Bye Bye Ma' Salaama

World Cup in Syria was an experience as intense as it was interesting. Every night all the restaurants, cafés and even the small shop on the corner filled up with fans more fanatically supportive of their team of choice than you could ever imagine any non-affiliated people to be.

The team of choice was in most cases Brazil, proved by the great amount of flags hanging from windows or between houses. Brazil's popularity was followed but not rivaled in any way by Germany, Argentina and Italy. More or less in that order. Banana Republics of Football like Angola, Togo and Sweden was not even remembered in the most flag-covered of restaurants.

Watching football here was fun in all kind of ways. People got so engaged in the games half of the fun was watching them jumping up and down when ever their team had a chance or scored a goal. In the end of the games they would always taunt the losing team in the most taunting of ways. Preferably shouting, for example, England barra barra or just the title of this post. It's good when people are good winners.

After the games people would get out on the streets and shoot of fireworks or ride around in their cars waving flags. Except for when Brazil lost of course, that was a day of mourning. In the end that was probably best for all of us since it would have been impossible to sleep for several nights running had they won... In the end people seem to have been pretty happy about Italy winning. Nothing wrong with that, always good when people are happy.