5. A week after moving into my apartment in Madrid, I got to watch the Baltimore Ravens murder the Pittsburgh Steelers at the James Joyce Pub on October 3rd with Devon Jayne (my roommate who can now name at least five of the Ravens and the positions they play). I couldn’t have asked for a better start to my first full month of living in Madrid!
4. Realizing how small the world has become as I watched an American football game at an Irish pub in Spain with Alli, my friend who had flown in from America.
3. Traveling back home from the Madrid airport after a delayed flight from Dublin, I was tired and knew the Ravens game had already started. It was late, around 8pm, and I figured I’d have to really beg Devon to come out and watch the game with me on a Sunday. We had to teach early the next day, after all. When I finally walked into my apartment, Devon was already waiting to go out with me. “Where have you been?” she asked. We took the Metro to Dubliners where Jack and Sarah were had been watching the Ravens v. Chiefs game since the kick-off. There’s nothing like a pint of Guinness and watching a game with friends to fight travel-fatigue!
2. Standing in a crowded Madrid pub on January 15, 2011, a day that will live in infamy….just kidding, I watched helplessly as my team was defeated for the second time in one season by Pittsburgh. After the game, we went to Melocotton where Pedro, the bartender, asked my friends, in Spanish, why I looked so depressed. I could have died. That was the last night I got to pretend I was at home in an American sports bar watching American football (real football, the greatest sport on the planet). :(
1. Watching Superbowl XL-V at TGI Friday’s Madrid, Sarah commented on an incomplete Roethlisberger pass: “That looks like a pass a rapist would make.”
Best line ever in sports commentary.
