June 15 - Brazil v. North Korea

*This is the first of three installments worth of blogging that I am posting today, because we have a very bad relationship with the internet right now*

Today we woke up relatively late and made our way over to the local internet cafe in the morning. We are having to go there for our internet because our maximum security prison of an apartment has no internet.

After doing some research on the subject of game preserves (or safari locations), we decided the best course of action would be to rent a car today ahead of going to the Brazil/North Korea match at Johannesburg's Ellis Park. That way we could wake up the next morning and head for our safari adventure first thing in the morning. Plus, we are stuck out in the 'burbs a bit, so having a car will be helpful for the next week.

So, back on the wrong side of the road again (I'm from the USA and we rule the world, so dammit, we're on the RIGHT side) and with Joe navigating, we made our way to the FIFA Park and Walk location near Ellis Park. This particular Park and Walk was
located about 30 minutes from the stadium. When we got there, we were told that we had to have a ticket that we did not possess in order to park there. This is where the entrepreneurial spirit of South Africa comes in.

A young man named Lloyd arrived on the scene and told us that for 50 Rand (about $6.50) we could park in his backyard, located just down the block from the Park and Walk. I know a good deal when I see one, so we hopped on it. Lloyd and his friend Edward (the two of them were probably around 19-21 years old) helped us park in a really narrow space in a small dusty backyard right between a couple of tree stumps. More on this later.

On the walk to the stadium, we encountered various people using their homes as a location to make and sell braai - Afrikaans for roasted meat. Joe, Fawzi and I all had some boerewors, a sausage made from minced beef (and maybe pork or lamb or maybe ?).

After our tasty snack, we continued to approach the stadium, where we encountered some awesome Brazil fans.

a Brazilian leprechaun with his pot of gold

These guys are always good for some fun, and the atmosphere did not dampen as we got closer to Ellis Park. One thing that did threaten to dampen the atmosphere was the fact that shortly after we entered the stadium, the electronic gates stopped working to admit fans in as there were power outages that were evident all over Ellis Park. Soon, a huge crowd amassed behind the iron gates, and if it weren't for the fact that it was still 45 minutes to kick-off, there may have been some serious crowd unrest.

Luckily, that was sorted out by 30 minutes to the kick, and normal business was restored. When we got to our seats, we were pleased to be in the front row of the upper deck and close to the half-way line.

the view from our seats at Ellis Park to watch Brazil take on North Korea

Two things would blight an otherwise great experience, however. First, it was cold. It was really cold. It was bone-chillingly, let's play hockey on a frozen lake cold. Second, a die-hard Brazil fan placed a banner made of the lightest material directly in front of our seats. And it was flying in our faces incessantly for the first couple of minutes of the match until we all decided to shove the banner below some ad hoardings so we could see. While our incensed Brazilian friend tried to forcibly restore his lightweight banner, the best football of the match took place, as Robinho did about 100 stepovers and then nutmegged the North Korean defender. Not a goal, but the moment of the match for me, and we spent it yelling at an angry middle-aged Brazilian man to get out of our way.

Moving on, the football in this match was better than much in the tournament. Brazil played to their usual high standard, and the #9 for North Korea (I have no idea about the names of any of their players) was outstanding. The two Brazil goals were awesome, with Maicon unleashing a rocket from a nearly impossible angle to beat the North Korean keeper, and the tricky Robinho making a slide-rule pass to set up wispy Elano for Brazil's second. Even North Korea scored, on an excellent move which ended with my Man of the Match #9 for Korea Democratic People's Republic (never trust a country with "Democratic" in its title, Joe commented) heading down for nameless #8 to score a well-taken goal.

Brazil would run out winners, and so would we, as this match was hands-down the easiest to get in and out of for us, except for the fact that moving the right-hand drive car that Joe rented out of our space was one of the most harrowing experiences I've ever had behind a wheel. From an angle nearly as tight as the one Maicon beat the keeper from, I had to turn hard left, attempting to avoid a tree and a tree stump and fit into a driveway two credit cards wider than my car. Trust me, I'm not hamming it up, it was no mean task getting that car out. And as a consequence I put the tiniest of scratches into the rear fender. Oh well, that's Joe's problem with Avis in Johannesburg now (I kid). We did manage to get to our apartment quickly and we'll sort the car out later. Until next post...

