Last night we went to the opening ceremonies for the 25th Annual Universiade Games. The whole thing lasted about 2 ½ hours and was pretty good. The most painful part was the introduction of all the flags for each country. Luckily for me (being sarcastic here), this was the record-breaking year for the number of participants in Universiade! Yay! There are 145 countries taking part in the different sports, so, for 1 hour (not even exaggerating) I watched a volunteer walk in with a sign for each country, followed by the flag bearer. There must have been a better why to do it…I don’t know, maybe just put the names on a screen somewhere…works for me! The highlight of the opening ceremonies was when Nemanja Vidic (plays for Manchester United) came out at the end to wish everyone good luck. He is soooo dreamy!
Oh, I forgot to tell you, just before we left for the opening ceremonies, there was a knock at my door. I open it to find….my roommate…..yay! Now, instead of my 5x8 foot square, I have been reduced to 2.5x4 feet of pure bliss. It is awful. Seriously, I’m pretty sure that my closet at home has more space than I do. The funniest part is that nobody even knew she was coming, she had no games, and in fact, the tournament had already started. Everything got sorted out, and voila…14th referee. And my dream of having my own rool is over :(
The next morning I got up at 6:30am to get ready to leave for my game. The van picked us up at 7:30am and we were on our way. The stadium was in another village that was pretty far away, which is why we had to leave so early. Problem is, at that time, there is no traffic so we were there by 8:15am for our 10:30 am kickoff. We even beat the volunteers there, who they actually bused in from Belgrade. I have never seen so many volunteers before…there is something like 10 000 volunteers for this tournament. I’m sure that they must outnumber the athletes 2 to 1. Anyways, we arrive very early and go and sit in the restaurant for…you guess it…coffee! I had an orange juice.
The game itself was pretty good. Japan and France are both decent teams and they battled pretty hard. I was busy as a 4th official because there were 6 yellow cards, and each team used all 4 of their substitutions. Also, there were 2 major injuries during the game. The game ended up being tied 0-0 so we had to take penalty kicks which will be used only in the event of a tie-breaker between the teams.
After the game we sat for an hour….again, waiting for the paperwork to be finished and then we headed back to the hotel. After lunch my crew (referee and 2 assistants) took be to visit 2 of the major football stadiums here in Belgrade. First we went to Partisan, which is where the final will be held next Friday. Then we went to the rival club Red Star and had a tour of the stadium and the museum. I have to say, it was very impressive. The number of trophies and pictures, and history in their museum is amazing. They even have a man, whose job is to give tours and update all the stats, etc for the club. He is like a curator (is that the right word?) The president of the Red Star also came up to meet me, and we took a picture with him. It was very nice. After the tour we went to watch the Mens game between Serbia and Great Britain. It was Ok, GBR won 1-0 and Serbia just looked content to lose, which surprised me because they are the host team.
I came back to the hotel for dinner, and of course after everyone wanted to go for coffee, but I decided to pass…I know, I’m so antisocial….must be because I am shy!
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