Archive for June 24th, 2010

This time Carl does our stadium intro as we get to see an awesome game with Japan winning.  The stadium itself was not as full as one would have hoped with the placement of a team in a bracket on the line.

But the Japan fans came out in full force.  Carl managed to capture some incredible game pictures as well as fan pictures.  The full set can be found in the VVorldCup photo pool on Flickr. Here are some of our favorites:

The drive itself was the same as last time, but lighter in traffic.  The smoke, however, was constant and almost burning to your throat at some points. They have begun making fire breaks in the land due to the dry winter. Fire breaks can be a wide swatch of land or all of the sides of the road for miles. we were able to see an entire mountain side on fire at one point during the drive making the road an entire fog. Now we get 5 hours of sleep and drive the opposite way to watch Brazil down in Durban play. But, we enjoy it so much.

One of the things I have mentioned on the IdoNotes blog here is how this is a community event.  Global community.  Countries really do not matter when it comes to who you talk to, walk next to, stand next to our share a bag of crisps.

After the Ghana versus Germany game, we were honored to meet some wonderful South Africans that allowed us to do the following interviews. Carl did the first one, with Andy playing the instrumental.

Andy took on the second interview of a wonderful couple that has traveled the world. They even took time after to teach the Shosholoza song

We raced back from Durban to rest about an hour before heading to the train station for Ghana versus Germany.  This promised to be a good game as both teams needed to perform to advance.  After our parking experience the other day when catching the train to Soccer City, we learned an important lesson about private garages around the parking zone.  Mainly when the main parking is free at the train platforms.

Let me describe free.  You are able to park on the street as well as in the lot, no charge for the World Cup event around Park Station.  However, when leaving, the staff runs to walk you to your car, make sure you back out correctly even if you are the only car and then expect some form of “tip”.  So in essence you do pay to park a small amount, just not officially.  The private parking charges unstated pricing depending on the mood and what you are willing.

So we parked on the platforms (the streets were full already) and as we entered the train station we were told that the last train to Soccer City was boarding.  It was a good 90 minutes before the game, for a fifteen minute train ride.  The end result is we made the train fine with Carl running.  Yes.  You read what I said.

After we moved with the sea of people, we did our intro video.

Inside it was loud as ever with huge grouping of German and Ghana fans.  In the opposite corner of our seats was an entire section of German fans that never sat down and were told to remove some banners.  A small disturbance of locals hitting each other with vuvuzelas to our left made the entire game interesting.  Yet the fans were wonderful, excited, talkative to each other and just there for a good match.

As you can see, the fans were awesome and we had excellent seats for the game.

See all of our World Cup photos at the group Flickr pool

Dear blog readers, after the fantastic news that USA and England got though to the last 16 (and the rather sad news that Germany qualified) things took a dramatic downward turn for Chris and I.   Unfortunately we were not keeping a close enough eye on Andy as we passed the street sellers and he is now a very proud owner of a VuVuZelas.  We are coming up with various plans to disable the device,  such as chili powder on the mouth piece, wall filler in the tube etc.   We’re hoping the locals may yet take care of the issue, and ban Andy from playing it as he is so poor at having it make a sound.  Sadly, Andy’s poor playing technique will just lead him to practicing more I think.