High speed climbing Mount X in autobahn

Playlist VIII.

Part I by Rammstein

1. "Keine Lust"

2. "Eifersucht"

3. "Moskau"

4. "Du Hast"

5. "Sehnsucht"

Part II by Prodigy

6. "Smak my bitch up"

7. "Breathe"

8. "Funky Shit"

9. "Firestarter"

10. "Voodoo People"

Paradox

Every time I feel like writing, I am not here.
Every time I am here, I don't feel like writing.

Vater und sohn 3

On España: Part II

Yo soy Español, Español, Español!" As a whistle in Johannesburg ended the final match of the 2010 World Cup, 5,000 miles away, an entire country burst into song. From the shirtless kids taking a celebratory jump into Madrid's Cibeles fountain to the couples draped in Spanish flags dancing their way down Barcelona's famous Ramblas, all of Spain, it seemed, was chanting the same joyful lyrics. But perhaps no one sang with more fervor than Mahbubul Alam. Watching the game through the window of a café in Madrid's Lavapiés neighborhood, his entire body shook as he belted out the words everyone was singing: "I am Spanish, Spanish, Spanish!" The fact that Alam is Bangladeshi hardly seemed to matter.

Every World Cup has its stories, but this year's competition was especially ripe with overarching narratives. From the romantic (in a live, postgame interview, ecstatic goalie Iker Casillas planted a kiss on the shocked reporter who — sigh! — just happened to be his girlfriend) to the financial (the win, promised several newspapers, would bring a boost to the foundering economy), Spain's 2010 World Cup was about so much more than goals and penalties. It was about identity — what it means to belong to the new Spain.

Take, for example, the spectacular rise of Spanish athletes. When Andrés Iniesta took the shot, deep in overtime, that would be the final's only goal, he brought to an end an 80-year drought that had left Spain, despite its undeniable talent, without even a World Cup semifinal to its name. Throw in Formula One star Fernando Alonso, a handful of basketball players who, when they're not tearing up the court individually for the Memphis Grizzlies or the L.A. Lakers, are together winning the European championship, and a tennis player you may have heard of named Rafael Nadal, and suddenly the country is an athletic powerhouse. "Thirty years ago our footballers would play in alpargatas [flat-soled espadrilles] on dirt fields," says Roberto Palomar, editor of the sports daily Marca. But when dictator Francisco Franco died in 1975, the democracy that followed brought in a Socialist-led government that created state subsidies and built the infrastructure necessary to raise a generation of serious athletes. "Today, there's a multimillion-euro athletic center in every town, and they all have AstroTurf," says Palomar.

Spain's World Cup win also tells a compelling tale about nationalism. In a country where the provinces of Catalonia and the Basque country, each with its own language and heritage, strive for ever greater autonomy from the central government in Madrid, soccer has long been an arena for symbolic politics. The vicious rivalry between Barça and Real Madrid derives in large part from the fact that support for the Barcelona team was one of the few means that Catalans had during the 40 years of Franco's dictatorship to express their regional identity (Franco was a big Madrid fan). Many Catalans, who dream of one day fielding their own team at the World Cup, have been loath to support any team bearing the name of Spain.

But this year was different. The national team included seven Barça members and, by promoting itself as La Furia Roja (the Red Fury), garnered a broader embrace than it normally might have. "If you feel your nation isn't Spain ... calling them La [Furia] Roja lets you still feel passion for the team," says Barcelona-based communications consultant Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubí. "Their uniform was a single color, but it held a variety of shades."

That doesn't mean football eradicated the country's regional tensions. The day before the final, Barcelona held a massive demonstration to protest the Spanish constitutional court's decision that the Catalonia region, although entitled to an extensive degree of autonomy, did not have the legal right to call itself a nation. But the following night some 75,000 Catalans turned up to watch the game on a giant screen that the municipal government, for the first time in its history, had erected outdoors. "I marched at the head of the procession on Saturday and then went home on Sunday to watch the game with my family," says Barcelona mayor Jordi Hereu. "You can do both."

