The big hoardings inside Brazilian airports said, ‘Welcome to the land of football’. Years of planning, 14 days, five cities, six matches — hectic but a wonderful trip and plenty of warmth from Brazilians. It is indeed the land of football. We return with plenty of happy memories. I am trying to gather my thoughts at 35,000ft, on board the flight from Sao Paulo to Dubai, a little saddened that this World Cup journey is over for us and yet another four-year wait begins.

Before we left for Brazil, there was so much talk about safety (or the lack of it), the apprehensions about unfinished work at the stadiums, protests, strikes — everything but football. I would like to mention here that despite the language problem, the Brazilians in general have been fantastic, mainly towards visitors and the World Cup has progressed like clockwork.

There were many touching instances. There was this restaurant owner who was refusing to take money from us, saying in broken English and Portuguese that we were visitors to their country and Brazil welcomes us! There was an instance when a taxi driver took us to a wrong place by mistake (we thought he was taking us for a ride!) and made us feel awful when he did not charge the meter fare saying that the fault was his and he would take only the actual fare to the destination. After watching the Brazil vs Chile match at the Fan Fest in Recife, when we could not find a cab to get home to our apartment and approached a policeman for help, he stopped the traffic, found us a cab and instructed the cabbie to take us to our destination. We walked the streets, attended crowded Fan Fests, got back late in the evening, roamed around the cities we visited, and never ever felt insecure or threatened. Like the Neymars and the Messis, these people were also the heroes of the World Cup.

Shantanu Moitra and Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury (Tony), both recipients of national awards in their respective fields and enjoying the World Cup experience for the first time, were excellent co-travellers and their enthusiasm rubbed off on the two ‘oldies’— Amit (Sen) and yours truly. I would give Man of the Series to Shantanu (for doing so much work like grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, always volunteering to help — all with a smile). Tony gets the Man of the Match for keeping us in splits throughout the trip with his funny stories and boundless energy.

The food was fantastic, whether meat preparations or seafood. We tried out popular sea fish and found them to be excellent. On our way out of Brazil, on Tony’s suggestion (who is a big foodie), we had a superb seafood dinner at the Red Lobster restaurant at the Sao Paulo airport.

Different cities tend to have different weather. It was warm in Fortaleza, warm and wet in Recife. It was warm during the day and pleasant during early mornings and evenings. Brasilia was cool and Sao Paulo was cold (like Calcutta winter).

We watched our last match (France and Nigeria) in Brasilia. Nigeria dominated the first half but slowly France took control of the game in the second half and won.

(L-R) Amit Sen, Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, Shantanu Moitra and Deepankar Nandi in Rio

Brasilia, the capital, is a very modern city. The modern architecture, wide roads, upmarket malls, fancy eating places and pubs are in contrast to smaller cities like Fortaleza. We stayed at the Brasilia Park Hotel. Brazil is an expensive place (more so during the World Cup). One can understand why the local people went on strike, staged protests over various issues preceding the tournament. It must be tough for them.

Coming back to football, the host nation had a tough match against Colombia. Going by their pre-quarter-final form, there could have been an ‘upset’ on the cards! Though for the sake of Brazil, I hoped not. It is difficult to visualise the state of the country if Brazil loses any match from this stage. They were particularly lucky to scrape past Chile and need to raise the bar if they have designs of becoming champions. On their match days, the nation turns yellow –— even housemaids report to work in Selecao jerseys!

Before we left for Brazil, I had predicted Brazil, Germany, Argentina (in that order) as the probable champion. Fortunately, these three teams are still in the fray. Of course, I had a couple of wrong predictions in Spain and Italy. This World Cup proved that no team could be written off as some of the smaller teams produced some great football.

I hate long flights but the brighter side is the lady has just prepared a mean Bloody Mary for me, almost as good as the one you get at CC&FC! On behalf of Amit and myself, I would like to thank the “youngsters” — Tony and Shantanu — for their contribution towards making this trip a great one. Hopefully, they are addicted now and will find time from their busy schedules every four years to pursue this passion.

(This article was written before the semi-finals)