Travelin Monkey

What can I say to sum up the last 24 hours?? Not much.. we have about 2 gigs worth of videos from last night and when we get back, we are going to splice everything together and make a DVD of this ridiculousness that we have lived…

It all started with 4 guys renting a car, following the games from country to country. No one thought much of anything when Ger beat Sweden. We all didn’t think much more when Argentina beat Mexico. But, then France won when we were in Strausberg, Italy won when we were in Milan, and we started to see a trend here…

Next, France beat Brasil in Nice` and we were on FIRE!! Paris saw Portugal and Germany’s defeat to the hands of the finalists, and I immediately looked at koko and said “Buddy, we HAVE to go to Rome. There is no doubt that ROME is the place for us!!”

And so we did as we felt proper. 2 days of tourist activities later, the big day was upon us. In sheer Romanesque activities, we feasted on pizzas, pastas, beer, wine, fruits, and ice cream in prepapration for the debauchery that would follow. A nap later, out came the 1 liter bottle of grey goose that would make its way with us to the Circo Massimo (circus maximus). The trains were packed, the people were ready… at MINIMUM 100,000 spectators (later we found out it was a grand total of 200,000 people) were all in front of 3 huge TVs. Standing up, all around the grassy fields…

Then it started… No one could believe that at minute 6 France already had a penalty kick in. But what a come back!! We all knew that it HAD to go to penalties. That would be the only way to settle this right; no cheap calls, no cheap goals. Just straight one on one….

We have every goal on video, with about 200,000 people chanting, screaming, and dancing. Like a herd, we made our way down the streets of Rome, past the Colloseum and to the major center where we found a 3 story water fountain. We hung out with the Italians and made friends with some girls, all of us drunk of our asses because grey goose was no more. The girls were dripping wet and we had no idea why, when they said “go to the fountain”

About 20-30 men and women stripped down to their underwear were splashing away, partying like they rightfully should!! And within a blink of an eye, all my clothes were off… thrown to raffi to hold and koko was to follow… splashing, partying, yelling off the top of our lungs in the Republica water fountain. We climbed up to the second story of the fountain and began to do more of the same. After a while, kok left leaving just me, rockin out with the Italianos…

Eventually, we all got clothed and continued through the melee of people looking for more action. There were a couple of problems:

1. we had no map (again)…
2. there were no buses, no taxis, and no metro..
3. somehow we had to walk our way from the colloseum to vatican city (picture walking from pier 39 to mount sutro) and then find the hotel!!
4. at around 4 am… we were all tired of walking, tired of partying.. and luckily found a taxi..

He screwed us hard with the price, but we still had about 10 km left in our walk and we gladly paid everything…….

And that is how the Road to the World Cup 2006 came to an end… When I graduated high school in 1998, I saw France beat Brazil in Paris, and with envy I looked upon the streets of Paris at the party and riots that were to follow. In 2002, I graduated undergrad and spent a month watching all the games from 6 am until 11 am. In Las Vegas, for the Fra vs URU game, at the bellagio sports bar, at 2 am I looked at sayat and said “in 4 years I will be a doctor and you will have your masters, lets celebrate with style, Germany 2006″ … 4 years later, here I am…

what an adventure!

next stop…. Amsterdam! WOO HOOO

Trackback URI | Comments RSS