June 14th - Holland v. Denmark and our first visit to Sandton

the impressive Soccer City, the premier venue of the 2010 World Cup

On June 14th, we made our way into downtown Johannesburg as we had to return our rental car and make our way over to the sparkling new Soccer City Stadium just outside Johannesburg. Downtown Johannesburg seemed a bit grim and dark compared to what we experienced in Cape Town, but I would like to go back soon as it looked like a big, bustling city, and that's my kind of place.

Finding ourselves without a car, we needed to get to Soccer City somehow. We found a cab in downtown Johannesburg. The driver spoke very little English, but he somehow got us to one of the Park and Ride locations near the stadium.

One of the most remarkable experiences of this World Cup for me has been the enormous hassle of getting to and from the games. Today, for instance, we got to downtown Johannesburg two and a half hours before our match started. We were only in our seats about a half hour before the match. Getting back would be worse.

Our seats were very good for the match. They were in the second deck, so high enough to get a good view, and close enough to midfield to get a balanced viewpoint of all the action. We were seated behind a real-life Viking.

the view from our seats for Holland/Denmark at Soccer City

The match itself was like many so far in this World Cup. Not very exciting. Holland went ahead via an own goal and neither side had much spark until the Dutch introduced Eljero Elia, who did a couple of street footbal style moves and was the best thing to happen to the game. In the end, Holland won, much to the delight of their bizarrely costumed fans.

the "Flying Dutchmen (and women)" with a foreign journalist

After the match, we set out for Sandton, an affluent suburb of Johannesburg. This journey was to take about 3 hours, as we walked for what must have been literally miles looking for a bus to take us to proper transit. I don't want to criticize too heavily the authorities who have set up transport here, but signage and information was not on a par with many other places I have been in my life. Finally, we grabbed a bus that took us to Wits College in Johannesburg, where we started walking aimlessly again until we hopped in a cab bound for Sandton.

When we arrived in Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton, we found a bustling mall with upscale shops and restaurants. We soon found a Thai restaurant called Wangthai (I could eat Thai everyday), and stopped for some food and drink. While we were eating, we ran into a work colleague of ours from the Bay Area, Jason, and we chatted about our experiences so far here in South Africa. After moving to the bar, we watched the Italy/Paraguay game, which, in my humble opinion, was more crap football. I'm desperately hoping that this World Cup can start to offer more spectacle, as it has been a fairly drab one football-wise so far. OK, until next time...







Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton

June 13th - A day of rest

After a long 72 hours, we all crashed until late in the day on Sunday. The place we are staying at in Johannesburg is best described by Lars when he says "it's like breaking into Fort Knox" to get in. There are two large metal gates that separate the place from the street. There is barbed wire all along the perimeter wall to the house. The place itself has an intricate alarm system. Graham, the guy who owns the place, assures us that the area is safe (for my morning runs, for instance), but for a safe area, there sure is a lot of security on this apartment.

For me, it seems apparent that the great need for security stems from the enormous gulf in wealth here in South Africa between the haves and have-nots. It seems equally apparent that the haves are mostly white and the have-nots are mostly not white. I know that in the USA we have tremendous racism and class inequality, and I'm just a visitor here so I cannot know the whole story, but this place has a very twisted feeling to it regarding race and class differences.

I guess it's unnerving to have such a large amount of security at our place. It makes me feel like I'm going to get robbed all the time. However, everyone here has been friendly and kind so far, so I really hope this World Cup is an experience that South Africa can build upon to uplift the entire country. Tomorrow we go to our first game at the new Soccer City Stadium - Holland v. Denmark, so times should continue to be exciting.

June 12th - USA v. England

I've had to work to get to some sporting events before in my life, but this day was to take the cake.

We woke up at 6AM to get to Cape Town Airport. From Cape Town, we caught a 10:55 flight to Johannesburg. This is where the real fun began. As Joe and Lars took a taxi over to our apartment in the Parktown North area of Johannesburg, Fawzi and I stayed behind to rent the car. Budget rentals at OR Tambo Airport in Johannesburg was a mess, as apparently we weren't the only people who were renting a car to make the 2 hour drive north to Rustenburg for the USA v. England match. When we finally got the car, we were told that Budget had no more GPS units. After scouring the rest of the airport for a GPS, we gave up and made our way old-school style over to the apartment with, wait for it.... maps!

It's been a while since I've used a map to navigate. Using the map, we did what seemed best: we made our way into downtown Johannesburg, from where I had a vague idea of how to get to Parktown North. With Fawzi and I getting remarkably close to our destination with our heads and a map, we enlisted the help of a friendly South African to get us the last bit of the way to our apartment.

