African Champions and a Glass of Guinness

If you truly know me, you'd know that I could care less about sports or attending sporting events. I rarely watch, less attend, any event and can say I've never attended a college or pro football game and haven't even "pre-gamed". 

However, this weekend came to me as a surprise as my friends and I  decided to go to Casablanca for a 'long weekend'. [Monday is a holiday so technically for us, this is our first real weekend since we have Sunday and now Monday off, because we all work 6 days in a row.]

This long weekend just happened to be the same weekend where Morocco played against Egypt for the African Cup Title IN Casablanca - it also had been 25 years since Morocco took the title, so everyone for the past week had been talking about this game.

The match started at 8pm and we arrived at the Casa Port train station around 7pm. What's so special about the Casa Port train station? There's a Starbucks inside! Unfortunately, they were out of PSL and didn't have any holiday drinks; which I don't even know if they'll have them later this month or in December... 

We took the tram to our airbnb, which is a lovely typical Moroccan-style apartment. Then we set out for dinner. Since we were in the biggest city in Morocco, we had such a wide selection of restaurants to choose from: burgers, Indian, Spanish...   We decided on Spanish food, as my trip to Spain for my visa renewal was denied (I'll blog about that in due time).

Upon walking in the restaurant, the place was packed with people all watching the game. We knew that anywhere we went, the game would be on. It was also neat to: 1. Be at a restaurant at night.  2. See women, even groups of them, in the restaurant.  3. Order alcohol! 

We ordered  sangria and I got a Spanish spicy chorizo tortilla (it's like a potato pie but not... Just Google it) which was delicious!

While waiting for our food, we watched the game. It was so neat to see everyone so excited about this match. Finally, during the second half, Morocco score and my goodness did people cheer! Fortunately, they scored towards the end of the game, so they only had to hold out for about 15 minutes and the game was finished and Morocco won! 

Everyone in the restaurant cheered, clapped, screamed and some even danced.  Since I never participate in sport gatherings, let alone witness a very special match to the people in Casablanca, so it sure was a new and exciting thing to experience.

Once things calmed down, we decided to head to an Irish pub. While walking there, cars were honking, people shouting, hanging out of the windows all while waving the Moroccan flag(s).  It was just so neat to see the entire city celebrating!!

Of course, once we got into the Irish pub, there weren't people celebrating and I gotta say, it was weird seeing so many white people. That's when I realzied just how small and away El Jadida is from any tourist or métropolitain areas. I also FINALLY had my first beer in 7 weeks... The owner said he had Guinness (you'd think an Irish bar would of course have Guinness, but they didn't have Jameson, so I had to ask) and when he brought me my glass, he also brought a can of Guinness which a part of me wanted to tell him I wasn't interested in a canned Guinness,  but it had been 7 weeks of no beer, so beggars couldn't be choosers. The beer was drinkable but I couldn't finish it.

Once the bar closed, we wanted to go to another one but it was too packed and we figured with everyone celebrating, it would be hard to find a "calm"/less-packed bar so we decided to head on home. 

Today, Sunday, will be a day of shopping and running errands to buy things we can't find in El Jadida... Like Heinz Ketchup.

You might ask if witnessing this sporting event has changed my view on sports or will make me more intrigued in watching or attending a match... Honestly, it probably won't, but who knows. Maybe.