Camp Nou

My Sport & Culture class is one of the most interesting classes I am taking this semester and my feelings were confirmed when we recently took a tour of Camp Nou, the FC Barcelona stadium. My roommate, Justin, and I were overwhelmed with anticipation as we boarded the private bus to the stadium. It was a rainly day and fairly miserable outside, but that didn't mattr at all to any of us. As we pulled up in front of the stadium, people literally began fighting to be the first one of the bus. We waiting anxiously as our teacher went and got the tickets, then we made our way into the stadium. The first stop on our tour was the opposing team's locker room, which was actually very plain, but cool none the less. All it contained was vanilla colored lockers, a shower area, and toilets; nothing flashy by any means. After the locker room, the tour really began to pick up. We made our way down the halls to the entrance tunnel of the field. As Justin and I looked down the hallway, we were humbled by the knowledge that generations of FC Barca players had run down this very tunnel in front of thousands of screaming fans. An interesting thing to note was that there was a little chapel off to the side of the tunnel, where players are allowed to pray before they take the field. Our teacher told us that Ronaldinho prayed there before every game, which was very cool because he is my favorite player. I also found this interesting because there would never be anything like that in the United States. We exited the tunnel and found ourselves on the FC Bara field, gazing up at the thousands of seat ascending from all directions. It was unbelievable to picture the stadium filled with 100,000 people, Justin and I could not stop giving each other high fives. After the field, we made our way up to the various levels of the stands. It was great to see the VIP area of seating, high enough up to see all the action at a premium. After seeing all the levels, we made our way down to the FC Barca media center where all the players give their postgame press conferences. After that we headed into the recently remodeled FCB history museum. Unfortunately, the tour bus was leaving and we basically had to run through the museum. But some highlights were the virtual television screens with highlights running, the digital history of the team, and the various generations of jerseys. We left the museum feeling overwhelmed with everything we had just seen, Justin and I could not stop talking about it for days afterward. I have already made plans to go back and take a more in-depth journey through the museum.