Helaas! Nederland is uit!

It seems that all of Holland has gone mad for football over the past couple of weeks - from “wuppies” in the grocery store to just about anything you can imagine in the color orange. It’s a major let down over here that the national team lost in a world cup match to Portugal last evening. They have been eliminated from the tournament.

It certainly wasn’t from lack of enthusiasm by the fans. The streets were eerily quiet when we walked down to Frank and Natasja’s to watch the game. It seemed that the city had been abandoned. But you could see in the windows of the houses. The living rooms were full of partiers and every TV was tuned to the match.

I know absolutely nothing about soccer, but even I had a good time and thought that it was a pretty exciting game. Holland played hard, but it seemed to me that they lacked the ‘fire in the belly’, balls-out gusto that would get them to the next round. I was very surprised when the last six minutes was posted to the clock; the coach stood calmly on the sidelines; the team passed the ball around the field like there was at least another half to go. Like I said, I don’t know much about the game, but I’d have expected an all out blitz or a few hail-mary’s to try and even things up. It just wasn’t going to happen.

Today the mood is definitely subdued. I missed the best opportunities to get pictures, but here are a few of the pre-game hype.