L'Ombre de l'Olivier

The Shadow of the Olive Tree

being the maunderings of an Englishman on the Côte d'Azur

14 June 2006 Blog Home : June 2006 : Permalink

Back from the Match


So we're back. We had a blast but there were little bobblettes here and there.

The good news was that we got VIP passes which included free nosh, beer (sort of - see below), champagne and excellent seats. The beer on offer was part of the bad news - unfortunately Anhueser Busch decided to sponsor the world cup and hence VIPs are forced to drink the sponsor's product even though Germany has rather a lot of rather better (and rice-free) beers.

Still we enjoyed watching the match - at least for the first 80+ minutes or so while Japan was winning, the last 5-10 were rather less good. But we were watching which is more than can be said for the guy in front of me who spent most of the first half calling people and decided to skip the second half completely

The other bit of bad news was that it turned out we had got 2 tickets each to the game. One was the VIP set that the spouse obtained via heinous nepotism and tennis playing etc, the other was the set of "conditional" tickets I paid for but which FIFA couldn't tell me I had obtained until effetively 24 hours before the match started. No doubt I was far from alone in that position which probably explains why the SOLD OUT stadium has visibly empty seats:

Actually I admit that it actually showed up at 1:16AM GMT on the 11th of June which is 35hours and 44 minutes before the match started but I didn't check my mail until that evening what with driving 1,000km from the Côte d'Azur etc. and given that the previous email I receved from FWCTC said:
Date : 06-06-08

Dear Football fan,

The 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany (TM) has just started!

As you placed an order for conditional tickets you still have the chance to get tickets allocated. In order to avoid unnecessary trips we would like to remind you that so far we could not allocate any tickets to your order.

You have the chance of getting tickets allocated until 36 hours before the relevant match. In this case you would get a confirmation from us. In your own interest, we advice you not to go to one of our Stadium Ticket Center (STC) a tour 12 FIFA World Cup venues, unless you actually have tickets allocated that you need to collect.
When you read that you get the impression (well I did) that the chances of a ticket being allocated was approx 0, you also discovered that you had no way of cancelling the tickets and were basically forced to make any hotel etc bookings entirely on hope with the problem that hotels tend to not like no shows who cancel 24 hours or so before the arrival time. In other words: "do you feel lucky punk?"



I despise l'Escroc and Vile Pin