Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Foto's weblog

Hup Holland Hup

After a short night, we took the ICE train from Köln to Amsterdam, where we arrived around 11:35. The 'orange feeling' starts already in the train station: almost everybody has 'something' orange, even if you are not Dutch. We already knew that the Dutch people are crazy when their national team plays, but this was worse (so 'better') than we had expected! We went to the 'Rembrandtplein' where we followed the match in an Irish Pub. We also met three Scottish men who had the same problem as ours: their national team didn't reach the final stage of the World Cup either. Again, we could win our game: 2-0 against Denmark!

This means that we didn't lose this weekend :-). After a slow start (0-0 in Lille, a draw because of an enormous blunder in London, we got six points out of six in the last two games! Thanks a lot to Eurostar, Thalys and DB for this wonderful weekend!

Schiess ein Tor!

Sunday evening 20:30: we are in Köln to follow the game Germany-Australia together with some 2000 German fans. After the two draws in France and England, we were hoping that we could finally win 'our' game. During the game, we do an interview for Koëlncampus, a local radio station. Sunday evening 22:15: the atmosphere is really fantastic, we have won 4-0!! We can already sing a few Germans songs (Schiess ein Tor is the most popular one) and the victory is celebrated as if Germany is already the world champion.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Come on England!

From the first moment we arrived in London, we could feel that the city was ready for a big game. The atmosphere around Trafalgar Square was really brilliant. A lot of people were waiting in front of the Sports Bar, so we had hoped to watch the game there. It was overcrowded so we had to go to another place, but it was also fantastic. We don't have much time to post a lot here. For the moment we are on the Thalys on our way to Köln (we are in first class so we have WIFI for free :-) ).

We have 2 points out of 6, so we hope that the Germans and/or the Dutch will win their game!

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Come on les bleus

Bonjour à tous!
Un grand merci à tous les supporters du café 'Magnum' hier à Lille. L'ambiance était parfaite!
Friday evening we followed the game France-Uruguay in France. Despite the draw, the atmosphere and the French fans were great. At the end of the evening, we were almost able to sing the national anthym (“Aux armes ...”). We would like to say sorry to the French fans who sometimes couldn't follow the match because the camera crew was trying to make some nice pictures of us (which is impossible of course). Now we are on the Eurostar on our way to London, let's find out if the English fans can do better ;-)!
Au revoir!

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

The plan...

From 1982 (Spain) till 2002 (Japan and South Korea), the Belgian football team joined every World Cup football. In 2006 and 2010, the 'Red Devils' didn't make it to the final stage of this great event.
We are born in 1980, and even thoug we were only 10 years old then, we can still remember very clearly the goal of David Platt, who scored against Belgium in the 119th minute of the 1/8 finals on the World Cup in Italy in 1990. We even remember getting up at night during the World Cup in Mexico in 1986, where the Belgian team got the best result ever.
In 2002, we were at university in Leuven. I still remember going to a bar to watch the beginning of the game Belgium-Brazil (1/8 finals) with my suit because at the start of the second half, my oral exam of linguistics started. It is in this period that we made a deal: the next time Belgium joins a World Cup, we are going to the host country to support them. There was only one problem: they didn't join it so far...

That's why we came up with another idea. Why cannot we go to our neighbouring countries to feel the atmosphere when their team plays? So we decided to go to France, the UK, Germany and The Netherlands and to do this in four days:
- June 11 France-Uruguay at 20:30 in Lille (France)
- June 12 England-USA at 20:30 in London (UK)
- June 13 Germany-Australia at 20:30 in Köln (Germany)
- June 14 Holland-Denmark at 13:30 in Amsterdam (The Netherlands)

Because it would be quite difficult to go from one place to another by car, we decided to take trains. We told our story to Eurostar, Thalys and Deutsche Bahn, and those very friendly people supported our idea. They have given us train tickets from one city to another! So thanks a lot to Eurostar, Thalys and Deutsche Bahn!!

We also created a group on Facebook about our project, but if you are not on Facebook, you can follow our story on this blog. The link on Facebook is:
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/group.php?gid=129718223721852

From Saturday onwards, we will try to give you some news about our adventures in the four different countries. Let's find out which supporters are the best ;-)!


Frederik Hoedt, Frederik Allossery and Jesse De Meyer