Paella and Bovril

Here is another wee tapas serving of Paella and Bovril  Part of my job is to teach the “art of international small talk”. One of my favourite topics that somehow always comes up is football. Time can fly by when the exchange of of opinions and loyalties is discussed between students. When this question was asked  “Which club has drawn one of China’s largest audience’s for a player’s debut?” the immediate answer of many was FC Barcelona, a few mentioned “one of the Manchesters”. Only the author of the question seemed to know the answer  RCD* Espanyol, the “other team” in Barcelona. 40 million had tuned in from China to watch Wu Lei's 12 minutes on the pitch. For a comparison in Spain the viewing figures didn’t even make the 180,000 mark. So it would seem that this Chinese following has made Espanyol the most watched team in China. With this little snippet of football trivia now on the table this opened up the conversation to questions about supporting “the wee team”...

Is an old post but in the current atmosphere of athletics it seemed appropriate to post again.  On my last few days of holiday here and they are being filled with a variety of things. One of these things is of course watching all the European footie that is bombarding my TV.  Now there are lots of accounts of how terrible our homes teams were and so many of these reports want to make me top myself.  Today's wee blog post comes from last years letters from Barcelona . Barcelona hosted the European Athletics last year and I was lucky to get tickets for the last night.  PLEASE SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL MATCH DAY PROGRAMME LETTERS FROM BARCELONA AUGUSTS 2010   I went to see the last night of the European athletics here in BCN at the Olympic stadium on Sunday 1 st of August. Half full stadium, mostly due to the ridiculously overpriced tickets. The atmosphere was still fantastic, with lots of French supporters having loads to cheer abou...