Blogs from Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa, Africa - page 25

We began our drive to Hazyview (which is where our resort is) around 8:15am, and Janel proceeded to put on the right path right away. To get there, we would have to drive to Nelspruit first (400+ km away), which was one of the host cities in this World Cup. The drive was smooth, but not as exciting as the drive along the coast from Durban to Cape Town. As we drove into Nelspruit, we saw the new stadium right away. I forgot to say that on the way to Nelspruit, I was stopped by a cop for changing lanes when the dividing line was solid. Just as I was about to do so, I hesitated because I could have easily waited another 6 seconds or so to pass the slow-moving truck that was ahead of ... read more

this is just a shout out to an anonymous comment left on my blog. a true blog post with photos will come soon, i promise... but what this person said, in my opinion, needs to be read by others...as it is true and the papers here and abroad are saying the same and eating their previous words...fans are so fanatical about S Africa being so wonderful in so many ways and saying how much they want to return!! "Thanks for telling them!! Europeans and Americans are fed on bigoted reports from CNN and BBC, filed by parachute journalists. Here is a quotation from an article written by my friend who's a journalist:. "Like the biblical log in one’s eye, the English and Germans who are hell bent on portraying South Africa as a very dangerous place ... read more

Up at 6 o’clock, for an early start, to join the convoy of England supporters, on the 5 hour drive to Bloemfontein. The number of supporters making this trip was enormous. Every car had England colours of some sort, be it car flags, big flags or scarves. Such a sight. The in- frequent service stations were awash with red and white. In Bloemfontein the English had taken over the waterfront. The government had relaxed the selling of alcohol for the day. This was obviously too good an opportunity for the bars etc to miss. In fact the restaurants were drunk dry and couldn’t match the demand. Fortunately Roger and I managed to purchase some beer and sat by the lake to drink it in the sunshine with the other supporters. Again the atmosphere was unbelievable and ... read more

Day 13 Got over yesterday pretty quickly - just looking at my Soccer City pics cheered me up. This was the first morning that I didn’t have to do ANYTHING ………….. so I didn’t!!!!! Then met Grace for a nice afternoon coffee (well I had a beer) before heading off to Ellis Park for our best game so far - Brazil v Chile ………. As well as the colourful, vibrant, diverse crowd (I was sat next to a Nigerian); the (at times) good football, and the excellent English officiating (the bald referees’ society had a good day); who could have imagined, only 20 years ago, that Brazil would be playing in the football World Cup at this impressive stadium which to some was a symbol of apartheid. Pete had chatted to an Ethiopian last week whilst ... read more

Here we go again. This time to Bloemfontein. Naively Roger and I assumed England would win everything, unfortunately not the case. We didn't book accommodation taking into account the Team would be runners up in the group. This morning we spent time trying to get somewhere to stay in Bloemfontein, which is about 5 hours drive away from where we currently are. Everywhere is rammed. fortunately one of the guest houses we tried gave us the name of one that she thought had vacancies. Success. We have heard that there is a religious holiday in Bloemfontein on Sunday and beer will not be sold anywhere, They under estimate the English who can find beer like animals find water ha ha We thought the day would be quiet today, but we managed to come across the Italian ... read more