World Cup Brazil 2014 - Recife
Even though I'm only on the third day of this trip, it feels like I've been here forever. That's how it always feels when so much life and energy and fun are happening in one place.
The Brazilian World Cup 2014 adventure is underway and I'm currently in our second locale of the trip, having just completed the Recife leg. The buzzing atmosphere and the fascination of being in the host country for the World Cup while it is going on is no less consuming than it was four years ago. I can think of no other situation where such harmony and unity of purpose exist across so many nations and its truly humbling to be a part of.
There is a particular kind of joy being able to support one's own team in a foreign place where people will come up to you and greet you warmly and introduce themselves simply because you're from the same country. People come up and shake your hand, hug you, ask you where you're from and bond with you because of that unity of purpose and deep spirit of camaraderie.
It started at the airport when I saw lots of other people at DCA getting on my plane in US team jerseys and decked out in head to toe red white and blue. These people (about 25) followed us all the way from DCA to Recife and we kept seeing them in bars, at Fan Fest where people gather to watch the games together, and at the match itself. And normally, if I recurringly see people in the US for sort of the same reasons (we shop at TJ's at the same time each week, we pass each others cars on the road a lot, we park next to one another but work in different buildings) I don't introduce myself because simply being in the same place at the same time a few times doesn't create a sound enough reason for conversation. But here, you already know why everyone is here and so no one thinks anything of talking to other people. It's easy to make friends and start conversations.
Recife is a large city but we still had to transfer twice to get there. It was a long time to travel. We were thankful to have finally arrived and head to the apartment where our other friends were staying. (We being Karina and I, meeting up with Benji and Nate who had already been in Brazil for over a week and to three other matches.) It was sunny when we landed and the turquoise waters off the coast looked very inviting. Sadly, Recife is the shark attack capital of the world so not many people brave the waters. There are warning signs about every 100 yards on the beach.
Once we had gotten settled and cleaned up a bit we went out to Fan Fest to watch the evening match. It felt just as exciting to fall in with loads of my countrymen and people from all over the world and watch together as it did in South Africa. It felt familiar and new all at once. After we watched Ecuador tie France we headed to dinner at a Brazilian steakhouse my friend Nate recommended. We got there at about the same time every single other person in Recife did and the hostess looked like she was going to have a meltdown. We were told a one-hour wait at first. I hadn't had a real meal in about 24 hours so I was pretty hungry at this point. But the spread looked so good and it was such a huge restaurant I figured it wouldn't be that long. Then we checked and they said 1.5 hours, then a few minutes later, they said "2 hours, but we have another location EXACTLY like this one, it's five minutes away and we'll even bus you there for free. They can seat you immediately."
That's really all I needed to hear. I was so hungry, we all were, that we agreed and all just piled on the bus without asking a lot of questions. 20 minutes later and in a part of town we were wholly unfamiliar with, we were dropped off at a restaurant that, yes, had the same name, but didn't have much else to do with the place we had just left. Yes, it was still a steakhouse and people were still walking around with long skewers piled with meat and sharp knives at the ready, but the similarities ended there.
The dinner was disappointing to say the least and we found out at the very end of the meal that they had charged us a cover charge secretly for the crappy in-house band on stage that began a few minutes after we got there. When Karina and I were taking a cab home, we're pretty sure the cabby got lost on purpose and took forever getting us home to run up the meter. So we fell into a lot of tourist traps on the first night. I was upset by this because it's no fun to be taken advantage of, but the fact that I had eaten real food made everything else sort of fade into the background. I also went out to meet up with some other friends in town for the match that night and had a great time and no problems or secret charges so my night felt salvaged, even if I was going on 4 hours of sleep. It was worth it.
We closed the bar on Wednesday night, I got home and crashed in hopes that my energy would somehow be restored by 8am the next morning when I had to get up and get ready to go out to Itaipava Arena Pernambuco. Waking up on Thursday morning my stomach was fluttering with anticipation for the US v Germany match already. And there was a monsoon. We all put on all our ridiculous clothing and brought our face paint, banners, pom poms, beach balls and anything else the dollar store offers in the way of patriotic trinkets, and walked outside our building.
