BRRRRazil - North Korea

BRRRRazil as in BRRRRR it is cold today watching Brazil!


It is actually 29 degrees outside at the moment - i wish that was Celsius, but it is Fahrenheit. The whole day was pretty chilly and it ended with the coldest night i have had in at least a year.

I did say goodbye to Aghas and Mallory today, they will be leaving down to the south coast to see some games down in Durban and Cape Town while I stay up here for my games. It was really fun seeing some people from home, even though I see these people quite a lot because Aghas and I work for the same company.

After dropping them off by their hostel, I went about 20k north of Johannesburg to pick up some tickets to Uruguay-Mexico. I was going to meet this person before USA-England, but the noise was so loud there, we couldn't hear each other on the phone so we didn't end up meeting at all. He left the tickets for me at the guesthouse he was staying at.

After that, I went to do another ticket switch, this time at a place called the Brazilian Grill. As you could guess, it was full of Brazilians getting ready for their group opener against Dear Leader FC....errr.... North Korea. I met Berto there and gave him my extra Argentina-South Korea ticket for his spare Brazil-North Korea ticket. I met this guy online - i like it when things like this work out.

It was a pretty big mission to get to the park and ride to the stadium as it was around rush hour time on the freeways. I did finally make it there though and I had some Brazilian friends now as well! I had a good talk with Druso on the bus - he's the one on the left holding the Atletico Mineiro flag... he assures me they are the best team in Brazil. His friend Bruno in the Cruzeiro shirt REALLY assured me that they are not. They were pretty cool guys and this was their first World Cup!

The game was in Johannesburg at the other host stadium in the city, Ellis Park. This stadium is famous as it is the home of South African rugby. If you have seen the movie Invictus, this is where (spoiler alert!) South Africa won the Rugby World Cup in 1995. It was a pretty magnificent looking place as well. I don't think my night time picture of the outside of on of the stands does it too much justice though.

As soon as I took my seat which was in the upper tier, the wind started blowing very hard, and the temperature was dropping by the minute and it eventually dropped below freezing! While i was sitting there "chillin" all alone, an American guy came up to me. He noticed I was wearing my Columbus Crew jacket and he was a season ticket holder while he lived in Columbus. His name was CJ and he was there with his friend Kareem. We had a great old time freezing together.

There were actually a few North Korea fans there, I counted maybe 50 total. I do know that one large group of them were actually Chinese. North Korean citizens are not able to leave North Korea, so they gave their tickets to China, who sent Chinese nationals to cheer for PRK in their place. This woman's sign says something along the lines of China supports you, remember 1966 (PRK beat Italy in that World Cup).

North Korea defended bravely in the game, but they ultimately lost 2-1. They got their goal with just a minute left, and I was very pleased that they did. I actually liked watching them play more than I liked watching Brazil!

The park and ride trip back to my car wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. It was cold, but the lines to the buses moved quite fast after the buses started showing up. I thought it might take a long time by the size of our line. This picture was taken when we were still about 200 feet from the front of the line.

I did finally make it back to the place I am staying at and after turning on the electric blanket, I'm all ready to warm up and get some sleep. I'm taking the day off of going to games tomorrow, so I'll be watching South Africa - Uruguay from the pub up the road again.


brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!