Continued from the first section:
Salvador cont.
The third World Cup game we saw in Salvador live from the stadium was perhaps the best in terms of atmosphere, and it certainly continued the trends of open defences and penetrating attacks. Perhaps imitating the activities of Nickydeanho off the field of play. The 2010 chokers, France, who until this point had been excellent; dominating with a attack led by Benzema of Real Madrid, were to meet the Swiss, their neutral rivals who came into the game following a 2-1 defeat of Ecuador, but were rated a very much the underdogs in this conte
st of the Alps. The French fans were full of beans throughout this match and they never looked like losing in the 5-2 display. This should have been 7-2 as the Frogs missed a penalty in the first half and scored a goal less than two seconds after the final whistle. Luckily it was already a drubbing with the French national anthem ringing around the stadium with a slight echo of the Brisbane Lions theme song. They have the same tune if you didn’t get that one. We painted ourselves in Swiss colours, as we joined the rest of the non-french speakers around the world cheering against France. I am not sure why this is, but they just seemed to be too easy to cheer against, despite their brilliant brand of football. Maybe it is because they were so dominant in 1998 when I first remember watching a World Cup, or perhaps it is due to a cultural arrogance that many travellers, myself included, have felt first hand on the streets of Paris. Anyway, credit where credit is due, the French put on a great display, and we found ourselves a cult hero in Pogba, who came on for the last stanza to a great ovation from the five of us. His enthusiastic warm-ups, only metres from where we were sitting, coupled with his easily chant-able name had won us over, despite his Frenchness.
Our final game, and perhaps the most anticipated game of the tournament, was between not-to-traditional rivals, Bosnia and Iran. This boasted the lowest crowd of the four matches in Salvador with a tick over 35,000 attending which was still an exceptional effort. Iran lifted, with the support of a large majority of fans, and won comfortably 3-1, despite Dzecko (of Manchester City and Bosnia) playing a great game and scoring a blinder from the edge of the box. I was astounded by the amount of Iranians that had made the trip over and their voracity in support.
With the final whistle here came the end of our viewing experience, which had culminated in four great matches with an astonishing 21 goals scored. If a subsequent match had of finished below 3-2 it would have brought the average down. Incredible. Although, our live viewing did not necessarily have to end here, though it emphatically did.
This hurts me inside every time I think about it. As I was the one lucky enough to get through to the FIFA system and buy tickets, I was the one in contact with the ticketing service. Unbeknownst to me, I had actually purchased Venue Specific x 5, and not Venue Specific x 4, as we had planned for months for. The ‘4’ represents the amount of games that we had tickets for. Hmmm. So when I bought the package, we planned for all the groups games in Salvador and had flights to Rio de Janeiro payed and sorted as well as 10 days of accommodation in advance, knowing that there would be a rush during the Cup.
We did not open the ticket packages until we arrived all together in Brazil, and, on opening them, discovered to our amazement that we had tickets to a round of 16 game. Obviously, as we had already planned so much ahead and spent so much money on it, we had to sell the tickets on. This game turned out to be an absolute ripper between the USA and Belgium, which the Belgians won 2-1, with all the goals coming in extra time. I will put my hand up and say that this was the error of the tournament. Definitely my bad. Although it was far from the only dubious action of Brazil 2014.
The Mysterious Cobb
I feel that know might be the time to give a brief run down on the enigma of the group, The Cobb (or ZeCobberto, Cobbarinha etc.) was a late inclusion to the team and was a welcome addition to the line-up. With him, Cobb brought a much lacked sense of maturity and an insatiable appetite for Caipirinhas. Whenever it was beer-o’clock for the rest of us, it was already half-past the Caiparinha clock according to the Cobb. Unfortunately on a night long expedition to a nearby Island escape the Caipirinha clock caught up with the Cobb. Praia do Morro was a much spoken about destination so we thought it best to check out the stories. Needless to say it was sensational, and the sense of occasion hit the Cobb harder than any of us in unfortunately literal terms.
The first night was kicking off well as we had situated ourselves at a bar overlooking the main beach where we had been informed there would be a beach party kicking off from midnight. Perfect. There were only two issues, it was only 9:30 and we had already reached, as Grandma likes to say, ‘an elegant sufficiency’, of alcohol in our system. Secondly, the Cobb had the hiccups, which was a pain in the arse for all concerned. The conventional methods of hiccup removal; think glass of water, an unexpected scare, did nothing to halt the maddeningly frequent outbursts from our oldest member. Finally, unsuccessfully fighting the urge not to abuse the trust put in me by the Cobb, I explained to him (using my father’s and brother’s medical background as a point of reference) that the only scientific way to remove hiccups was to place the
hands above the head, inhale deeply, pause, rapidly exhale, then be punched right in the solar-plexus. Without batting an eyelid, my patient placed his hands in the air, took a swift breath in, then blew out with the force of a gale.
Needless to say, I obliged and let loose a right hook that would have done Tyson proud, right under the rib cage of ZeCobberto. The sound escaping the his lips was that of a dying elephant which, when coupled with his shocked expre ssion of pain, almost made me feel bad. Almost. At this point we were already kind of wrecking the bar where we had stationed ourselves, it did not help that in the middle of the floor the was now a fully grown man rolling around in pain and ecstasy, uttering, between gasps for oxygen, ‘It….. (gasp, gasp)….. worked!… (gasp, gasp).. the hiccups… (cough, splutter)…. they’re gone!’. Sorry Cobb. After this minor setback, Cobbarinha got on with night very successfully, perfecting the ‘Lepo Lepo’ dance move on the beach that every gringo had been trying to master the song’s inception. Ultimately, the lowlight lowlight hit less than twelve hours later with the boat trip ride back to Salvador registering more than token discomfort from Cobb as he became the second of us to vent his stomach to the Brazilian skies/toilet bowls. It was great to meet you my friend.