We were greeted with knee-deep water and looked around to find all the streets in our area flooded. We had planned on walking to the metro station but we couldn't see the sidewalks in many places so we started looking to hail a cab. We waded to the main street only to find it barren and I guess the locals weren't interesting in picking up 3 soaking wet Americans. So we walked 2 miles to the metro station in the monsoon. I hope no one ever questions my love for my country's soccer team.
We left very early (9am) for a 1pm match and it took us every bit of two hours to get to the stadium which is well outside the city limits. The metro was of course full of fans from Brazil, many from the US and many from Germany. In our train car, there was a group of twenty-something guys who had clearly been drinking for some time already and started singing oldies on the way out there. It was annoying at first, but their relentless pursuit and terrible pitch won me over in the end. I led the people in a stirring rendition of Survivor's classic "Eye of the Tiger" supported by Benji beatboxing and another guy doing the guitar part (DUN.... DUN DUN DUN.... DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN). We were applauded by everyone on the train.
When we finally arrived at the station it had taken so long that we had somewhat dried off. The half-mile walk to the stadium from the shuttle buses quickly took care of that. We milled around the stadium, getting some food and water and then finding our seats. FIFA seemed to be playing a little joke on us because we were absolutely surrounded by Germany fans. We commenced face painting and putting on all our silly things with about 40 minutes to go before kick off.
The German fans around us were absolutely lovely people. They were engaging, wanting pictures with us and striking up conversations. Many had been to the World Cup in South Africa too. They were concerned for our team, they sort of wanted us to go through to the round of 16, but they obviously wanted to win too. During the game they were congratulating us on our good plays, and when they scored, we reciprocated. But it was pretty sweet to hear over half a stadium (filled with 41, 267 people that day) chanting "USA! USA! USA!" in unison. It felt important to do that and like it really did matter to the US to hear us and be supported by us. I felt like I had a job to do and that we, the fans, were doing it pretty well.
It's been a rollercoaster ride for the USMNT fan this World Cup. Obviously it was great to beat Ghana, but our tie against Portugal felt like a loss since it was such a tragic ending, and our loss to Germany felt like a win since we didn't lose by too much and we still advanced. Down is up and up is down. We thanked the Germans repeatedly for beating the crap out of Portugal earlier in the tournament and for the goal differential that created. But overall, I've been impressed with our level of play and I can't remember ever seeing us play so well. Germany was clearly the better team on the field but we held our own and Tim Howard is just a friggin' brick wall. I can't remember how many times I screamed this sequence of exclamations:
Oh no.
Oh no oh no oh no.
OH NO! OH NO!
......
TIMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!
Anyway, I didn't mind losing to them and because we still advanced it was kind of nice because the German fans were great, saying they were glad its us. Maybe its because they feel confident they can beat us if it comes down to it again, but I also feel like they were kind of pulling for us a little.
After we lost 1-0 we found out almost immediately that Portugal had beaten Ghana 2-1 and that we were to advance with Germany to the Round of 16. The stadium erupted in cheers and more USA! chants, and our boys stayed out and waved and applauded to their fans from the field. I loved that. Mission complete. Whenever you advance to the round of 16, it's almost as if whatever happened in group play doesn't really matter. It's a clean slate.
We started on the metro home amidst the crush of people all going to the same place. It had stopped raining by now which was fantastic. Although we were all still damp since it was humid and cloudy. No one really dried. But the transport system worked pretty well and we didn't have any problems either way. Looking out at the parts of the urban sprawl that we passed we saw swollen rivers and lots more flooding so it felt like we had pulled off something incredible by getting to the match on time and in one piece. We only had problems with drunk people but there's nothing you can do about that. Karina was wearing her backpack on her stomach underneath a big rain jacket and a Brazilian woman offered to give up her seat on the metro because she thought Karina was pregnant! Hilarious, and touching.
