Uruguay, Eat My Shorts!

Holland is on a roll! WE WON AGAIN! And now we're in the World Cup finals. Holy hell - Hup Holland Hup indeed!

Our entire office decided to head down to the Museumplein - a big square behind the Van Gogh and Rijks museums where they were screening the match on a huge screen. Remember my picture from the middle of the winter? This is what it looked like then.


This is what it looked like yesterday, just before kick-off.



See the screen? There in the distance. It's a giant close-up of a player's eyes during the national anthems.


For such a huge space, this was the ONLY screen.


Because a couple of us were late, we couldn't find the rest of our friends. It was too manic. But being part of the huge crowd was pretty amazing. Right after the first goal:


People were also firing off flares:


Halfway through the match, extremely randomly, a bunch of boys came drumming through the crowds, Brazilian-drumming style. There's no way anyone else could've got through the crowd, but just for them, the crowds parted and they drummed their way through. (they're the guys in the middle, all in orange)


Right at the end, when we scored the 3rd goal and pretty much had the game in the bag, someone started throwing toilet rolls in the air. One roll became 3 rolls, which became 20 - 30 rolls. As they started unravelling while sailing through the air, it looked like party streamers in the sky. It was SPECTACULAR! They were thrown from the back of the field, and every time they landed, someone else would pick up the rolls and hurl them forward again, so by the end of it - it was almost like the ending of a Blue Man Group performance, where there's bog roll EVERYWHERE, and there were still streams of toilet roll flying through the air all over the field!!


(You can see more way in the distance, amongst the cranes)

Before the game was even over, more people were letting off fireworks. More like little firecrackers that popped in the sky. My camera ran out of battery, so the Blackberry camera was too slow to catch any action!


More flares were lit up all over the Museumplein.


And the ensuing MAYHEM after the game was officially over. Oh yeah, don't forget, this is Amsterdam where pot is legal. So there was lots of that in the air too! ;)


Of course it was impossible to cycle anywhere with the mass exodus of people. We had to walk with our bikes through the crowds. The trams, buses and cars were probably the worst places to be coz people were shaking them, climbing on top of them and cheering, and right when I took this shot, a spontaneous roar rose from the crowd, with people punching their fists in the air. ALL AT ONCE!


It was kinda like Queen's Day but at night, with people who were so over-the-moon they couldn't give a flying-fat-ass-frog what they did! (Cops on horseback were just laughing at the scene playing out in front of them).


It's pretty rad living in a country that's winning. Now... Looking forward to more madness at the finals this Sunday.

PS. My ashtanga practice is practically non-existent at this point. I've been meaning to get to the shala this week for early practices, but my good friend I.N.S.O.M.N.I.A. has struck again and I'm averaging 2 - 3 hours sleep a night. Just can't roll outta bed when the alarm hits. Still trying to get into a new kind of routine here. Sigh.