Blogs :: A Special Report on ZA: Part 2

A Special Report on ZA: Part 2

Brazil v. Portugal was up next and with almost week out on the farm without television, we were feeling left out of the World Cup madness. Little did we know when we set out at 4 in the morning, sleeping in the back of the "bucky" on a mattress for an 8 hour journey across the country, what type of madness we would be encountering.

On Durban
Durban: "The Warmest Place To Be For 2010". The slogan was fitting, we'd left the cold shivers, the wrapping up in coats and blankets, of Koster and Rustenburg and replaced them with sunny sunny 80 degree Durban. While they say the waters are warm enough to swim in, even though its technically winter, I challenge the comfortability of that statement.

The next two weeks were a blur. FIFA Fan Fest, bars, beaches, malls, sleeping, partying, eating, eating, and more ensued. Before we knew it the World Cup was almost over. Suji, our couch surfing host, Koogen, Nishan, Roderick, Pun, and many may many more, became our new family, our Indian family. Durban, most do not know, houses the largest neighborhood of Indians, outside of India, in the entire world: Phoenix.

We ate curries, with more spices than I'd ever had in my life. We ate roti rolls, the Indian version of a burrito. We ate bunny chows, a loaf of bread hollowed out and filled with sugar beans or lamb or chicken curries. No fork included, tear off a piece of bread and grab the food spilling out. I finally understood why the Christophers and Magellans back in the day went searching half way around the world for a more direct trade route to India. If not for its quest for spices, the Americas may not have been discovered for many more centuries to come. Many thank yous to India for your spice!

The matches kept on. Brasil went out. USA went out. My only favorite left was Germany. Assuming, of all games if any to be sold out, the semi-finals must. Not true, more on that in "A Letter to FIFA" later. Not only were we Americans surfing in Little India Durban, so were three Germans, two Canadians, one French, and three Argentinians over the course of our stay. One of the Germans determined to find tickets to the Germany v. Spain semi-final, left early in the day to sit out around the stadium beachfront and scour for tickets. We wished him luck and thought no more. Merely an hour before the match was to begin we received a call: he had exactly 1. A Category I ticket at face value is $600, I paid $150. Score.

Unfortunately Germany did not, but I had checked off one of my previously believed to be inconceivable goals for World Cup 2010. The night was ripe with partying and I enjoyed my share of the festivities, speaking in Spanish for the first time in many weeks.

I wish I could now continue to inform on how it all ended. A big bash, an explosion of football fun, a crazy beach party, but alas I cannot. With family obligations looming, I set off on detour. Home. Temporarily...of course.