We got back to our part of town and then immediately went to go find food. Again, just the way these days go I'm finding I don't really have time to eat until the evening and the need is dire. We went to another sort of steakhouse thing but this time ordered differently and the food was delicious. The owner brought us out some coffee and whiskey because Benji and Nate had made friends with him on previous visits and while I wanted neither of those things, I felt accepted by a local, which means a lot to a foreigner in a strange town.
After dinner we went back to the apartment we had rented, washed the residual filth of the morning's floodwaters off our feet and the paint off our faces, and felt much restored. Benji, Karina and I decided to go get caipirinha's and meet up with two of Karina's friends at a place about a 10 minute walk away. We had a very drunk friend in tow whom we couldn't stop from leaving the apartment. So we got to the bar and within seconds of meeting Karina's friend he snatched the bottle of water right out of this guy's hand without asking or acknowledging anything. We knew he had to be corralled and was not safe to keep in a public situation. I had been jonesing for a walk on the beach anyway, so to the beach we went. Recife is stretched along the northeast coast of Brazil and has a nice wide sidewalk right along the water. We went there and our very drunk friend immediately spotted and joined a pick up soccer game with some kids on the beach. We were glad to see him sweating out some of the presumably astronomical amount of beer he had put away that day.
We met some other USA fans walking along the beach. Karina and I wrote USA in gigantic letters in the sand, Adam kept playing soccer. Benji Karina and I decided it was time to go home and Adam wanted to keep playing so we left and went home to crash.
The next morning we packed up our stuff and got ready to head to Fernando de Noronha for the next 6 days. It's a tiny archipelago about 500 km off the northeast coast of Brazil and has some of the clearest water and the best scuba diving there is. I went running on the beach the next morning and it was VERY hot. The sun had come out and it's much more intense this close to the equator. I was pouring sweat and covered with gnats when I got back. So while it was lovely it wasn't a particularly comfortable run. I'm glad I got to see some of what Recife looks like on a normal day.
Touching down at Fernando de Noronha's tiny airport reminded me of all the little one-room deals I was processed through in the Caribbean. It was sunny and warm but not hot. We got our bags and headed to our Pousada where we were greeted by a friendly face named Luciana and settled into the next part of the adventure.
The Brazilian World Cup 2014 adventure is underway and I'm currently in our second locale of the trip, having just completed the Recife leg. The buzzing atmosphere and the fascination of being in the host country for the World Cup while it is going on is no less consuming than it was four years ago. I can think of no other situation where such harmony and unity of purpose exist across so many nations and its truly humbling to be a part of.
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| Old Town Recife near Fan Fest |
There is a particular kind of joy being able to support one's own team in a foreign place where people will come up to you and greet you warmly and introduce themselves simply because you're from the same country. People come up and shake your hand, hug you, ask you where you're from and bond with you because of that unity of purpose and deep spirit of camaraderie.
It started at the airport when I saw lots of other people at DCA getting on my plane in US team jerseys and decked out in head to toe red white and blue. These people (about 25) followed us all the way from DCA to Recife and we kept seeing them in bars, at Fan Fest where people gather to watch the games together, and at the match itself. And normally, if I recurringly see people in the US for sort of the same reasons (we shop at TJ's at the same time each week, we pass each others cars on the road a lot, we park next to one another but work in different buildings) I don't introduce myself because simply being in the same place at the same time a few times doesn't create a sound enough reason for conversation. But here, you already know why everyone is here and so no one thinks anything of talking to other people. It's easy to make friends and start conversations.
 |
| View of Recife from the plane. |
Once we had gotten settled and cleaned up a bit we went out to Fan Fest to watch the evening match. It felt just as exciting to fall in with loads of my countrymen and people from all over the world and watch together as it did in South Africa. It felt familiar and new all at once. After we watched Ecuador tie France we headed to dinner at a Brazilian steakhouse my friend Nate recommended. We got there at about the same time every single other person in Recife did and the hostess looked like she was going to have a meltdown. We were told a one-hour wait at first. I hadn't had a real meal in about 24 hours so I was pretty hungry at this point. But the spread looked so good and it was such a huge restaurant I figured it wouldn't be that long. Then we checked and they said 1.5 hours, then a few minutes later, they said "2 hours, but we have another location EXACTLY like this one, it's five minutes away and we'll even bus you there for free. They can seat you immediately."
