Sadly no pictures...

So, my friend Emily and I decided to go down town to watch the semi final game of the world cup. We couldn't decide where to go so we decided on being in a central place like down town and we would inevitably find something... at one of the stops we saw this dude get on wearing a German flag, at which point I turned to Emily and said "we're gonna follow him and he'll lead us to the right place to watch the game!" That ended up being partially true, until we got sidetracked by this American guy who ask US for directions, at which point we confessed that we we're American and not much use when it comes to directions. Then it turns out that this guy is from a small town in Pennsylvania not far from where Emily is from, so we chop it up a bit with him. He had just married an Austrian woman and moved to Graz and clearly didn't know his way around very well and in classic American form was just asking at random IN ENGLISH anybody for directions to some place. Of course by the time we got stuck with him we lost the dude with the German flag and wandered some more with the Pennsylvanian. Finally we realized that there was a big outdoor public space to watch the game (with a jumbo-tron, bleachers, picnic tables and beer stands!). That ended up being the place HE was looking for and also probably the place the dude in the German flag went to... upon arrival it took some effort (and an exchange of email address') to ditch the old Pennsylvanian and find a place to sit and watch.

Our initial search for a place to sit was not fruitful and consisted mostly of stairs from Austrians, checking out the Americans in their *cute* Adidas soccer, or excuse me, futbol, outfits (yes, we had cute little Adidas outfits!). At that point we decided that we needed some beer in a mean way and that we would try again with beers to find a place to sit (beer always makes things better, right? or at least that's what I keep telling myself). Our second attempt to find a seat landed us at a table of men that turned out to be Afghani and um, rooting for Portugal... not Germany. So there we are in our Adidas outfits in a sea of Austrians rooting for Germany at a table with Afghani's rooting for Portugal. Life doesn't get much more entertaining. Despite our initial concerns of intoxication and possible shit talking/trouble with Austrians, the Afghani's turned out to be very nice (although there was one who after a couple beers became a little lecherous... someone's always gotta go and spoil things, eh?). They had all been in Austria for varying amounts of time, 5 years, 11 years and none had plans on returning to Afghanistan because they are Christian. Of course I can't tell you how long it took us to figure this all out considering that they speak German and Farsi and um pretty sure Emily and I don't. The lecherous one spoke pretty good English and the others spoke a little bit (sadly in this sittuation my Spanish did not come in handy). Of course much to our amusement one of them was named Jabib... and the others I don't remember, for obvious reasons however, "Jabib" stands out.

The entertainment doesn't end there though, no, that would be too easy. When we sat down of course we all had to toast before we drank and Emily in her infinite wisdom (and I do really mean that, that girl is smart as a whip... however we all have our moments!) says "Chuss" (not actually spelled like that but you get the idea) which means goodbye in German. So we go on saying that for while everytime we would toast until after a while (and I'm sure their sides hurt from laughing so hard), the Afghani's fess up that we're making complete fools of ourselves and that we should stick to the old standby "Prost" or there's always "Salute", "Salud" all of the above... except "Chuss". Oh yeah, we're geniuses.

That's pretty much our adventure, one of them was hella cut and good looking. I of course thought he was gay until he kept hugging me goodbye and tried to slip me some tongue (sadly, I think he was the one named Jabib, although I can't remember). But whatever, we're planning on watching the final with them tomorrow at the same place so there should be some updates. Gotta love Austria, I mean Afghanis, I mean... where the hell am I????!!! I love this kind of shit, maybe it comes from being raised in the oh-so-international Rancho Urbano that I keep finding myself in these sittuations.

That's all for now. I'm tired.

Love, love, love,

Nishi