Hup Holland Hup

Tonight on the 6/7/14 Werner took my baba and I to one of his family friends’ house to watch Holland vs Costa Rica in the World Cup Quarter Finals. When I walked in there I thought ‘WOW! These guys are big fans!’ What I first saw was an amazing big Lego modelled soccer pitch. There were Corner flags, little Lego men with cameras for TV and cameramen for the papers. It had flag men and all of that. There was even a crowd of little Lego people and little Smurfs. That soccer pitch was in the front yard and covered the whole of the driveway. On the front wall of the house was a humongous banner of a soccer player and lots of flags. They had also attached a Netherlands flag like a roof for the soccer field and it opened and closed mechanically. It was really cool.
At the back of the house there was a big outdoor covered area that was completely orange. In the front of this area there was a wall and a camera projector that you connect to a computer to make it a big screen – underneath it there was a table with so many orange football souvenirs. There were even orange coloured nuts and orange chips to eat.
There were lots of seats and bar stools and I thought there wouldn’t be many people but then they started coming and I think there were about 30-40 people.
The game was very exciting – it was quite amusing when there was absolute silence and everyone had their eyes glued to the screen but when there was a good pass down to the front they would all start shouting “Hup holland Hup” and jump off their seats.
It was a tense game – most adults had at least 4 – 5 bottles of beers. They even had orange bottle holders with whistles to blow when they got a goal. The score was 0-0. They went into extra time and it was still 0-0 so they had to go to penalties. I found it quite funny and amusing that they changed the goal keeper before the penalties. I read in the paper that the goal keeper that was substituted off was angry cause he wanted to keep going. I thought it was right to change the goal keeper cause the one they substituted on was very good at saving penalties. Holland aren’t usually good at penalties. The goal keeper was very amazing – he made two saves and the other goals he was inches away from making the save. One person said that she didn’t really like the coach because of his attitude but he’s a good coach and guided Holland very well indeed. Most people really really respect his decisions and think that he knows what he’s doing. The penalty scores were 4-3 and Holland won. Everyone was going absolutely crazy when they won. Someone even snuck into the garden and lit some fireworks. Like everyone else I actually drank quite a bit too – but I didn’t drink alcohol. I was quite surprised that baba let me have a few cups of Fanta because it was orange. I also had one cup of orange juice. It was a very very late night – we went home at 1.15am. At a shop earlier in the day we bought some orange sparkly hairspray and some kind of orange streamer spray so while it was the penalties when Holland got a goal or saved a goal I kept spraying and it was really really fun. I can imagine having some kind of party like that in Australia but not as big.
I’ll be on a plane when Holland plays again on Wednesday and I’m not sure how we will find out the scores but we’ll try.

By Tobes

There was fantastic orange onesies in the Hema shop that we had breakfast in and baba said that if he wasn’t so Greek he would love to buy one. (Mama MiliKing)