Friday/Saturday
22/23 March Midnight, 2013
I'm not much of a sports fan, but when
a friend asked if I wanted to go to the Fifa World Cup Qualifying
Match between Germany and Kazakhstan, I said yes. It was a midnight
on a Friday, so really it was on Saturday, 23 March. It was at
midnight so that it would air in the evening in Germany.
My German students were going; my
friend said that many high school students were going;
pretty much everyone I knew who was still in town went. (It's
Nauriz, the largest Kazakh holiday, the festival of spring, so a lot
of people are out of town on vacation.) However, we saw no one that we knew
there because it was so crowded.
Tickets for the cheapest section were
just 500 Tenge (less than $4).
We left my home at around 11:20. The
game was at the football stadium that was built for the Winter Games two years ago; it's next to the Cycling Arena and the ice skating arena
Alau, and it's on the road that leads to the airport. It takes less
than 10 minutes to get there from my house when there's no traffic.
We walked behind my apartment complex
and through some mud to get to a road and hailed a taxi on Kabanbai Batyr Street (the same street that the stadium is on). The first
one stopped for us; the two guys in it were also going to the game,
but they still charged us 500 Tenge.
The guy who wasn't driving asked
questions about me and then asked if I'd like to marry a Kazakh guy. My friend answered for me, "Maybe."
The traffic was bad for the majority of
the ride, and I joked that we could have walked faster. We probably
could have. The guys were nice and let us out when we neared the
stadium; they still had to find parking.
We saw people running (we still had a
huge parking lot to cross) and as we got closer, we started running
too. Somebody said that Germany already had scored a goal. (Yes, the 10-minute trip took close to one hour due to traffic.)
Inside the stadium, we could hear
people cheering and we became rather excited, running to find our
seats. We found our section, but could not find our seats, so I took
a seat near the aisle and my friend sat on the steps next to me. (At
halftime, we switched spots.)
The excitement of the crowd was
infectious. Germany already had two points by the time we arrived
(20 minutes late), and most of the action took place on Germany's
side of the field. But every time the Kazakhs got the ball on their
half, the crowd around us stood up and roared and cheered. There was
just so much enthusiasm!
The score was still 2 to 0 at halftime,
and as the second half continued it became obvious that Kazakhstan
would not win (which, okay, was pretty obvious before the game even
began.) Then Germany scored another goal, so it was 3 to 0.
Then somebody started the wave. It
went around the entire stadium and then kept going... and going and
going and going. After it went around several times, my friend took
out her camera to video it; lots of people were videoing it. And it
kept going. I stopped counting after 4 times. I think it made it
about 10 times. It was quite fun.
In the end, we lost, Kazakhstan didn't
even score a point. But it was fun being in the crowd, and the crowd
was enthusiastic and happy, despite losing. We were happy just when
we came close to scoring a goal. And we cheered the German team when
they wandered around the field waving at the end.
Then there was a raffle for a brand new
car—I didn't win—and then we left.
It was cold now, and we debated walking
to the packed road to find a taxi, even though there were buses,
because the buses were packed full. Then we found a bus that was not
full, and we got on it. But it was a long wait before it became full
and left (but at least we had seats, so we were not crammed.) Then
it went behind the stadium, then did a u-turn and went back in front
of the stadium, and then it turned right on the crowded main
road—away from downtown, where we needed to go.
The road was packed and we traveled
very slowly for a short ways; then we turned left and finally made a
u-turn and turned back on the main road, finally heading in the
correct direction.
This bus' route is not a direct route
to my place, and so it took a while to get to my stop, and then it
was a short walk to my apartment, and so it was nearly 4 am when we
got home, even though the game had ended at 2.
I had a lot of fun, though I'm not sure
I'll ever go again. I'm not a big fan of huge crowds. But the
enthusiasm during the game was wonderful.
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