Day 9-11 7/4-7/6 Durban - Warmest Place to Be

Leaving Cape Town at 4 in the morning felt like we were smuggling blow out of this beautiful city but there were absolutely no flights available to Durban in other days leading to the semi final game. So we were in Durban with the emotions from yesterday's crazy game: One of us jubilant the other one no so much.

We planned to stay at Banana backpackers hostel and checked in there early enough to get catch up on our sleep. At this point I think our bodies gave up on fighting with few hours of sleep, drinking and weather change and decided that since the world cup is having two rest days our bodies needs some rest as well. We were both coughing and sneezing back to back at one point which is part of the game if you travel around crazy.

Let's talk about Durban a little bit... The city is predominantly inhibited by Indians who came here back in the times to work at the sugar cane factories from their motherland. They were smart to choose a beachfront site to work. The entire city is surrounded by beaches and they ran out names to name each of their beaches. We stayed at North Beach making me feel close to home to the SF version of this neighborhood. Really the city had a few pockets of interesting/cool hang out locations like the Florida Street which has the big chain Cubana that I saw on Cape Town and couple other local eateries. Rest of Durban had a Wilson's wharf that had some OK ish restaurant by the harbor and this place called Joe Cool's by the beach that almst every 20-30 somethings hung out at night.

Maybe our assumptions were crazy that the city would have been filled with German and Spanish fans starting on Sunday but even the local shop owners admitted that the city was empty. One of the owners was being brutally honest by saying that Durban had pretty much nothing to offer as an entertainment besides the Sun Coast Casino that is by the beach, and that the locals would do getaways to Cape Town for fun. That proves my point that this city is great to lay down on the beach on South Africa's winter and get some Vitamin D in your system and let your soul relax if you have been running around like crazy. Our sick first couple of days had lost of soaking up the sun and taking good lengthy naps on the sand. I played beach soccer with the local boys remembering that a few past lives ago I used to play with Brazilian boys in Santa Cruz and learned some tricks about moving the ball on the sand. Spending rest of the day at the beachfront on our second rest day, at night we figure we will kick it up a notch a bit but our best bet was Joe Cool's and the place was a dead town. Either FIFA has cancelled the semi final game and we had no clue or someone was joking with us. Two days prior to semi final game of the World Cup semis the city was empty. Durban is the 3rd largest city in South Africa by the way.

Next day, day 11, was the first semi final game facing Holland vs Uruguay. We both felt like we have been around Durban to say that we've been everywhere. The only place that we haven't checked out was the Sun Coast Casino. The weather has been beatiful so we walked by the beachfront to get to the casino. On our way we were interviewed by the Brazilian TV SBC and the French radio station RTL. Speaking about interviews I guess we have become popular on German ZDF Station and they ran our interview that Thomas and I gave on the Cape Town fan fest. I had my Argentina jersey on Thomas had his German one and I still don't remember what I said in the interview. Whats funny is we found the video online but I still haven't heard the audio since the internet cafes here are blocking the streaming here. By the way we really have the true African rates at the this internet cafe right by our hostel. its 5RND an hour pretty much like $0.70. I thought I'll share the Consumer Price Index numbers for the econ gurus out there :)

What was fun about the casino is that after we lost our money on blackjack as we were leaving I asked Thomas to give me 10 minutes to play 3 hands of Roulette. I only play 2 hands in Red and 1 hand in black, and in that order. I never take the money out of the table. Red Red Black. Thomas gets the encouragement from me and puts 20RND on his fav #23. 23 is a red number and believe it or not it did come. My German buddy pocketing 700RND and making up his loss and going up on profit. I on the other hand hit my red color and got to survive on more hand. Started with 100RND and now its 200 on the table. Next turn Thomas leaves his 20 RND on 23 again and I do the red again. Beleive it or not the evil white ball jumped out of the 23 and landed to the number next to it.Wow that was quite exciting. He missed his second 700RND and I got the black so I lost as well. It was a fun 10 minutes that we spent there for sure.

Now it is the game time! The fan fest in Durban was amazing I must say.As much as I was not overly impressed by the city after seeing the beatiful Cape Town, Durban Fan Fest was giant entertainment center. The game watching area was on the beach itself where everyone was on the sand dancing and cheering. You can get your local food, typical American junk food, and drinks in the Fan Fest for a reasonbale price. This Fan fest idea was first introduced by Germans in the 2006 WC but it was not officially organized by FIFA. In South Africa they truly made a business out of this having official sponsors as Coca Cola, Budweiser and the local cell phone carrier MTN. I must say MTN was milking every penny that they have spent on their sponsorship money. THey have this tagline 'Ayoba' that started annoying me abit as every single DJ, host seems to be paid to make the crowd cheer Ayoba. First I thought it is cool it must be an African thing but it is quite the marketing promo. Coming from a capitalist country I was amazed by the amount of ads that involved Ayoba. They had the Ayoba vuvuzela song if you believe it :)

Anyways, now we were at the beach couple hours befort the kick off time and was told that this famous singer will show up in half hour. His name is K'Naan(hope I prounced it correctly)who is a hip hop/reggee guy that has roots from Somalia but grew up in Canada. Seems some Canadian flags in the World Cup did surprise me in the beginning but later on I had the 'Aha' moment. K'Naan had cool songs actually and his closing one was the "Waving the Flag" songs that he got famous with. I have videotaped the entire song on my camera where everyone had their flag going from one side to another.There were most likely over 20,000 people at the fan fest and everyone was having a blast. It was dominated by the orange color and you saw the blue-sky of the Uruguayan flag in couple of pockets. South Africa had many Dutch decended people living and supporting the L'oranje.

The game itself was quite entertaing I must say. The two captains scored absolutely amazing goals in the first half. Diego Forlan becoming the hero for all the underdog supporters. And on the second half it could have gone either way, really. When you thought Uruguay would score, Schneider popped-up and had the go ahead goal. Two minutes later, left-footed magician Arjen Robben scored his possibly the only goal that he would score with his head. Whats up with these short Dutchies scoring amazing goals with their heads. I thought one-touch 'Total' football was played with feet :) Amazing 2 minute show got the Netherlands up 3-1 and Uruguay were able to pull one back on the stoppage time.

We now know the one finalist and tomorrow's insanely important second game will determine the other finalist. If it is Germany vs Holland which it looks like it will happen, the tension between these two teams will make it an amazing showdown. Before I write anything about that game lets not forget about Espana. They were one of the big favorites before the tournament. They have not showed that yet in this World Cup. Having 7 out of the 11 players from Barcelona team makes me want to support Spain but my logic says Germany for sure after seeing them against my Argentinos. One Game Changes Everything. Weather report says rain during the game time. Durban got unlucky with marketing this time. They have 'Warmest place to be' signs all over the city. On the most important game it is cold and rainy. One thing is for sure... it will be the warmest place to be for one of these teams :)