15 cities, 20 teams. 51 goals. 18,700 kilometers. By plane, by train, by bus, by car, by taxi, by metro, on foot. 9 months.
Everything thanks to a boyish whim, thanks to a collection of football scarves and tops, tightly tied in a big bin bag, at the bottom of one Scottish boy’s wardrobe. That’s where it all started.
If it weren’t for that whim, I wouldn’t be on a train now, traveling from a city that Hemingway fell in love with to a city where I happened to live for 2 years. Among many others, I wouldn’t have been given the chance to walk along streets smelling of jasmine and oranges, to see a museum caught in fish scales, a cow chewing on grass with a view over a windy see, the glitter of Christmas decorations on palm trees.
Our trace stretches across the peninsula like a spider web. It has one central point and many symmetrically spreading arms. Our trips, one after the other, got caught in the sticky spider threads like flies, creatures full of life, put together from memories and impressions. Now it is the spider’s time, but before it can go to another place, it will have to lightly and agilely creep along its threads and swallow all the creatures found on the way, to protect them from going dry or being forgotten.
The greenness of mountains, palm trees, rivers in gorges, wine bottles, grass on meadows. The dry colour of soil, ploughed by farmer, by time, by dry streams. The whiteness of windmills, sails, foam on dangerous waves. The blackness of the volcano, cockroaches, a night seen from a train, the losers’ sad eyes.
All the moments of a traveler’s non-being, steps and visits without a trace, a visitor’s immunity, the harmlessness of the sightseeing eye, the innocence of the first and maybe the last time.
All this would have remained undiscovered and unexperienced if the owner of that bin bag hadn’t come up with his football idea.
Everything thanks to a boyish whim, thanks to a collection of football scarves and tops, tightly tied in a big bin bag, at the bottom of one Scottish boy’s wardrobe. That’s where it all started.
If it weren’t for that whim, I wouldn’t be on a train now, traveling from a city that Hemingway fell in love with to a city where I happened to live for 2 years. Among many others, I wouldn’t have been given the chance to walk along streets smelling of jasmine and oranges, to see a museum caught in fish scales, a cow chewing on grass with a view over a windy see, the glitter of Christmas decorations on palm trees.
Our trace stretches across the peninsula like a spider web. It has one central point and many symmetrically spreading arms. Our trips, one after the other, got caught in the sticky spider threads like flies, creatures full of life, put together from memories and impressions. Now it is the spider’s time, but before it can go to another place, it will have to lightly and agilely creep along its threads and swallow all the creatures found on the way, to protect them from going dry or being forgotten.
The greenness of mountains, palm trees, rivers in gorges, wine bottles, grass on meadows. The dry colour of soil, ploughed by farmer, by time, by dry streams. The whiteness of windmills, sails, foam on dangerous waves. The blackness of the volcano, cockroaches, a night seen from a train, the losers’ sad eyes.
All the moments of a traveler’s non-being, steps and visits without a trace, a visitor’s immunity, the harmlessness of the sightseeing eye, the innocence of the first and maybe the last time.
All this would have remained undiscovered and unexperienced if the owner of that bin bag hadn’t come up with his football idea.
The spider is eating quietly, thinking of where to spin its next web.
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