The soccer-driven sense of togetherness didn't stop with the Catalans. In Lavapiés, one of Madrid's most ethnically diverse neighborhoods, Chinese wholesale shops press up against Moroccan butchers, and Peruvian women in long black skirts buy fruit from Senegalese grocers — all the result of a massive wave of immigration that has, in recent years, raised the percentage of Spain's foreign-born residents to 11% of the total population. On the night of July 11, however, the neighborhood was a sea of homogeneity — one red shirt after another. José Romero, an immigrant from Ecuador, had even painted his black-and-white dog Spot with the Spanish colors for the occasion.

Seated outside with friends, Azhar Abbas, from Pakistan, was ecstatic before the game even began. With a red-and-yellow scarf tied around his neck and a Spanish flag emerging from his collar, he was sure Spain would win because it was such a good country. "It's not like Germany or Italy, where there's discrimination," he said. "Here there's no difference between Spaniards and foreigners." And just in case ethnic tolerance wasn't enough to guarantee victory, he added, "I went to the mosque today and prayed for Fernando Torres."

They were praying, too, at the Baobab, an African restaurant up the street, when Casillas blocked Arjen Robben's shot. Glued to the restaurant's television set, a group of Bangladeshis, one Chinese woman, a couple of native Spaniards and a half-dozen red-shirted Senegalese screamed in outrage when Nigel de Jong's foot connected with Xabi Alonso's chest. In unison, albeit in several different accents, they shouted obscenities at the referee.

The scene was much the same at Hasan Keyf's doner kebab restaurant around the corner. At one point during the evening, the 20 young Moroccan men sipping Fantas at tables draped in Spanish flags broke spontaneously into a chorus of "Viva España." "They're gods of the game," said Mohammed Dauud, referring to the Spanish team. The 22-year-old immigrated by himself to Spain from Morocco when he was just 12, and the intervening years, he said, explain his loyalty to the Spanish team: "This is where I live, who I am now. Of course, Spain is going to be my team." Asked if, by that logic, he supported Real Madrid, Dauud shook his head. "Are you crazy?" he asked. "I'm a Barça fan."

The original article from Time.com can be found here.

MJK

This is tribute to the fine memories of friendship and great music in Lowland festival 2007 which was held exactly 3 years ago.

"You are the light and way that they will only read about..."

RE--SPECT!

Resolution 9. It is of utmost importance that one respects the place and the role of the others involved, precisely in the same manner that one requires to be respected. This rule is valid for any game, the most significant one being the game of life.

"So in the end

I want to see some respect

(I said)

You better show some respect

(I said)

Attitude and respect..."

On Barcelona: Part I

Preface: I had the intention of writing a piece based on my visit in Barcelona a couple of month ago when I ran into the following article on Time.com and I found it very much coherent with my own findings. It's a bit overdue since it should have been read just before the WC (and its sequel just after the WC) but since both parts are interesting reads anyhow, I put them here nevertheless.

Forty-five million Spaniards drew a collective breath at the news on May 2 that Xavi, the playmaking genius of FC Barcelona, was carrying an injury that might prevent him from playing in South Africa this summer for Spain's national team. His club coach said Xavi, 30, had a 3-cm rip just above his left calf muscle; if aggravated, the tear would require surgery, ruling him out of the World Cup. But with the Spanish league in its final stretch and Barça needing victories to stay ahead of archrival Real Madrid, Xavi opted to keep playing. "He is committed to this club," coach Pep Guardiola said at a press conference. "He is an example for everyone."

Not everyone was pleased by Xavi's devotion to his club. "I thought to myself, We don't need him to be an example. We just need him to be fit for South Africa," says Sergio Soto, a pharmacist's assistant in Madrid. "Because without Xavi, our World Cup dream is finished."

Spain had to wait a nerve-racking week before it could breathe easy. Xavi (few fans know his full name: Xavier Hernández i Creus) played his last game of the season for his club on May 8 and emerged without further injury. Speaking to TIME shortly afterward at Barça's training complex outside the city, Xavi says his countrymen needn't have been on tenterhooks. "I know my own body," he says. "People all over Spain were worried, but I'm all right."

It's not unusual for soccer-crazed nations to get exercised over the well-being of their star players — all of England winced at Wayne Rooney's groin strain, and Germany felt the pain of the egregious tackle that ended Michael Ballack's Cup hopes. But Spain's agonizing over Xavi tells a deeper story, one of soccer rising above politics and bridging ancient divides.

