I haven't thought about the negatives of this trip too much with all of the positives that the Cup brings. As I have seen in my travels around the world, most generalizations and worries people have are usually blown out of proportion. It reminds me of my first week in Spain. With my good buddy Troy, we stayed in a quaint hostel next to a little park with an intricate Columbus statue and some interesting spanish architecture. In our first night, Troy and I decided to check out the Madrid locals and see what they were all about. We wandered around, got some food, went to the park where many teenagers and early twenty-somethings were hanging out. Troy and I played guitar, drank cervezas, shared purros, and just tried to assimilate with the locals. Yeah, there were some cultural differences--our styles were different, but as I played my favorite Bob Marley song, we all sang along and had a great time. Months later, Troy and I found our heads in the clouds after attending the Atletico Madrid game capped off by a splendid free kick by El Nino. While getting ourselves lost, as we usually did, we asked for directions back to the park where we spent so much of our free time. I'll never forget what the man said "El Parque de heroina?? No quieres a ir a esta parque!" Turns out, we were hanging out in a "very dangerous" park that we should have never gone too (a.k.a. Heroin Park). Granted, I guess there could have been problems, but we found ourselves hanging with the locals without an issue and had a considerably good time. If we would have followed the advice of this man before going there, we would have had a completely different opinion of the park and probably never would have ended up in one of the most memorable spots of our whole trip.
I digress, what made me think of this is that I have been coming across news article after news article as of late, listing reasons why not to travel to South Africa. Whether it is the white supremacist leader that just got killed and the expectation of race riots or the feeding frenzies that the great whites will have with all that foreign meat around to chomp on, its actually starting to make me think about some of my free-wheeling travel plans and recognize that there are some dangers out there. This all being said, I'm really not that worried, just find it interesting that i can read article after article of "things to scare you" about South Africa, like they are popping up just to frighten people away from the greatest sporting event on the planet.
Regardless of all this, I am just completely stoked to be able to witness this event firsthand--the South African bars teeming with rabid fans, the newly built stadiums with flares emblazoning the national teams' colors, and the chance of a wildebeest sneaking up to our apartments side door--I know the adventure is not far off
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