Recoleta
I started the day out by going to the Recoleta cemetery, the cemetery where famous people from Argentina are buried. The day before I had agreed with Anne Dorthe to go the Recoleta cemetery, so the two of us went. We walked all the way there, and at the entrance donated some money to an organization dealing with the children whose parents are infected with HIV (suitable place, a graveyard). The graveyard is enormous and filled with impressive graves. But for me the real attraction of the place, was the grave of Eva Peron. For a long time I had been studying the Peron regime in history class at Aloha College, so actually being at the grave, sort of felt like the end of a pilgrimage.
Walking around the rest of the graveyard was quite stunning still, those graves always get bigger and bigger; well others are left to crumble or otherwise feel the ages. The one final grave I want to mention is that of Juan Manuel de Rosas, the guy who features on the Argentinian 20 peso note.
Afterwards we walked around Recoleta, the fanciest neighbourhood in Argentina, went down to the University and then came back up in the direction of the hostel, where we ate lunch and upon arriving at the hostel, discovered that on this night Boca (Argentina) was playing Colo Colo (Chile), that is the Argentinian top team vs. the Chilean top team, playing in their equivalent of the Champions League, in a game that both teams has to win, and Boca had to score at least 3 goals and win, so an aggressive game seemed sure. So both of us bought a ticket for 150 peso through the hostel, and cooked dinner before we left for the game around 6 o’clock.
At around 6:30 we left, and on the bus I met Stefan, a Swedish guy from Stockholm who sounds Norwegian to me (that statement would almost warrent a death sentence), whom I talked a good deal to. When entering the stadium, everybody gets searched twice, and in that process the second time I got searched, the guy doing it grabbed my ass, something I pointed out, but the only thing that was done about it was another guy who said “lucky boy”.
The game itself was crazy though; we were inside the stadium at 19:30 o’clock, and kickoff was at 21:10, so we had a long wait, but the atmosphere was amazing (almost explosive), and all the locals were ready for a big game. Boca had to win and score at least 3 goals, otherwise they would have no chance of progressing from the group play, in the Latin American version of Champions League.
The ball was kicked off, and within 4 seconds there was a freekick, and the Argentinians played an extremely offensive game, always pushing forward; however it didn’t take long before Colo Colo scored the first goal of the game (to an excessive amount of booing from around me), followed not long after by a penalty kick to Boca, which they somehow managed to miss (the player didn’t hit the bar, nor was the ball taken by the goalkeeper, he simply missed the goal), but about 90 seconds after that, an amazing goal was scored, where one player simply just took on 3 defensive players and the goalkeeper; really good playing.
The offensive playstyle continued, which ended in a red card to Boca, followed sharply by a 2-1 score to Cole Cole. But Boca came backafter the brek in the game and scored to 2-2, this surely was a lively game, with lots of corner kicks, shots on goals and everything you want. Boca kept on scoring the goals, first to 3-2 and then to 4-2, before the Chileans caught up and scored to 4-3, which was the ending score. Two South American teams, 7 goals, 1 red card, who knows how many yellow (the referee does), even more freekicks and corner kicks… Was this one the best games I could have possibly gone to? You bet!
This entry was posted on Saturday, March 29th, 2008 at 04:40. It is filed under Argentina.
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