The day job
Doing nothing but watch football is much harder than at first it would seem. With three games a day the first kicking off at 3pm and the final whistle not being blown until 11 it’s become a full time occupation. Thankfully Tobias’ flat is only a fifteen minute walk from the Hamburg fanfest, just past Otto across the Reeperbahn and bingo, so at least the commute is manageable.
Hamburg has really put in a good effort for their fanfest with every participating country represented with a stall, which means lots of people pretending to be Brasilian, a strange literal translation from German to English for the Ivory Coast – Elfenbeinküste meaning something like elephant’s foot, and everyone ignoring the Saudi tent. Why would you bother, crap food, no fans and most importantly no beer. Also odd is the British tent only selling Strongbow cider and no lager.
The first game we watched involved Holland so lots of easy humour involving Dutch fans. Then a game that definitely wasn’t marked down on my list of games to see between Mexico and Iran. Who knew that there would be so many Iranians and that they would be so loud – at time of writing the first half of this game has probably been the loudest of any witnessed, having flown over Iran earlier that morning and the vociferous fans made it an easy choice over who to cheer for. This game also involved our first cultural misstep of the tournament. We had battled our way into the temporary stands that border the viewing area and were firmly ensconced in with the Iranians when we realised out of the whole stand we were the only ones with a beer in our hand, oops.
On the other side of Eicholtz is a Portuguese (from now on being pronounced to rhyme with sways :) street, what could be more perfect to view their first outing against Angola. So after downing the first kebab of what I’m sure will become many, going to be hard to beat this one though, we joined the throng on the street all craning to catch a glimpse of a screen in the teeming bars. 1-0 meant they and we went home happy. Me more so because that meant finally going to bed having had just two hours sleep the second night in Dubai, not much more the night before and then it being back into the early hours of the morning Dubai time.
Today also marked the Team Weltmeisterschaft European footballing debut. Every Tuesday Tobias plays a bit of social five a side down at his university and he invited Grader and I to join him. I was a bi nervous as to how the Kiwi standard would match up against one of the greatest footballing nations but we seemed to hold our own.
It was a pristine ground surrounded by beautiful classical building. It was also a stiflingly hot evening. There has been somewhat of a heat wave in these parts with day upon day over thirty barely cooling down in the evenings. With it not getting close to dark till after 10 the days have a tendency to drift by very quickly – what you think is mid to late afternoon turns out to be more like 7pm.
Hamburg has really put in a good effort for their fanfest with every participating country represented with a stall, which means lots of people pretending to be Brasilian, a strange literal translation from German to English for the Ivory Coast – Elfenbeinküste meaning something like elephant’s foot, and everyone ignoring the Saudi tent. Why would you bother, crap food, no fans and most importantly no beer. Also odd is the British tent only selling Strongbow cider and no lager.
The first game we watched involved Holland so lots of easy humour involving Dutch fans. Then a game that definitely wasn’t marked down on my list of games to see between Mexico and Iran. Who knew that there would be so many Iranians and that they would be so loud – at time of writing the first half of this game has probably been the loudest of any witnessed, having flown over Iran earlier that morning and the vociferous fans made it an easy choice over who to cheer for. This game also involved our first cultural misstep of the tournament. We had battled our way into the temporary stands that border the viewing area and were firmly ensconced in with the Iranians when we realised out of the whole stand we were the only ones with a beer in our hand, oops.
On the other side of Eicholtz is a Portuguese (from now on being pronounced to rhyme with sways :) street, what could be more perfect to view their first outing against Angola. So after downing the first kebab of what I’m sure will become many, going to be hard to beat this one though, we joined the throng on the street all craning to catch a glimpse of a screen in the teeming bars. 1-0 meant they and we went home happy. Me more so because that meant finally going to bed having had just two hours sleep the second night in Dubai, not much more the night before and then it being back into the early hours of the morning Dubai time.
Today also marked the Team Weltmeisterschaft European footballing debut. Every Tuesday Tobias plays a bit of social five a side down at his university and he invited Grader and I to join him. I was a bi nervous as to how the Kiwi standard would match up against one of the greatest footballing nations but we seemed to hold our own.
It was a pristine ground surrounded by beautiful classical building. It was also a stiflingly hot evening. There has been somewhat of a heat wave in these parts with day upon day over thirty barely cooling down in the evenings. With it not getting close to dark till after 10 the days have a tendency to drift by very quickly – what you think is mid to late afternoon turns out to be more like 7pm.
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