The country of the day for Day 2 of World Cup is mos def: Algeria!
My friend Edwin and I started the day off by picking up a friend from USA up at the airport. One nice thing about World Cup is that a lot of infrastructure improvements have been made all over SA. Usually the road to the airport from Pretoria is pretty packed, but now it’s a 3 or 4 lane dream drive. We arrived in no time! Ramsey, my friend from the USA, is living in Jordan now, but is originally from Iowa. Midwest, represent! We met in 2006 because we both got Rotary Scholarships and were attending an orientation together in Kansas City, MO. I haven’t kept up with Ramsey much in the time that has passed since we met, but we did become facebook friends in the last few months. I saw he was coming to SA for the World Cup and insisted he get in touch when he arrived. It just worked out that we could go get him and spend the day enjoying soccer and sharing Pretoria with him.
(L-R: Edwin and Ramsey vuvu it up in Hatfield Square)
We dropped his stuff off at Edwin’s place (since we got robbed Friday…stuff needs to go inside the house!), picked up our friend Douwe, and headed to Hatfield Square.
Driving in the car these days means seeing people selling flags for the World Cup teams at just about every single intersection. I did have to buy an American flag on Day 2, since we were playing later in the day and I just wanted to wave my flag like K’naan suggests. A small flag (about 1.5ft x 1ft) cost R50 but I managed to haggle down to R26 since that’s all I had in my pocket. Plus the flag was really really poor quality and was so not worth R50 (about US$7). Last time I checked there was not some amorphous blue mark in the spot the red and white stripes should be…
Driving in the car also means being silly with the vuvuzela! Ok, at least for me. It seems vuvuzela toots are pretty much okay anywhere these days. I heard people blowing them in the airport when I looked for Ramsey (I also greeted him by vuvu…lol). People are blowing them all over the place. So when you ride in the car it’s fun to put the window down and blow the vuvu as you see fit. The best neighborhoods are ones like mine where there are a lot of people on the street also blowing vuvus. Then you can get a call and response thing going on…which is kind of fun. I actually had a few vuvu battles with people on this day: some little kids, an English chick that was getting annoyed, and just about anyone else that wanted to throw down. Good times. A vuvu is a must carry item these days J
I live about two blocks from one of the World Cup stadiums, Loftus Versfeld, and on the other side of the stadium lies Hatfield Square, which is the campus bar scene for the University of Pretoria. Hatfield Square is one of the viewing places for all the FIFA games so it is probably going to be packed with internationals and domestics for the next month…hooray! I think the University of Pretoria is also renting out the student dormitories for World Cup guests so those folks will probably make their way to the Square most days since it’s within stumbling distance to most of the dormitories.
I will admit that we headed to the Square to watch rugby and not soccer. Rugby appetizer, soccer main. That may be a sacrilegious thing to say these days, but I’m just throwing it out there! We went to watch the SA national team (Springboks) play France. The funny thing is that usually in the Square you can never find a place that is willing to play a soccer game. Honestly, the Square is kiiiiiinda of a white stronghold. And especially Afrikaans. Bar managers often won’t play soccer games on TV in the bar cos it “attracts the wrong crowd.” Let your imagination run wildly racist with that phrase. This day it was the complete opposite situation. Only one bar in the Square was playing rugby on TV. We got Ramsey some biltong (similar to beef jerky AKA the “apple pie” of SA) and settled in to watch the Springboks kick some French tail…which they did.
The Algerian madness started for Ramsey and I when we went during rugby half time to the grocery store across the street to get some things. Some fans there started talking to Ramsey in Arabic and then me in French. The photo snapping started there and continued for the whole rest of the evening.
After the rugby, we wandered out to where they were playing the soccer games on a big screen and were greeted with more Algerian madness. The Square was PACKED with Algerian fans (predominantly men…actually I don’t think I saw any women). And it seems when Algerians come out to represent…they do not mess around. Most of the people were completely decked out in the Algerian colors (red, green, white), dancing around, instruments in hand. The vuvu was there, of course. Everyone was just happy and enjoying the atmosphere. Algeria wasn’t even playing today, but these guys were bringing the noise in a serious fashion. Guys kept asking to have their picture taken w/me and my flag. It was almost swarm-like at times. One guy would ask to snap a picture together and all of a sudden 3 more people were jumping in and handing off their cameras to a another person.
We watched the Nigeria vs. Argentina game in the Square with everyone pretty much rooting for Nigeria. There were a lot of Nigerian fans out and “Up Nija!” was being shouted from all corners of the Square. Many people in South Africa have their other favorite team (besides the SA team Bafana Bafana), but it seems there is an African solidarity thing going on big time…so many people are shouting for any African team that is playing. This was the case with the Nigerian game, even though Messi (an Argentinian player that was just voted best soccer player of the year) was on the opposing team. Messi has a lot of fans, but not when another African team is on the pitch!
The next game started a few hours later, so Ramsey, Douwe, Edwin, and 2 friends that joined us (Surprise and Vama) headed off to Sunnyside for a meal and some beers. In the short time we spent with Ramsey we packed as much SA in as we could. J We took him to Sunnyside for pap and vleis, a traditionally SA dish, and showed him the chocolate side of Pretoria.
Now back to the Square for the USA vs England game…which we drew 1-1 with England. What a relief! England has some serious players on their team, but we gave them a run for their money! I spent the first ½ of the game out in the Square jumping around and waving my flag and the second ½ with Douwe at a bit quieter bar. This saw me wiggling around some guys standing in the way of the TV, keeping my vuvu quiet, but still shouting at the top of my lungs for the USA. We were at News Café, which is a bit of an upmarket chain restaurant/club here in SA. They have the BEST cocktails in all of SA. They can be a bit expensive, but are so worth it. Now they have these vuvuzela shots with each team having their own special blend. My favorite one was the “Chastity Belt” representing England. Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Hilarious. They also had cocktails representing each team and when you bought one you got a bracelet with the flag of that team on each bead. I decided to splash out and get a “Long Island Iced Tea” to represent for the USA! I had traded my USA flag for an Algerian flag a bit earlier in the evening, so I needed something to show my support. I figured it was a good diplomatic move and the flag I got in return was much nicer than the one I had to offer. Sorry Algerian dude!
(U-S-A! U-S-A!...Vama vuvus for the USA)
The best thing about meeting Algerians was being able to speak French with them. It seems Algeria has a French/Arabic hybrid thing going on, but they seemed to understand my rusty ass French and I got the basic idea of what they were saying. I think many of the people I talked to were impressed that this American girl could keep up in their language…it is not something we are known for.
Also, Algerian dudes are pretty hot. I'm just sayin'...
After the games we headed back to Sunnyside to go to a bar called Europa for some dancing. Ramsey and I were pretty tired so we ended up going home pretty early to gather up our reserves for the next day of World Cup madness.
And that’s where I’ll leave you for now…Day 3 coming up next!
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