That's really all I needed to hear. I was so hungry, we all were, that we agreed and all just piled on the bus without asking a lot of questions. 20 minutes later and in a part of town we were wholly unfamiliar with, we were dropped off at a restaurant that, yes, had the same name, but didn't have much else to do with the place we had just left. Yes, it was still a steakhouse and people were still walking around with long skewers piled with meat and sharp knives at the ready, but the similarities ended there.
The dinner was disappointing to say the least and we found out at the very end of the meal that they had charged us a cover charge secretly for the crappy in-house band on stage that began a few minutes after we got there. When Karina and I were taking a cab home, we're pretty sure the cabby got lost on purpose and took forever getting us home to run up the meter. So we fell into a lot of tourist traps on the first night. I was upset by this because it's no fun to be taken advantage of, but the fact that I had eaten real food made everything else sort of fade into the background. I also went out to meet up with some other friends in town for the match that night and had a great time and no problems or secret charges so my night felt salvaged, even if I was going on 4 hours of sleep. It was worth it.
We closed the bar on Wednesday night, I got home and crashed in hopes that my energy would somehow be restored by 8am the next morning when I had to get up and get ready to go out to Itaipava Arena Pernambuco. Waking up on Thursday morning my stomach was fluttering with anticipation for the US v Germany match already. And there was a monsoon. We all put on all our ridiculous clothing and brought our face paint, banners, pom poms, beach balls and anything else the dollar store offers in the way of patriotic trinkets, and walked outside our building.
 |
| Monsoon and flooding on match day. |
We were greeted with knee-deep water and looked around to find all the streets in our area flooded. We had planned on walking to the metro station but we couldn't see the sidewalks in many places so we started looking to hail a cab. We waded to the main street only to find it barren and I guess the locals weren't interesting in picking up 3 soaking wet Americans. So we walked 2 miles to the metro station in the monsoon. I hope no one ever questions my love for my country's soccer team.
We left very early (9am) for a 1pm match and it took us every bit of two hours to get to the stadium which is well outside the city limits. The metro was of course full of fans from Brazil, many from the US and many from Germany. In our train car, there was a group of twenty-something guys who had clearly been drinking for some time already and started singing oldies on the way out there. It was annoying at first, but their relentless pursuit and terrible pitch won me over in the end. I led the people in a stirring rendition of Survivor's classic "Eye of the Tiger" supported by Benji beatboxing and another guy doing the guitar part (DUN.... DUN DUN DUN.... DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN). We were applauded by everyone on the train.
When we finally arrived at the station it had taken so long that we had somewhat dried off. The half-mile walk to the stadium from the shuttle buses quickly took care of that. We milled around the stadium, getting some food and water and then finding our seats. FIFA seemed to be playing a little joke on us because we were absolutely surrounded by Germany fans. We commenced face painting and putting on all our silly things with about 40 minutes to go before kick off.
The German fans around us were absolutely lovely people. They were engaging, wanting pictures with us and striking up conversations. Many had been to the World Cup in South Africa too. They were concerned for our team, they sort of wanted us to go through to the round of 16, but they obviously wanted to win too. During the game they were congratulating us on our good plays, and when they scored, we reciprocated. But it was pretty sweet to hear over half a stadium (filled with 41, 267 people that day) chanting "USA! USA! USA!" in unison. It felt important to do that and like it really did matter to the US to hear us and be supported by us. I felt like I had a job to do and that we, the fans, were doing it pretty well.