At the apartment, which is fortified like a maximum security prison (more on that in later blog posts), we met the owner, Graham. Graham was kind enough to write out directions from our location to Rustenburg. In addition to his hand-written directions, we had a map of South Africa and a book of detailed maps of the Gauteng Province, where Johannesburg is located.

The problem with Graham's directions is that he failed to include street names at most of his turn locations. The directions read like this:

Take a left out of the driveway
Take the next left
Go five robots and then veer left
Take the next right
Go through two robots and take a right at the third robot

If you can't work it out on your own, South Africans call traffic lights robots. When we tried to follow Graham's directions, if he was even one "robot" off, we would be making the wrong turn and have a hard time knowing it. This is why we were lucky to have the book of detailed maps of the Gauteng Province. With Joe manning the navigational duties and me trying to stay on the correct side of the road, we hacked through the many turns on our way to Rustenburg using a combination of Graham's directions and a big book of maps that Joe was flipping through violently as he tried to stay with our progress.

A few things stood out on our drive to Rustenburg:

1. Highways in South Africa sometimes have stop signs.
2. We saw a sign that said "highjack point" on the way.
3. When you get to the middle of nowhere in Africa, it is vastly different from being in the middle of nowhere in the US. I can't fully describe it, but you can feel it.

In any case, we actually made it to Rustenburg, but it was really sort of against the odds that we did. When we finally made it around 6PM, we still had to park our car and make our way to the stadium. I don't know how big of a city Rustenburg is, but getting to it felt like trying to get to Woodstock or trying to get to a Superbowl that was being played in a sleepy small town. After about an hour and forty-five minutes in crawling traffic, we were able to park the car and boarded a bus to the Royal Bafokeng Stadium. Aboard the bus, we started running into some pockets of USA and England fans. There was some good friendly banter and when we got off, we had the opportunity to grab some USA flags for our march in.

On the way in, there were tons of flag-waving and singing USA and England fans. I myself was waving a USA flag for probably the first time in my life to support the team. The atmosphere was equally fantastic inside the stadium, as there were tons of flags, chanting, and vuvuzela blowing as the match got underway.

I won't say too much about the match except that it was a good result for the USA, as they were able to draw with the more fancied England side. England led, but the USA were able to equalize on an absolutely shocking piece of goalkeeping by England's Robert Green: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxspfInbLV8. After the match, we soaked up the atmosphere for a bit and began the long journey to our apartment in Johannesburg.

When we finally got out of the parking lot and on to the freeway, we saw tail lights for miles. We decided to stop at a spot right off the freeway called "Sizzlers," which bears no relation to the USA-based franchise. The poor people at Sizzlers were dealing with a huge crowd and a surly Englishman (disappointed at the match result I'm sure) complaining loudly about how long his order was taking. I ordered a hamburger and I ate it, even though the patty tasted like nothing I've ever eaten before. I'm honestly just glad to be alive and writing this blog now.

After we left Sizzlers, we got on a different road to go home (we weren't to stoked about passing the "highjack point" again in the middle of the night). It was a toll road, and even after stopping to eat, waiting in the line of cars to pay our toll made the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza at rush hour look like a walk in the park. When we finally got back to the apartment, it was 4:15 AM, and we crashed as hard as ever, but with the satisfaction that the USA had gotten a vital point against England.

the boys and I after the draw v. England

June 11th - Let the games begin!

After all the anticipation of the entire world for the last four years, the World Cup finally began on June 11, 2010. On that day, the boys, in addition to our friends John and Margie, had tickets to the night game in Cape Town: France v. Uruguay. More on that later. We wanted to make it down to Cape Town beforehand to watch the first game of the tournament on TV: the hosts South Africa v. Mexico.

From where we were located in Somerset West, we drove near Cape Town and stopped at a FIFA park and ride. From there we took the train in to Cape Town. When we arrived in Cape Town the place was buzzing with excitement for the South Africa game. We had to find a place to watch the game.



If you've ever tried to watch the opening game of the World Cup, which always features the hosts, in the country it's being played in, then you know how hard it is to find a good location to watch the game. We arrived later than we would have liked (typically), so we had our work cut out for us. As most bars and restaurants filled up, the best episode we had was when we found an Indian restaurant that had a TV, but it wasn't working. As an interested crowd looked on, the owners tried desperately to make the TV work, but it was not to be.

