Days 3 & 4 6/27-28 - Latin American World Cip

Last two days we have cherished every moment of football we watched live at the stadiums and I have personally been amazed by the performance of Latin American teams. 4 out of 5 Latam teams are still alive at the quarter final stage whereas there are only 3 Europeans and 1 African team.

Gotta start with the Brazil vs Chile game on Ellis Park. Building up to the game we have watched the Durchies beating Slovakia at a tough match b 2-1 margin. Holland still does not convince me to win the WC with their performance but there is no shortage of talent in that team. True tast is against the samba boys on Friday. Speaking about the Brasileros as much as I am an Argentinian fan and don't necessarily care about them they do have the best the most upbeat fans for sure. They have turned the Ellis Park into a carnival town. Luis Fabiano, Kaka and rest did start rusty against Chile but as they say here 'one goal changes everything' one goal did change everything indeed. A simple corner kick ended up in the back of the net by Juan's header. Fabiano and Robinho made it easier for fans to watch the last half our as they are in Rio at the carnival. Entire stadium was blue yellow and green with a few pockets of Chilean fans singing Ole Ole Ole Chile
Chile. Summary of this game a team with a good finisher beats the team with a not good finisher. Brazil deservedly goes to quarters to play with Holland. Knowing that the semis will be againsrlt Uruguay or Ghana this will be their Sem Final game actually. I'm all orange for that game!

On Monday we also changed our location and moved to our new place Ball n Kicka. One smart guy turned the dorm of a run down university house into a football fan village. We got excited about this place and for the price we paid we are not necessarily grtting our moneys worth but all we care is games and there is no shortage of the excitement at this place. Brazilians partied until 2 in themorning. At one point I wasn't sure if I was dreaming with the samba drum on the back ground but it sure was interesting to fall a sleep on this kind of atmosphere. The place is tubby bunch of young football loving peeps and we got our basic needs in this place.

For day 4 we started our day ealyish. We arranged our trnasport to the Pretoria stadium for the least exciting game of all times Paraguay vs Japan. It was our first daytime game and third different stadium. There were total of 8 other unlucky fans that ended up with this games tickets that wanted to take off from our hostel to the stadium. Our car had me Thomas Enzo from Napoli and Simon from Munich and our driver from Joburg. Continuing the intl vibe we were dropped off a mile from the stadum at Hedfield Square. The place is full of bars and restaurants and the people were gettinginto the excitement of a second round game. I was surprised seeing moreJapanese fans than Paraguay ones. I was rooting for Japan for my buddy David. Knowing that he is married to a Japanese woman made him a more fanatic than a native Japanese I liked the blue samurais with the blonde leader they have got there in he name of Honda. The funniest sign that I saw so far read: " I
love my Honda. This is not an advertisement".the guy who was wearig the tshirt was basically saying to FiFA that your main sponsor Korean carmaker Hyundai can not compete with my Honda :)

The game went to overtime and the excitement picked up in the stadium during the extra times. Witnessing my first live penalty shootout I was so excited for my Honda & co. Losing the game on penalties hurts regardless but losing it with a only 1 miss which hit the post did hurt more. It must have felt like an earthquake in Tokyo but knowing how down to earth and respectful Japanese are they stood up and congratulated every single Paraguay players burrying their curren temotion in their hearts.

At the end of this game as we were leaving the stadium we thought of a crazy idea and if things work ou with selling the quarter final tickets that we had for Paraguay and make our way to Cape Town for the craziest of all games Argentina vs Germany. We didn't know we would sell all four tickets we will have for RND 6000( $900). This opened the doors to the trip to Cape Town. After getting back to the hotel Thomas got glued to the Internet to do all the rasearch on Capetown. In one hour we booked our hotel and flight to the Cape. Someone sAid " you would not visited South Africa if you haven't seenCape Town". I guess we are making it happen and we dint have to break the bank.

Oh by the way you may wonder whether we have tickets for the crazy game.Simple answer is no. But I have no doubt that we will be in the stadium in Saturday night cheering for Argentina. History is not written onhow we will make it bappen but we will!

By the way after finally finding a wirelless connection at the hostel I realzed I have been blogging for the past 2+ hours. We have caught up fough.

Let the spontaneous lifestyle continue!! Tomorrowis a rest day for World Cup. Notmuch rest for us I don't think. We will search for the tickets at Sandton, rent a car for a day, go to Monte Casino for some entertainment and have a party at ou rlocal friends house having BBQ. Not a bad rest day eh...