Xavi is from Catalonia, the northeastern province washed by the Mediterranean that historically has had an uneasy relationship with the rest of Spain. Many Catalans see themselves as a separate nation and dream of independence. They speak their own language, Catalan, which sounds to the untrained ear like an admixture of Spanish, French and Portuguese. And like their Basque neighbors, they have a culture and history that have been often at odds with those of other regions of Spain. During the Franco dictatorship, authorities in Madrid sought to stamp out the Catalan identity, often by bloody force. The dictator favored Real Madrid, sowing the seeds for one of soccer's most bitter rivalries.

In turn, many Spaniards have long regarded Catalans with distrust. In soccer, that translates into a frostiness toward Catalan players, a suspicion that they don't play for the national colors with the same enthusiasm as they do for FC Barcelona, a club so closely linked to the Catalan identity that its crest includes the Catalan flag. Barça's slogan, "Més que un club" (More than a club), hints at its political role. Some Spaniards blame generations of Catalan players for the fact that the national team has never won the World Cup despite fielding world-beating talent every four years. During the 2006 Cup, Spain flamed out to France even before the quarterfinals.

And yet in South Africa this year, the hopes of the Spanish national team — known as La Furia Roja, or the Red Fury — rest on a group of Catalan players: Xavi, Cesc Fabregas and Sergio Busquets in midfield and Carles Puyol and Gerard Piqué in defense. (Goaltender Victor Valdés is also on the squad bound for South Africa, along with three non-Catalan players from Barça: Andrés Iniesta, Pedro Rodríguez and the club's latest signing, David Villa.) The Catalan contingent, products of Barça's vaunted youth system, has helped the national team sweep all before it in the past four years, becoming European champions and flying up the FIFA national rankings from 12th to first, before being overtaken by Brazil. Now, thanks to the Catalan stars, La Furia Roja will travel to South Africa as favorites to win the tournament. "Catalan players do their best in the national team, and we are proving that," says Piqué, 23.

In that time span, Barça has won three Spanish league titles and two European championships. "This is Catalonia's golden generation of players," says Marc Ingla, a former marketing chief at Barça and a candidate for the club's presidency in elections this month. "Both the club and the country have benefited from these riches."

For the players, the distinction is unimportant. "A footballer doesn't understand politics. What he wants to do is win," says Xavi. Says Piqué: "As a player, your dream is to play in the national shirt and defend it against the world."

But Xavi and company can't expect all their fellow Catalans to see it that way. For some Barça fans, the only "national" team is a collection of Catalan all-stars that plays occasional exhibition games in the region's colors. "One day we will send a Catalan team to the World Cup," says Xavier, a university student who refused to give his last name. "Until that day, that tournament means nothing to me."

That sentiment is shared by the club's top official. Joan Laporta's highly successful seven-year presidency at Barça ends this month. He and Ingla have done more to turn the club into an international soccer powerhouse, with an annual budget in excess of $500 million and hundreds of millions of fans around the globe. "Barça belongs to the world," says Laporta. "Barça is Japanese, it's African, it's American." But is it Spanish? Laporta pauses for thought, then shrugs. "I have no emotion for the [Spanish] national team," he says. "It doesn't matter if six of my players are in it." Some divides not even soccer can bridge.

The original article can be read here.

1300 Km for playing ball

It has been a while since I have been taunted by the question of why do I like baseball. I have been banging my head ever since trying to find a concrete answer with little success so far. I just know for sure that , at least for the time being, I enjoy very much doing it despite all the 'strange' sides of the game. Ideally, I would like to interview a bunch of people e.g. the guys at our team, and based on all the collected answers be able to answer this question.

This is not a direct answer to the question but it does shed some light into this: This Friday-Saturday, I traveled about 1300 kilometers just to play a double header which turned out to be 2 games of just 5 innings, leaving all my old and new attachments behind at home. I guess if I had traveled the same distance vertically I would have exited the atmosphere! We spent almost 16 hours in the car to play roughly 4-5 hours. If I step outside from myself and look at this, I can easily see that this does not fit with any logic whatsoever.

Yet, the question remains unanswered...