As we had little time to spare, Margie was busy devising an improvisational solution at a buffet restaurant called Karibu. We grabbed some sofas laying around outside and put them at a bad angle to get a glimpse of South Africa against Mexico.

The entire V&A Waterfront in Cape Town was electric with nervous excitement when the match started. It was a tense match until the 55th minute when South Africa scored. The entire Waterfront (and presumably all of South Africa) went mental when Siphiwe Tshabalala scored a great goal to put the hosts ahead. Unfortunately, South Africa could only manage a draw, which dampened the celebrations in South Africa but did not extinguish them.

Next, we made our way to the brand new Green Point Stadium, located conveniently right next to downtown Cape Town. Getting into the match was a bit of a drag at first, but after deciding to move to another entrance, we got in without much hassle. We had awesome seats as well, so we were all set. Now for my in-depth analysis of this match: it was crap.

We had a long day ahead of us the next day, so we said goodbye to John and Margie and got home early and got some sleep. USA v. England was our next destination, and boy would it take us a long time to get to that match.

June 10th - Table Mountain and fun in Cape Town

Hello all,

Sorry for the delay in the blog. It has been very tough getting online and my last 72 hours have been insane, even by my aggressive sleeping/traveling standards. So I am updating the last few days each with their own blog post, which I will do here in the next couple of days...

On June 10, we made our way to Table Mountain, which is a fantastic plateau that sits right above Cape Town. To get there, you take a tram sort of like a ski gondola up to the top.

the Table Mountain Cable Car from below

The views are amazing from the top of Table Mountain. You can see the city of Cape Town and all its surroundings on a clear day, which we were blessed to have that day.

the view from table Mountain

We had a great time up top just soaking it all in and then we went down into town, where people were celebrating the eve of the World Cup. There was plenty of live music, so it was a lot of fun.



We had a great time that night hanging out with the locals, who have been awesome the whole time. OK, until the next entry...

Robben Island

The gateway to Robben Island

Wednesday morning I got up and went for a 5 mile run in Somerset West. I have been trained by the media to be nervous about being on my own anywhere here, so there was a tiny bit of trepidation about doing the run, but I had a great time of it, as the scenery was fantastic and the locals I encountered were nothing if not friendly.

After the run, the group headed into Cape Town to putter around before our boat trip to Robben Island. At noon Wednesday here in South Africa, everyone in the country was supposed to blow their vuvuzelas (those plastic horns that make a really loud droning noise) in support of "Bafana Bafana" (or "The Boys," the nickname of South Africa's soccer team). There was some minor partying going on around the Waterfront, and we got a chance to see some of the South African fans and also some French fans here ahead of their game with Uruguay on Friday. Fun times. We even encountered some English fans in a pub, who greeted us "Yanks" with their customary rhyming slang term for Americans: "Septic Tanks." All in good fun, as we had a good laugh with the English fans and assured them that they've got their work cut out for them to take 3 points from the USA on Saturday.

South African fans blowing their vuvuzelas

So after a day's wait, we finally made the trip to Robben Island, the site of 18 years of Nelson Mandela's 27 year prison sentence which he served during South Africa's Apartheid regime. The ferry ride from Cape Town Waterfront takes about 35-40 minutes, and it makes the possibility of escape seem very remote (only three have ever escaped in 350 years).

We had a very engaging guide on the bus that led us around the Island. He was a young South African man who identified himself as "colored" in the context of the Apartheid government. He went on to explain the systematic creation of racial divisions created by the philosophy of Apartheid. This was done to ensure that the racial classes that were being oppressed would have slightly different fortunes to each other, and thus would not unite for the (slightly) more privileged classes' fear of losing what little scraps they were being given by the Apartheid government. It was definitely an education for me, and when I return home, I'll have to do more research on Apartheid.

The last part of the tour was guided by a former political prisoner, a man named Ngando who served seven years in the prison from 1984-1991. He told us about life on Robben Island, the awful diet the inmates were given, the squalid living conditions they endured, and some of the torture they were subjected to. All in all an eye-opening experience, and it actually gives me hope to see a man like this who can within a very short space of time see many (definitely not all) of the injustices of his country corrected. As our other guide said earlier, though, South Africa is just recently recovering from a long-standing, deep psychological and physical wound on its culture and citizens, and it will take a very long time before it is healed.

Ngando and I at Robben Island Prison