Barça and serendipity
A couple of weeks ago, we went to watch the La Liga match Madrid-Barça.
In Taiwan football is not very popular in general, they prefer baseball, but in Taipei there are some pubs that broadcast all kind of sports at any time (they will even broadcast the English royal wedding!). One of them is the Brass Monkey, where many expats go frequently. We are not great fans of football but it was a good excuse to meet some other Catalan friends and some from Madrid, to watch all together the match and cheer our teams up.
It was a great surprise when at the beginning of the match (4am local time) the pub was really packed! There were more Taiwanese than foreigners and even more amazing, most of them were supporters of Real Madrid!
By chance, we met two other Catalans who came to “visit” Taiwan. It is not very often that we can hear people speaking in Catalan, so it was easy to recognize them.
And this is how we met Emili and Pep, members of the crew of the Rainbow Warrior from Greenpeace. They were suposed to start a campaing against the fishing of whales in Japan when the earthquake hit Japan and the campaing was cancelled. The boat reached Keelung harbour (north of Taiwan) almost a month ago, and they were still waiting to leave to their next destination. They are NOT activists but members of the crew who take care of the boat and all its maintenance.
During the match they explained us their job, their adventures and how did they get here. I have to say that it was more interesting to talk with them than the match.
Their next destination was Japan but due to current circumstances they had to stay longer in Taiwan. So Joaquim and I couldn’t miss this opportunity and went to Keelung to see the boat and visit them. There we had a guided tour around the boat and we could discover the inner world of the Rainbow Warrior as well as the rest of the crew.
On April 21st they head for Fukushima to conduct contaminations tests of the water in that area. You can check more information here.
Good luck for our sailor friends! And if you come back to Taiwan you know where we are! :)
Visca pels catalans que esteu perduts pel món!!!
Queda demostrat que el futbol contribueix a la globalització.