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Otherwise known as, it’s a good thing the kids are back in the US, or I’d be tempted to trade my first born for a wifi hotspot.
I’ve been writing plenty, I swear. But with no internet at our apartment, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until later today or tomorrow for the updates I’ve already written.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Cape Town, rainbow, South Africa, World Cup
Filed under: Uncategorized
I’ve seen it before. In Germany, I got to talk to Germans about how they felt about the World Cup (helps to speak the local language) and many of them commented that it was the first time they had seen Germans show national pride. It was a moment in German history when they could forgive themselves for their past and enjoy being Germans. As someone who had traveled several times to Germany, it was a pleasure to be there for the transformation.
I see the same thing happening in South Africa. White South Africans seem awestruck by the World Cup’s impact on their country. We’ve been told that soccer is typically a black sport, that whites play rugby. Yet they’ve built the stadiums in poorer, black areas and it’s mostly whites that can afford game tickets. It seems to be creating a reckoning for South Africans of both races.
I met Don Currie, owner of Lanseria Lodge on my flight to Cape Town last night, and he echoed many of the sentiments that fans at the games have shared. It seems like people want to let go of the racism of apartheid, but don’t really know the road to get there. There’s a huge gap in class and economics between blacks and whites here, and it seems to restrict progress.
Mr. Currie said he could even see the difference between his 18 year old daughter, who isn’t racist at all, and his older children, who still hold on to some racist tendencies. Mr. Currie himself spoke passionately about the Robben Island Museum that we will visit in 2 days, where Mandela and many others were imprisoned during apartheid. It was clear that the understanding of what his class had done was deeply painful for him.
What I’ve learned so far is that all the people of South Africa are warm and welcoming to their World Cup guests. They are proud of their country and entertaining as hosts. I look forward to learning more about South African culture and history as we continue our journey here.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Cape Town, Long Street, Soccer, South Africa, World Cup
We got into Cape Town last night and once Christina learned how to drive stick left handed and drive on the left side of the road, we made our way to the apartment we rented here. It looked like a decent place on the map, but as we drove up at midnight (thanks delayed flight!) I started to get concerned.
First we past what sounded like a jail. Yeah…they put those in good neighborhoods. Then we past a “Crime Prevention Vehicle” and several characters that looked like they’d attract the Crime Prevention Squad. Then we found our apartment, which had bars on some of the inside doors. The apartment was, shall we say, less than we expected, but at midnight, what are you going to do?
We woke up this morning and things were looking up. The French and Italian consulates are in our hood, and the Long Street bar district is stumbling distance from our place.
And here’s the thing: South Africa is EXPENSIVE. This is our 5th, and by far, most expensive World Cup. Public transportation is non-existent of sketchy, and hotels and jacking up rates that make “”gouging” sound like a compliment. But the people are SO nice, you start to forget to care about it. They are funny and passionate and really pleased to have us here.
And the country is BEAUTIFUL. Better than I ever imagined. This is a country you really should come and see….especially once the prices have fallen from World Cup levels.
More later from wine country, Robben Island, and more of Cape Town.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: England, Soccer, South Africa, US, USMNT, World Cup
The World Cup has started for the US, and we may have only racked up 1 point on the pitch, but in all things non-banner related, we dominated the supporters game, in and out of the stadium. Our group of supporters hired buses for 37 of us to travel together from Joburg to our game in Rustenburg. We planned a huge tailgate and left 7 hours before the game.
Travel delays and getting lost along the way, we ended up being near the stadium, but far from our meeting point and decided to abandon the bus tour and head to the stadium with Kaela, Brock, Prairie and Toole. We were really psyched for a huge tailgate, but traffic was horrible and the call of the stadium was too great.
We set up camp just outside the security perimeter. As you can see from photo stream, we do stand out in a crowd. We spent the next few hours singing, face painting, meeting fans, giving interviews to foreign press from all over the world, and take photos with fans from all over.
Americans were there in a huge variety of costumed patriotism. There were superheros, princesses, Revolutionary heros, and assorted random costumes. It was fantastic. Except for a few guys in Monty Python conqueror getups, the English fans really didn’t get more creative than a flag draped across their shoulders.
Then there came the chants and singing. I travel to games with the serious supporters. We stand and sing all game, and have a hard time sticking to the half dozen cheers everyone knows. You don’t want to provoke this group’s creativity…which is exactly what a few English seemed determined to do.