Day 2 Sunday 6/27 - Two Big Games

So we had some Internet challanges hence the delay in the blogs. We don't want to miss out on the coverage of two crazy games on Sunday.

After having our first sleep in Joburg and some catching up on on jet-lag we started our day right away with heading to downtown. Now that we know what the locals do with the minibus we learned our way to the fan fest in Newtown which is right by downtown Joburg. Thomas was with his Germany jersey and I was wearing my blue & white stripes of Argentina jersey for the two exciting games scheduled today.

At the fan fest we must have pissed offf many English fans by our chants and we made friends with some other Brits. England vs Germany game was well covered by the local press and was an amazingly exciting game. As the young German squad piled the goals back to back to the English net the entire fan fest was going wild. All the local south Africans who were initally supporting England started to cheer for Germany. After the 4th goal and Thomas getting delirious i realzed that Germans will be hard to beat. They may lose on inexperience but may also go to the Finale on July 11th.

After partying for half our we wanted to make our way to Soccer City Stadium for the Argentina vs Mexico game. We took the train to the stadium and it was a long trip down to Soweto. We made it somehow on time after a long walk to the stadium. Now i understand why they give so much break time between the games. Seeing rows of Argentinos walking down the road with some Mexicans singing their Mariachis. Argentina was the favorite before the game but the way Mexico played made me worries about how Maradona's amigos will show up on tonight game. Mexicans started tough on couple of long range shots but it took Tevez & Messi co to score the first goal. Second goal made Higuain one of the contenders for the golden boot with 4 goals in 3 games that he played. Second haf goals from Tevez and J. Hernandez made the final score 3-1 for blue and white.

Being in the stadium and watching Messi dribbling 100 meters from me made me insane. I was right there feeling the entire action. Paying Category 1 tickets actually makes a difference apparently. We were feeling the sweats of the players.

I have to touch on the vuvuzelas of course. I bought mine as well and tried to blow it but it takes couple of practices to get the hang of this crazy bee sounding toy. In the stadium there were a few times where the entire 85,000 fans started blowing the damn thing and there was no way any player could hear any whistle from the ref. As much as it is part of the culture here in SA for me it will be a good souvenior from here. After couple of games you get used to the sound but I would doubt in 2014 in Brazil the samba dancers would appreciate the bee buzzes. FYI, vuvus are going for RND 50, apprx $7 and almost everyone has one.

After the game we met up with our Aussie friends who were staying at the same hotel as we were and also came to watch the game. We went to Melville bar once again that we visited yesterday to grab couple of drinks. It was to hang out with Aussie boys. Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi is the chant they taught us. My boy Harry Kewell and Lucas Neill from Australia national team is one of their fav players as well.

Gotta love the international vibe at the world cup! We met so many people from so many different pockets of the world that I can only imagine it getting better as the final game approaches.

World Cup Fanatics on their Way to Joburg

South African Airlines crew at Heatrow

Day 1 Craziness

We landed to Joburg airport 7am on Saturday. Already started making
friends on the plane with Americans and many of them were going to
Rustenberg for the Ghana game. Even though I was offered many US game
tickets they were all jacked up prices and the fact that we had to
figure out our accomodation stuff and Rustenberg is 2 hrs away from
Joburg made it tough for us to make it to the game.

We got all the tickets from the Fifa ticket machine including the
final game tickets!! As we are heading to our lodge we already started
to negotiate with the taxi guys. You learn that only way to go around
without going bankrupt is negotiate the hell out with these guy and
the prices are tripled than the normal rates just for the WC. It's
good that I have some good skills that i built from the Istanbul days
so I feel comfortable:)

For our first day we wanted to experience the local culture and went
around the city how locals transport. Two Europeans right in the heart
of downtown with everyone else Afrikan made me feel pretty unique to
say the least but experiencing how the locals communicate and act was
pretty cool. Joburg has very poor population in the dowtown area
besides the Bevery Hills-look-a-like Sandton where most of the whites
live. Country is still pretty much seperated in the class and race
level but given that it was only 14 years ago that the Apartheid ended
they are doing pretty good. Hosting the World Cup made them a lot more
shinier as the rainbow nation. Watching the USA vs Ghana game at a
local bar called SiX in Melville, which is the artsy district of
Joburg, allowed me see how well blacks and whites were living in
harmony. It was a well balanced, cosmopolitan vibe that I enjoyed as a
tourist even though the entire bar was rooting for Ghana for obvious
reason.

