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!!