The stadium crowd was mixed up fans: English and US mixed up, the wisdom of which FIFA will have to explain to me. We mostly sorted into a group of Americans and sang and cheered our hearts out with our full repetoire of material: “There’s only one Ron Green” to “If it weren’t for USA, you’d be speaking German” to any number of songs about individual players. England fans earned a rendition of “You’ve only got 2 songs” and were generally far less impressive than I expected.
The best was on the way out, our group was getting heckled by an persistent, if not all that sober or smart Englishman. He made a few jokes about BP and George Bush, but was no match for us. Even his desperate “You know, all you are is shit” was met with joyful “You tied shit” chants and my favorite of the night “One – nil, and you f’d it up.”
I love that about the American fans. We’re funny and creative and entertaining. We are passionate about the game, and have been doing this for years together. I couldn’t ask for better travel mates. The official score may have been 1-1, but know that in the stands, the English hooligans of infamy had nothing on USMNT Ultras.
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Thanks to The Onion’s Article about America’s single soccer fan, a few of my friends have started refering to me as “The Insufferable One” (I’m sure it’s in jest…right?) But the other side of that article for all us IOs is that it’s much, much more fun to be around other soccer fans, particularly during the World CUp. It’s why we have watch parties and supporters groups. It’s why we don’t want to stay in the US for a World Cup: in general, Americans still don’t get what a big deal the World Cup is to the rest of the world.
It’s been great taking our flights from Home to Boston to New York to Dubai to Johannesburg. Each step of the got a little more serious about soccer. (It’s an American blog, if you want to call it football, go follow some European). In New York and Boston, there were a few people that got immediately the we were going to the World Cup, but most of them couldn’t hold a conversation on the topic. On the Dubai flight, there were many soccer fans, mostly American, with varying degrees of experience.
Now I’m sitting on the flight into South Africa. Surrounded by American, English, and German soccer fans (and one Algerian). It’s the greatest meetup in the world. Everyone is an insufferable one. It is a huge relief to finally be in the clubhouse, with people who are just as soccer geeky as we are. Can’t wait to get in country!
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I’ve had plenty of adventures at the World Cup. I’ve even had adventures getting ready to leave. Why should this one be any different? I’ve been working on a book about our travels around the world, and at the same time, was planning on writing a blog about my experiences in South Africa. I wanted to tweet, foursquare, blog, and otherwise complete engage in the sharing of our adventures as part of my personal mission to share our passion for soccer with not just our friends and family, but to take part in some small way in explaining to Americans why the rest of the world loves soccer so passionately.
There’s just one problem: my Droid phone wouldn’t work in South Africa, and I didn’t have the budget to finance my own technological arsenal. Fortunately, upstairs from my store, Simply for Giggles, there’s social media expert Nathan T. Wright of LavaRow. He introduced me to his contact at Verizon, who was lovely enough to supply me with a Blackberry Tour and in HP Mini Notebook. This would allow me to Skype to my children back in the USA, as well as report every detail immediate and mobile.
I started carrying the Blackberry Tour in the days leading up to the trip in an effort to re-learn the Blackberry OS. Here’s where the trouble started: I went out one night and somewhere in the evening the Tour was stolen. That would be bad enough, but it gets worse. I was very focused on wrapping up at work and packing, and didn’t notice the phone was missing until 4 AM, 3 hours before we were to leave Des Moines.
Disaster. Utter disaster. I emailed Karen, my contact at Verizon, hoping that there was some way to get another phone on our 18 hour layover in Boston. At this point, I was desperate and willing to go to any number of Verizon locations, pay almost any penalty with money we definitely didn’t have. I had gotten very comfortable with the idea that I would be able to call my kids whenever, and I wasn’t too excited to tell my mom that it wouldn’t happen.
As it turns out, Karen and the people at Verizon work miracles on short notice. Not only did she find a loaner Blackberry Tour for me, but her contact in Boston brought it to the airport for me. Even better, he delivered it in front of my mom, so instead of being the idiot that had her phone stolen and didn’t realize it in time to do something about it, I’m her daughter that has people bring phones to airports for me. How’s that for an upgrade?
This isn’t even the first time Verizon has worked a miracle for me. The last time I was in New York, someone spilled coffee on my phone and sent my brand new Droid to an early grave. Like any parent of young children should, I had the insurance on the phone, but Verizon rushed my replacement and got me a new phone with all my contacts loaded in under an hour so that I would have it for my flight that day.
So if you enjoy my photos and tweets this World Cup, thank Verizon Wireless. They’ve earned my business for life, twice now.
