June 20 - Apartheid Museum and Brazil v. Cote d'Ivoire

Today after getting a late start and making the near daily pilgrimage to Lulu Café in Parktown North (which has wireless internet), we headed out to the Apartheid Museum. The Apartheid Museum is situated not too far from Soccer City, where we later went to watch Brazil face Cote d'Ivoire (or Ivory Coast for you Francophobes).

When you arrive at the Apartheid Museum in a car, you are asked whether it is the Museum you are visiting or the Gold Reef Casino, which shares a parking lot with the Museum. After you park, you may enter the Museum for only 50 Rand.

the entrance to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg

We gave ourselves 4 hours for the Museum, and we used every second of that. It is one of the most present, relevant, thought-provoking, and exhaustive museums I have ever been to. There is a tremendous amount of detail in all of the history leading up to Apartheid and a wealth of artifacts and video footage from the recent history of Apartheid in South Africa. There was also a comprehensive temporary exhibit on the life and times of Nelson Mandela, who is a man I've decided I need to know more about. It was literally hard to get out of the musem in four hours.

After we left the museum at 5:50, we had to go maybe two miles as the crow flies to get to Soccer City. It inevitably took us around 45 minutes to get parked, as there was already traffic around Soccer City. I've been to Soccer City three times now, and I'm not going to miss it one bit. We stopped at some street vendors on the way in for some food. I myself had fried chicken, pab (sort of like grits), some salsa-like substance, and some beet salad. An interesting meal. I followed that up with an in -stadium boerewors and it was time to watch some football.

the view from our seats to watch Brazil face Cote d'Ivoire

After a slow-moving 25 minutes or so, Brazilian ace Luis Fabiano opened the scoring with one of the goals of the tournament, a top corner rocket from an acute angle to beat the Ivorian 'keeper. At the beginning of the second half, Fabiano doubled Brazil's advantage with a goal that looked like a really amazing piece of skill: bringing the ball down softly twice after looping it over Ivorian defenders both times and then smashing the ball left-footed past the netminder. On the replays, however (a couple of which were accidentally shown in the stadium), there looked to be handball on the play. That was not to be the end of the controversy on this night.

Later, Brazil's Kaká was sent off after it seemed there was some play-acting by one of the Ivorian players. It is a shame because Kaká (one of Brazil's top players) will miss their next match. In the end, Brazil won 3-1 and they probably do not need the services ok Kaká in the next match anyway, as they have secured passage to the knock-out stages with their two wins in two matches so far.

On the walk back to the car, I swapped scarves with a Brazilian man who was excited to get a USA scarf. Who says our country is hated all over the world?

after trading scarves with a Brazil fan