around 17 or 18 until they are in their 30s when a woman is almost as likely to wear a top as she is not -- and that continues, apparently, until the day they die or at least stop going to the beach.

My curiosity has to do with what is the deciding factor for these girls/women? On this, I really don´t have an answer. My wife seems to think that the company they keep is one of the bigger factors -- i.e. is she there with a new boyfriend, other topless women or her parents. Obviously, her concern with a tanline is probably the ultimate driving factor.

One of these days, I will get around to sharing my thoughts on this continent´s unmatched coffee.

posted by FreeSanJose at 10:20 AM

1 Comments:

coffee and soccer, I want to hear more - your boss

By  Anonymous, at 12:16 AM  

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