World Cup Final Match

Sunday, July 11, 2010

This evening, we changed our plans last minute because we heard that it would be very difficult to try to go to the Stadium. Our Australian friend, Ken, suggested that we all try to go to a part of the city called Sandton to watch the game on the big screen at one of the fan parks. We got to Sandton and wanted to do some shopping before heading over to watch the game, and on our way to the mall we noticed a large crowd in front of a hotel. As we walked closer, we saw a bus waiting with several police and security guards around it--it was the Spain Soccer Team's bus, waiting to take them from their hotel to the game! After waiting for around 30 minutes, we finally saw the players exit the hotel lobby and board the bus. As soon as the bus left, the crowd dispersed, and we headed into the shopping mall.

We were really hoping to buy some World Cup merchandise, which was one of the reasons why our original plan had been to go to the Soccer City Stadium. But this mall in Sandton also seemed like a nice place to find the things we were looking for. However, when we got inside, we found that almost every store was closed. We saw tons of great jerseys, jackets, hats and vuvuzelas through the windows, but we couldn't buy any of it.

We gave up on shopping and decided to start walking to the fan park. We thought it was only a few blocks away, but after walking awhile we asked a taxi driver for directions. He told us it was too far to walk, so he drove us there instead. We arrived at the fan park, which is a huge open field with a very large TV screen and a few tents for selling food and beverages. People were still filing in 1 hour before game time, and it looked like there would eventually be thousands of people in this park. We also discovered that vuvuzelas are much louder in person than they are on TV! We checked out the merchandise tent here and found that almost everything was sold out. This large crowd, long food/drink lines, and lack of merchandise was definitely not the atmosphere we were looking for, so we got into another taxi and went back to Melrose Arch, where we watched the Third Place Game the night before.

Melrose Arch was 3 times more crowded than last night, and there was absolutely no place to sit, or even to stand. Ken decided to stay, but we couldn't take it. We eventually found a taxi driver from a nearby hotel who drove us back to our hostel, where we just watched the game peacefully in the lounge with a few of the other hostel guests. We also decided to drink the champagne that had been given to us by the British Airways flight attendant. Although it wasn't the fun party we had last night, we still enjoyed the game and a chance to relax.