Saturday 18th & Sunday 19th December: Zaragoza

Next stop – Zaragoza. Now, Zaragoza is not on your normal travel route but we were on a mission.. Basketball!! David Barlow, ex Sabres, Tigers and Boomers player, now plays for CAI Zaragoza and we decided to watch a game. We had checked with his mother and knew he was going to play on the 19^th, we had checked the Team website for the game time and a map to find exactly where the Stadium was but basically that was it!! So we headed off from Barcelona, by bus, to the middle of Spain, through very arid, flat countryside. Guess this is what they meant by “ the rains in Spain fall mainly on the plain!” However, not much rain had fallen lately!!

We had placed ourselves in the middle of the old part of the city, a totally different feel to the industrial wastelands surrounding it. Beautiful buildings very different to what we had seen before…the guidebook suggested the Moorish, French influence but I have no idea about that!! Left the kids at the hotel and headed off in search of tickets for this B’Ball game. The Information office was closed, it being siesta time, so found a little bar named Murphy’s for a drink and to wait till they were open. Well, at the bar was a Scot who’d been in Zaragoza for ten years and owned a language school, and a Dutch barman. They suggested we’d have no trouble getting tickets but couldn’t actually tell us where from!! However, a very pleasant hour was spent having a chat, getting the lowdown on Zaragoza, Spanish and Scottish and Australian politics and generally having a laugh. Back to the Information office!! They told us you can get tickets at special ATMs!! Yeah right!! By this stage dusk was falling, Christmas lights were twinkling, our first night in Zaragoza and we still didn’t have tickets!! Long story short, B’ball tickets can be bought through ATMs once you find one that actually does it!!

Next day, safe in the knowledge we had tickets to the game, off we went to check out the town, do some shopping and find a laundromat.

Now we haven’t actually mentioned mundane things like doing the washing but let me tell you it has been an interesting exercise explaining then finding them in various places along the way. But things were getting desperate so off Bruce and I went armed with a map and a backpack full of clothes. This time we only got lost once, found the place only to find it closed!!

Excited about the game we went to the Stadium early. Now we didn’t know if David knew we were coming so asked a few Official looking people if we could see him after the game. Turns out we had asked the Media Manager who was rapt with our story. Met Tiwi (?) David’s wife, who was amazed to hear Australian voices in a Spanish crowd, then settled down to watch the game. If you think Australians are vocal AND partisan, just be in a Spanish town watching their team… if there were any opposition people there in the 12000 people, you certainly could not hear them!! Luckily Zaragoza won by four points in a nailbiter of a game!! Met David who was all smiles at hearing Australian accents, learning that the kids were Sabres players and went to their old school and lived so close to them in Highett. I don’t think he could believe it actually!! We had a ball! The next day had our story and photo on the CAI Zaragoza Website. Bruce and I felt like groupies!!