Posts Tagged ‘World Cup’

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

The ride to Durban was a long one, just under 6 hours, covering beautiful countryside, fire breaks being made and plenty of small towns.  Andy posted earlier about the funny traffic sign for the workers that were everywhere.  We arrived to a great bed & breakfast (more on that in another post) to walk to Moses Mabhida Stadium.  We took two videos, one outside and one inside to introduce it to you from our perspective.  The fans were incredible as we sat with Nigeria.  The music, dancing, horns, cheering and more.  I will have those uploaded in a bit.

Outside the stadium

Inside the stadium

We even had a Nigerian priest it seemed and Nigerian Police joining us in our section. The Flickr stream has all the pictures up and running.  Head over to the VVorldcup group!

This roadwork sign says it all….

Our wonderful host family has never had three well connected geeks before. So we decided to contribute to the local economy while here at World Cup 2010.

It seems Carl offered his spicy salty balls previously, and today we restocked.  It seems I was up first and then Carl with a brand new offer.

Yes, this will be the end of these posts.