Rio de Janeiro
After 18 days of Salvador, it was time to move south to the soul of Brazil: Rio de Janeiro. This city blew me away, I was not expecting the combination of breathtaking scenic beauty and rough-around-the-edges day to day routine of the locals to be so infectious. Five days was not enough to even scratch the surface, but it was time very well spent on picturesque Ipanema beach and the humming Lapa where street parties throbbed until the early hours of the morning. Here is someof what passed on the streets of Lapa. Whats happens in Lapa, does not stay there.
Our first night on the town in Lapa was a Thursday and we were astonished and shocked at the ease with with we could buy a one-litre cup full of the glorious Caipiriniha. Needless to say the first night may have got a little out of control. Robenho, jubilant at this acquisition while simultaneously eating a bread roll (how he got this is still a contentious issue) let loose an animalistic roar which made those in front of him turn on the spot. What proceeded was an image that will keep me in immoral stitches laughing about it as I write it now. Benny rolled out the barrel, the torpedo, the German punt! Whatever you want to call it, he let loose a hell of a kick on the remaining scrap of bread in his hand, intent on hitting Christ the Redeemer on the chest. Unfortunately for Benny and a urinating homeless man on the side of the street, the remnants of the roll skewed off at a 45 degree angle and slapped the afore mentioned local fair on the back, covering the poor chap in physically harmless, but emotionally devastating crumbs. What made it exponentially worse was that as this Lapa local turned around to check who the perpetrator was, it became apparent that he only had one arm. I’m not sure if there was a more disenfranchised man in Rio that night. Robenho, despite this wayward attempt, your were generally spot on.
(Un)fortunately he was not the only person to break someone (or be broken) on the Lapa streets. Another evening in Lapa, where we parked ourselves at a bar drinking out of two litre vats of beer, the 5ft 7inch short man of the line up, Nickydeanho, made the unfortunate confession that it had been his lifelong ambition to throw down a slam dunk on a full sized basketball hoop. More so, he was of the (perfectly entitled) opinion that given one year full time training he would be able to do it. Now this blog post is not about to discuss the arguments for and against such a ridiculous notion, but the barrage that followed the confident assertion of Nick was such that I have never seen a man shrink so much from such a low height. Every pun cruelly intended. Nonetheless Nicky, your optimism is something that is lacking in this world, and something we can all learn from.
In Rio de Janeiro we unfortunately lost the Cobb after three days to his return to Australia and real life. This lost was ever so slightly offset by the acquisition of my bearded brother, Oliver (Revilinho… maybe?), fresh from his conquering of Cuiaba and his stadium specific tickets there. He sported with him a companion that had very nearly
achieved self-awareness by this stage. His beard. His Facebook page can do more homage to this blanket that this post ever could, but it was a welcome addition to our varying degrees of facial hair which, until Oliver’s arrival, had been led by Benny’s moustache, which would have looked more at home on Freddie Mercury or on the album cover of a Village People album. Especially when accompanied by the fedora hat he insisted on wearing in the gay section of Ipanema Beach. This incident is worth a paragraph actually.
Our first day in Rio of course we wanted to spend it at arguably the most famous beaches in the world. We wandered down with a towels to the less packed of the two, Ipanema as opposed to Copacobana, and laid our towels down betweenmarkers eight and nine, with maybe a slight inclination to the ninth marker. We spent the whole day there, loving the sun and the waves and the various pedlars that sell all manner of things from cheese, to prawns to hats to marijuana. In the late afternoon I met up with a Brazilian friend (she was a friend of a friend from another trip, long story short) on another part of the beach and informed her where we were seated. She giggled and said,
‘Oh really? Are some of your friends homosexual?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ I replied with a confused frown.
‘Oh really? Because that’s the only gay section of the beach,’ she said with a laugh.
The sheer chance of this is mind-blowing. Firstly, there are two main beaches in Rio, Copacobana and Ipanema. They total twelve kilometres in length when combined, maybe more. We had nailed the spot (between markers eight and nine but slightly towards the nine) where the gays of Rio and tourists commute to hang out. Also apparently it is well known and obvious. As I returned to the gays guys from meeting my Brazilian friend, it was as if my gay-dar had been turn on and turned up; everything I had see for the previous five hours had changed in meaning. I won’t go into details, but, needless to say, when I saw that Benny and Seamus were using our purchased wooden paddles to play some paddle-tennis on the beach, I fell about laughing. On receiving the information there was plenty of finger-pointing before we decided that it was a group decision and that we all must be comfortable with this. And we were, it hadn’t changed the day at all. But that image I have of Seamus and Benny playing paddle-tennis on a gay beach in Rio is not something that will leave my mind very quickly. If only they had 21st’s coming up.
Thanks for reading,
Hugh.
P.S, Part 3 pending.
Here are some assorted photos
Hugh's Lost 
Once again, very entertaining Hugh! Interestingly, your Aussie voice is being overtaken by a more ESL/foreign turn of phrase….must be your almost bi-lingualism, haha! Are you dreaming in Spanish yet? Keep up the great story-telling:)
Janine Fitzpatrick Sent from my iPad
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