Today, the last pair of tickets for a game we could attend goaded us back into Durban to see Netherlands take on Japan. Our hotel recommended catching the train that passed near the hotel, and said that one of the arrivals was a special FIFA train. Just by showing our tickets, we could ride for free. I read about some of the trains before coming to South Africa and came across warnings about muggings and robberies on the trains. Being a special FIFA train, I was thinking that maybe they'd stock it with loads of security guards, but the security situation isn't sorted yet and I don't know if the thinning police force would be represented on the train. We scoped out the platform yesterday and saw mostly locals and some who looked like they might be homeless. The situation might have changed for the FIFA train, be we decided to play it safe and drive back to the beach and walk the three miles to and from the car to the stadium.
It was near eighty degrees in the sun. People were swimming and surfing again, and occasionally there was a random spontaneous dance party. The Blonde got on my nerves by stopping every ten feet to take a picture or pet somebody's dog. Two weeks is a long time to put up with someone and early on it probably wouldn't have bugged me, but I'm exhausted and ready to go home. I can tell she's getting sick of me too, but I don't know why. I never get sick of me.
The game wasn't extraordinarily exciting, but it had it's moments. If you watched it on TV and saw some huge Netherlands flag covering a whole section in the upper deck, you may have seen us as a bump underneath. The fan ratio was skewed heavily towards The Netherlands, and we were sitting in front of a group that hatched the plan to spread the flag. Before the game they colluded with the Dutch fans in the front row; telling them it would be passed down to them and that they should hold onto it when the team entered the pitch. At that point, I was a fan of the Dutch. Then the game started and the Dutch players bugged me by walking away with the ball during deadball situations, and the Dutch fans bugged me by smoking in the clearly posted No Smoking stadium (until the police showed up and told a dozen of them to extinguish). And the Dutch fan that frisbeed his drink carrier into the lower stands was the last douchebaggery that turned me into a fan of Japan.
The vuvuzelas were worse than when The Netherlands played Denmark and the fans were more lively, but still just as tall and blonde. This time, I picked up some earplugs beforehand which turned out to silence not just the horns, but also The Blonde. I'm considering bringing some back for at the office.
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