To be honest, I was surprised with the stadium. In a good way more than bad actually.
It was actually an excellent stadium. The pitch was great, the seats were good. The architectural design was amazing. Even the design of entering and leaving the stadium was such that it meant even the "hawash" / 3agad / حوش / "Chavs" couldnt mess it up, and there was no resulting walking-traffic.
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| Panorama of the inside of the Stadium |
Video of players entering the pitch
Even the toilets didnt disappoint. Well, not as much as I thought. It made my day knowing that one guy left a present in one of the cubicles.
Warning, a not-so-pretty picture ahead.
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| What the F .. ? |
Lovely. So from what was in front of me I gather someone shat himself, threw his pants next to the toilet, and left?
The parking lot though, was something else ..
The pitch can hold up 60,000 people approximately, give or take the odd hundred here and there. Parking-wise fits about 20,000 cars. I would say the maximum number of people that showed up to this match would be 6,000 - 8,000. So you would expect a lot less chaos than what we saw.
Yet still, people were parking ON the pavement, disabled parking, blocking other cars, right next to the stairs, etc.. even though 12,000 other parking spots were available!!! Shit3alim ib hal nas??
Anyway, so me and my friend were driving down the road away from the stadium, and we reached a roundabout where we saw a jeep with a guy poking out of the that car roof window thing, mitlathim, and dancing. Hatha wint ma6goog 3 - 1 ..
So like decent people, we took an "upside-down" (U-turn, you non-kuwaities) at the roundabout, only to see 5 cars take a U-turn by going the wrong way at the roundabout to "beat the traffic".
i.e: these guys were coming HEAD ON towards us - driving the wrong way round the roundabout to take the last exit. Naturally, we went " BEEEP " until they stopped, and we went on our way. After a few songs, a couple of dances in the car later, we reached a traffic light, and the following happened.
Note, I am NOT MAKING THIS UP:
A white jeep was asking us to put our window down. I thought he wanted to ask for directions or something, this was a dad with like 6 kids in the back.
The conversation happened in Arabic, so naturally Ill write it in arabic first, then translate.
Me: هلا يبا؟
Him: خير اخوي؟
Us: ؟؟
Him: طاقلي هرن؟
Us: يايني عكس السير الله اهداك
Him: انزين؟
Us: امخالف و بغيت تدعمنا
Him: عادي
Us: عادي؟؟
Him: اي عادي
Us: lol .. ok. تفظل.
Me: Yes daddy?
Him: Whats wrong?
Us: ??
Him: You "tooted" your horn at me earlier (at the roundabout)
Us: Oh you mean when you came at us head on after your illegal upside down?
Him: Yeh, and?
Us: Um, its illegal. And you almost crashed into us.
Him: Its ok.
Us: Its 'ok'?
Him: Yeh, its ok.
Us: lol .. ok. Carry on then.
So, what do you say to someone like that. This was a father. 6 Young kids were in the back of the jeep, what message does that send to them? Its ok to break the rules as long as you stand up to yourself even though you make a complete fool of yourself?
What a strange feeling of anger and laughter at how a beautiful country such as Kuwait can turn immediately into a shit hole because of people like that, and those IN the stadium.
I give the stadium a year. After that, I hope someone would go and take a picture of what remains of the seats there, and tell me what else you find in the toilets.
Hal nas mara7 ikhaloon il deera ib 7alha...