It's been a rollercoaster ride for the USMNT fan this World Cup. Obviously it was great to beat Ghana, but our tie against Portugal felt like a loss since it was such a tragic ending, and our loss to Germany felt like a win since we didn't lose by too much and we still advanced. Down is up and up is down. We thanked the Germans repeatedly for beating the crap out of Portugal earlier in the tournament and for the goal differential that created. But overall, I've been impressed with our level of play and I can't remember ever seeing us play so well. Germany was clearly the better team on the field but we held our own and Tim Howard is just a friggin' brick wall. I can't remember how many times I screamed this sequence of exclamations:
Oh no.
Oh no oh no oh no.
OH NO! OH NO!
......
TIMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!
Anyway, I didn't mind losing to them and because we still advanced it was kind of nice because the German fans were great, saying they were glad its us. Maybe its because they feel confident they can beat us if it comes down to it again, but I also feel like they were kind of pulling for us a little.
After we lost 1-0 we found out almost immediately that Portugal had beaten Ghana 2-1 and that we were to advance with Germany to the Round of 16. The stadium erupted in cheers and more USA! chants, and our boys stayed out and waved and applauded to their fans from the field. I loved that. Mission complete. Whenever you advance to the round of 16, it's almost as if whatever happened in group play doesn't really matter. It's a clean slate.
We started on the metro home amidst the crush of people all going to the same place. It had stopped raining by now which was fantastic. Although we were all still damp since it was humid and cloudy. No one really dried. But the transport system worked pretty well and we didn't have any problems either way. Looking out at the parts of the urban sprawl that we passed we saw swollen rivers and lots more flooding so it felt like we had pulled off something incredible by getting to the match on time and in one piece. We only had problems with drunk people but there's nothing you can do about that. Karina was wearing her backpack on her stomach underneath a big rain jacket and a Brazilian woman offered to give up her seat on the metro because she thought Karina was pregnant! Hilarious, and touching.
We got back to our part of town and then immediately went to go find food. Again, just the way these days go I'm finding I don't really have time to eat until the evening and the need is dire. We went to another sort of steakhouse thing but this time ordered differently and the food was delicious. The owner brought us out some coffee and whiskey because Benji and Nate had made friends with him on previous visits and while I wanted neither of those things, I felt accepted by a local, which means a lot to a foreigner in a strange town.
After dinner we went back to the apartment we had rented, washed the residual filth of the morning's floodwaters off our feet and the paint off our faces, and felt much restored. Benji, Karina and I decided to go get caipirinha's and meet up with two of Karina's friends at a place about a 10 minute walk away. We had a very drunk friend in tow whom we couldn't stop from leaving the apartment. So we got to the bar and within seconds of meeting Karina's friend he snatched the bottle of water right out of this guy's hand without asking or acknowledging anything. We knew he had to be corralled and was not safe to keep in a public situation. I had been jonesing for a walk on the beach anyway, so to the beach we went. Recife is stretched along the northeast coast of Brazil and has a nice wide sidewalk right along the water. We went there and our very drunk friend immediately spotted and joined a pick up soccer game with some kids on the beach. We were glad to see him sweating out some of the presumably astronomical amount of beer he had put away that day.
We met some other USA fans walking along the beach. Karina and I wrote USA in gigantic letters in the sand, Adam kept playing soccer. Benji Karina and I decided it was time to go home and Adam wanted to keep playing so we left and went home to crash.
The next morning we packed up our stuff and got ready to head to Fernando de Noronha for the next 6 days. It's a tiny archipelago about 500 km off the northeast coast of Brazil and has some of the clearest water and the best scuba diving there is. I went running on the beach the next morning and it was VERY hot. The sun had come out and it's much more intense this close to the equator. I was pouring sweat and covered with gnats when I got back. So while it was lovely it wasn't a particularly comfortable run. I'm glad I got to see some of what Recife looks like on a normal day.
Touching down at Fernando de Noronha's tiny airport reminded me of all the little one-room deals I was processed through in the Caribbean. It was sunny and warm but not hot. We got our bags and headed to our Pousada where we were greeted by a friendly face named Luciana and settled into the next part of the adventure.
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| The north coast of Fernando de Noronha. |
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| Sunset at Praia de Cachorro |
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