Man on the Street - Volume 1

I got a couple of emails this morning that I'd like to share with you.  Travis and Craig are traveling together in South Africa.  This is part of their story.

A Message from Craig:

So yesterday was the biggest ordeal getting tickets, but it all worked out, thank god. They only have a couple outlets where you can pick up your tickets and the one at the airport had this extraordinarily long line (which I probably should have used anyway), so we went to the pickup spot in Pretoria. We ended up having to wait in line for 2 hours because their atm-like terminals were all down (imagine that in africa). 

Getting my tickets was easy because I just handed them my credit card and my id, and got the tickets, but the USA v England tix were the more difficult ones, as we had Rob's credit card, but not his ID. Travis pretended to be Rob, and said that he didn't have his ID because the directions said all you needed was the credit card (which they did), so we argued with the guy, and then he went and got his manager, but that didn't work, so I had the realization that I had my ID and my name was for one of the tickets, so I gave them my ID, the manager went back and checked and since everything checked out with me, they printed out the tickets for us. I was going to freak out if we couldn't get those tickets!

Anyway, it's crazy here. Travis heard his first vuvuzela at 5:30, but I wasn't woken up until 7:30. And we're not even downtown. When we get off the internet here, we're going to go to downtown Pretoria and watch the opening ceremonies and the games there. I'm so freaking excited. Everyone here is so super nice to us. They, as a country, are just as excited as we are. Tomorrow we're going to drive out to Rustenburg early and spend the whole day at the stadium. The tickets for the USA v England game are pretty damn good. We're about half way up, right at midfield in the USSF section. Look for us. I've got Charlie Davies 9's that I will be holding up at the 9th minute. As for today, maybe one of the bars will have WiFi, though I haven't found any wifi in this country yet, so I can chat in real time on my iphone. Either way, go Bafana Bafana!

A Message from Travis:

travis hunnings here, reporting live from the whitest place i've seen in the last 3 weeks. yes, i'm possibly a racist.

i present to you the " coca-cola vuvuzela report brought to you by MTN networks in association with Hans Pilsner(tm)" in which i inform you of the exact time and location of when i hear the first vuvuzela each day (i will try and bring this to you daily via email or text).

june 10th - OR Tambo International Airport, baggage claim, 10:50am local time, 5 minutes from stepping foot in the airport itself and i hear the noises...surprisingly these were coming from a large mexican contingent that must have found the south african stockpile of tequila or something.

june 11th - Val De Grace, Pretoria, South Africa, under the covers of my bed, 5:30am local time...ugh...i dont know where they were coming from but i can hear them in the streets. these people are nuts.

in other news we have received all of our tickets but it was not an easy affair. i explain below.

where i compare this country to the holocaust (i'm sure this is wildly offensive, but at least i'm not like that iranian guy who doesnt even believe it exists).

so we go to the mall to get our tickets thinking we only need the credit card that was used to purchase them to receive them. oh boy was that theory about to break the glass windows of our psyche and pack our confidence into boxcars like sardines.

we arrive at the mall to see a giant line that wasnt even the line we needed to be in...they herded us down into a gulag of sorts out by the parking deck where we had to wait in another line. little did we know that this line was where we would be given our numbers. seriously, they wrote numbers on our arms. i have a pic on my iphone that i'll send you as soon as i get wifi (which apparently this country doesnt believe in either). we waited in this line for an hour with some very nice people. this wasnt so much like the auschwitz death camp, but more like one of the re-education camps where they wanted us to learn our place as obedient queuers (yes thats a word, i just put it in urban dictionary).

we then were moved to the main line where we could actually see the ticket desks. unfortunately none of the automated machines were working and we knew that the person who purchased the tickets had to be the one to pick them up (seriously FIFA, why the fuck is this the rule? it makes things infinitely difficult for such a slight increase in security that it is so not worth it). so we had to figure out how in the fuck we were going to get our usa/england tickets since they were bought by rob mishler and he clearly was 8042 miles away sleeping comfortably in his bed in adams morgan (and even our other tickets were in doubt because craig didnt have his passport, only his driver's license).

we devised a clever plan of lie our asses off and hope it works. i was to play the part of rob mishler who forgets his id in the hotel and hope and pray that was enough. after some quick texting to find out his birthday in case they asked me to verify the one piece of information i knew i couldnt pretend not to know we were ready.

craig was able to get his tickets with minimal hassle using his driver's license instead of passport but i was in for some trouble. the ticket desk guy was actually really helpful and tried to bring down his gestapo leaders by lying for me as well saying that i was from durban and had forgotten my id there and that i couldnt possibly go back and get it. unfortunately this did not work. the manager came out and was explaining to me how completely fucked we were and that we spent retarded amounts of money on tickets that would sit unused.

then, out of nowhere, craig came to the rescue. he explained that he was one of the 4 people assigned to the tickets and that he had his id and maybe that could help. the manager looked pleased and relented, eventually going to the back to check things out. after 10 minutes of tense waiting, he came back and with a wink we were in. tickets received. it was a most glorious moment of celebration.

now we just have to deal with selling the two extras.

i kinda slacked off on the holocaust references there towards the end but whatever, fuck it, i got tired. the holocaust sucked, getting the tickets sucked, they are basically the same. the end.

we are giong to a group viewing area to watch the celebrations/ceremonies/opening games today. should be awesome. i'll try and report more when we get more internet...which i'm not sure if i've said it before or not but its really hard to find in this country.

travis out.