Thunderstruck

Finally I could sleep a bit longer. 7:30am I woke up, I think without any additional mosquito bites.

Match-day number 2 in Recife today, and it was clear that we had to improve some things compared to last Sunday.

After a nice walk again to Prazeres and the train to Rodoviaria I first took some time for a good cup of coffee. In Europe very often Brazilian coffee is served but over here there are not many people drinking coffee. Obviously is coffee a good export product for this country. Around the Arena it was still quiet when I arrived at 10:15am. Most of the 650 volunteers who are working in Recife arrive around or short after midday. There are 10 international volunteers in different teams, whilst there are 63 volunteers allocated to the Media Centre, coordinated by Thiago and Rachel.

First thing to do was to get the activities in the SMC allocated and up and running. After that I started with the planning for all activities around the match Italy-Japan. As I did not receive all feedbacks from the team-leaders I decided to make my own personnel planning based on the experiences from last Sunday and the feedbacks I gathered in the past days. I anyway agreed to meet with the team-leaders at 2pm so there was still time and room for discussion. I thought… At 2pm 1 team-leader was present, the others all arrived after 3pm. So no joint coordination of our activities, just my planning and personnel allocation and off we went. The Arena was opened already at 3pm so the fans could watch the Brazil match on the big screens. The media people were allowed to enter the media tribune as off 5pm. Our operational work normally starts about 2.5/3 hours before the match starts. Also this time we decided to start accordingly. After all team-leaders were instructed and the personnel were informed I went up to the Media Tribune at 4:30pm to check whether there was enough water for the journalists. Surprisingly there were already some journalists on the tribune. And it was good to see that this time the spectator services were around as well as the security.

There was partly still no light in the staircase (reported already on Tuesday); but wonder wonder, within 20 minutes the light was installed! Sometime miracles are still possible.

Most of the journalists entered the tribune after the Brazil match was ready, meaning that we had quite some work between 6-6.40pm. At 6:45pm, 15 minutes before the start of the game, like on Sunday, they played AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck”. A fantastic song, still, and for me one of the best U can play to get to a great atmosphere in such an Arena. And it was a wonderful atmosphere. It was a great match with a 4-3 for Italy after a 0-2 for Japan. Many Brazilians were shouting for Japan, maybe because quite some Japanese people are living in Brazil. And to be really honest, this was one of the best and interesting matches I have ever seen! Great football, fantastic atmosphere, and our media volunteers did a real good job today, all of them! Thanks and congratulations to all of U!

Back in the Media centre some last jobs were done, and I left from there at about 11:30, together with Sergio. The train would drive till 1am, so no problem. But wonder wonder, we were informed by Cathie that the trains stopped running at 11pm! So, what to do…? And yes, Sergio said he would take me home. This man is great, thanks a lot my friend, muito obrigado!

So I got home “early”, at about 00:30. Time to shortly hand-wash my Confed Cup pant (we only got 1), and my Confed Cup T-Shirt (we got 2!), before writing my blog. Thursday will be my day off, will have to catch up with some mails, but will also take my time to see somewhat more from the beach, of Boa Viagem, Marco Zero, Boa Vista and Olinda and to meet with some friends. And maybe I will also go and have a look at the protest which starts at 4pm.

 

By the way, Thunderstruck! This might be my new favourite song!