When I heard about the baseball refereeing controversy last week (a referee made a questionable call and cost someone a perfect game) it reminded me of the scope of referee impact. Disclaimer: I’ve been a soccer referee since 1993, climbing as high as State Referee and NISOA college refereeing, and I’m married to a former US Soccer National Referee. So we are a pro referee household. My default position is that you have to play the game, with the referees included. When the US was eliminated by Germany in 2002 and there was a questionable handball, as a fan, I was upset, but realistically, you have to play through all those things to win.
In 1998, my husband and I were staying in a small French town visiting a friend when the American referee, Esse Baharmast, did his game, Brazil vs. Norway. My friend arranged for us to watch the game at her friend’s house, where they had cable. We hardly spoke any French, but we were able to communicate that we were interested in the game because the referee was American.
We enjoyed watching the game with them until Esse called a late in the game penalty against Brazil, that looked from all angles highly questionable. At the time, Doug and I were both refereeing at high levels and both seeking advancement, so Esse Baharmest was a hero to us. I’d met him at youth tournaments and liked him. I couldn’t believe he would blow such a big call, but all televised camera angles looked awful.
Not only that, but that penalty was scored, and that changed the group outcome from Morocco advancing to the next game to them being eliminated. Now here’s where it’s important to really be smart about soccer while at the World Cup. Why would we have reason to be concerned sitting in a small town French living room watching the outcome of Brazil vs. Norway, impacting Morocco’s advancement? Because the Moroccan coach is French, and you better believe the French immediately put it together that our referee had just eliminated their coach. It was several extraordinarily uncomfortable moments before we could leave at the end of the game.
So lesson #1, pay attention to who’s on what team and who it’s impacting, so at least you’re aware as you wander into hostile territory. Lesson #2 is you have to play with the referees you’re dealt, and generally, they do a highly professional game. The next day, a smaller news organization came out with a previously unseen camera angle that showed that Esse had made the correct call. It was too late to keep him in the tournament and too late to alieviate the international tensions where we watched the game, but in the end, he did get it right.
Lesson #2: You have to play with the referees you’re dealt. It sometimes sucks, but if you can’t win with the referee you draw, that it may be a cheap loss, but it counts just the same as a fair loss.
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And we’re off on the 54 hour trek that will take us to the other side of the world! Today’s itinerary is Des Moines > Minneapolis > Boston. There we stop at Grandma and Grandpa’s and start the kids’ World Cup adventure. Then, 18 hours later starts the Boston > New York > Dubai > Johanesburg leg of our journey.
I didn’t even bother trying to sleep last night. It took me until 11 to finish my work, then I was packing until 2:30 AM when I realized that my worldwide smartphone had gone missing. By the time I had searched the whole house, my store downtown, and my car it was after 4 AM. I decided one hour of sleep was not better than nothing, and sewed my super hero USMNT cape until it was time to head to the airport for our 7 AM flight.
I feel exhausted and exhilirated at the same time. I know I should be tired, but I’m so thrilled that this day is finally here, I can’t settle down to even think about sleeping. Maybe on Minneapolis > Boston.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Abduction, South Africa, Travel Safety, Women's World Cup, World Cup
I’ve always written about my travels and adventures WITH my children. In my work life, I own a children’s store and blog about my adventures as a parent. My plan for Soccer….Family Style was to write about traveling with my kids. My 7-1/2 year old has a dozen caps, and at the age of 3-1/2 led a German double decker train car in the “Everywhere we go” chant. My 2-1/2 year old sees a flag and starts soccer chants without prompting. They’re great little fans and I love going to games with them.
But even I have to draw the line somewhere. When we realized that just to fly them to South Africa would cost $3700, we had to accept that this trip would be better suited for second honeymoon than family adventure. Thanks to Verizon and Skype we should be able to keep in touch with the kids as they party it up with an extended Grandparents visit.
In the back of my mind, I was a little relieved to not have to worry about their safety. When we were planning to bring them, I had people at my store advising my to write on them in permanent marker with our contact information in case they were kidnapped. But it was hard to take comfort in that since my previous experience has been that the World Cup is typically a very safe place to be. There’s security everywhere, the hosts are excited and helpful, and people are typically in good spirits.
Then I read a story of a mother in South Africa who fought off a child abductor who tried to snatch her child out of her car through a smashed window. I had heard that you should be very careful to always travel with windows up and keep valuables off the seat and out of view, but how are you supposed to extend that to your children? We have two kids…they can’t both sit in the middle.
I would love to have our kids with us. They have a different way of looking at the world that makes sharing soccer with them a pleasure, but in this case, I think they will have more fun getting spoiled by grandparents and we will have more fun knowing we only have to keep track of two grown ups. And we’ll save that $3700 to go visit Germany next summer for the Women’s World Cup.
Soccer....Family Style 