To touch abit on the USA game I wasn't getting in to the mood until
an hour to the kick off for some reason. What was awesome is that at
one point there was group of us eating dinner where table was
represented by an Armenian German Brit Puerto Rican South African and
Kenyan. We were all sipping our local South African wine which was
quite delish.

I had to buy a USA flag from the guy on the street to really get
pumped up as I was the only guy supporting the Yanks at the entire
district. US didn't play as I wanted them to play but give credit to
Ghana for their amazing performance and two awesome goals that they
scored to advance to quarter finals. Getting knocked out by the same
team in two WCs hurts a lot but I think we can know call US and Ghana
rival teams...

Last nite at the bar in Melville, at one point there was a Spanish
looking girl sitting on my lap who said was from Swaziland originally,
made the night a lot more interesting for me as I was watching the USA
lose but I won't get in to too much detail on that really:) o

What a way to start the 20 day trip! Off to the crazy post WW II game
with Germans and Brits following it with the live action on the battle
of Tango and Mariachi dancers!

En Route to Jo'burg

As the locals call it, Jo'burg is 11 hr away from us at the moment. With my German compatriot Thomas we are hanging out at a lounge sipping our Beck's at Heatrow Airport in London watching the Brazil vs. Portugal game. After 11 hrs and 5300 miles coming from SFO we are ready for another 12 hr flight with 5700 miles to head to South Africa.

As I was blogging here I just met some Sourh African businessmen and they pretty much did our itenirary for the Durban piece of our trip. We will catch the semi final game at Durban and will have the couple of rest days in between to see some "game parks" as the locals call it. Make no mistake these no different than your regular zoos in case you were thinking Thene Parks like Six Flags:)

After sitting with Thomas and making our plans we realized we will be watching 7 games from Second Round to the Final. It is still hard to believe for me. It was back in 09 Thomas decided to apply for these tickets. He picked Paraguay as his team( at the time have no clue that if Paraguay will make it to the WC) and being in the first round of the lottery he had little more chance to be chosen. When he told me if I wanted to go with him to South Africa I was like " is that a question?" the way ttys tickets work out is that since he picked Paraguay we are following them all the way to the finals. Paraguay finished their group first so if they go all the way to the final game (in which case I would memorize their first 11 by then:) ) that's great but if they lose to someone on the way we will follow that team. Say they lost to Japan we will be following Japan in quarter final and so on.

We booked our flight tickets, hostels and paid for tickets all back in March. Having saved some money for the trip in advanced and getting some good chunk of tax return back helped me afford this trip. Ok ok I still owe $$ on my credit card but not much really:)

When it comes down to it watching almost every World Cup game since USA1994 on TV now the fact that I am half way across the world and will be watching the final game live makes me delirious!!

Now what's next? We arrive to Jo'burg 7am local time. We'll check in to our lodge, where we will stay for the first three days before we move to our hostel right near by Rossmore which is the university town. After we get all settled in we will head to pick our tickets in Sandton and start hunting for a cool place to catch to USA vs Ghana game. We already corresponded with some local peeps through friends of friends and I'm sure we ll meet some local throughout to get a nice group gathered to watch the USA gsme. It will be interesting to hfeel the entire Afrika continent against you. Can't wait!

What's on tap for our first few days in Joburg...
Saturday USA vs Ghana: watch at a fan fest with 50,000 people
Sunday: Germany vs England - much anticipated game will be watched at a fan fest near soccer city
Argentina vs Mexico - watch live at Soccer City stadium
Monday: Brazil vs. Chile/Spain - watch live at Ellis Park Stadium
Tuesday: Paraguay vs. Japan - watch live at Pretoria stadium

We are watching 3 out of 8 Second round games! My bracket says USA, Argentina, Uruguay, Holland, Brazil, Germany, Paraguay, Spain qualfies to Quarter Finals.

I guess we'll wait and see!

Off to boarding to Jo'burg with South African Airlines.

Let's go USA!!

Sent from my iPhone

Start of the Journey to South Africa

It's indeed hard to believe that I'm leaving to South Africa in two
days... The fact that I am watching the games either in the bars of
San Francisco or at home still did not allow me to believe that I am
actually going to watch at least 5 games live in South Africa,
including the final game.

Maybe starting with this blog I would feel it more who knows that I am actually going there. More posts will be
coming in for sure. Today is Tuesday June 22nd and I realized I have
not blogged exactly for a year. Maybe it is coincidence but this is a
great reason to write back and report from the amazing land of Africa.

My beloved Argentines finished their group first and will face Mexico
on the second round. One of the games that I will be watching at
Soccer City on Sunday!

Viva la Argentina!