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This was the final score of yesterday's football match Armenia-Holland. I am not going to give you a review of the match itself, there are other places for that. Suffice it to say that the Dutch didn't play that well, they were kind of expectd to win by a larger margin (the Dutch newspaper-sites I checked today were rather negative). As in the previous match between the two teams in March in Holland, Armenian goalkeeper Roman Berezovsky played very well.

My boyfriend and I went to the match together with Sanne and Marieke, the two Dutch "Bem-girls" (yes, Onnik: we finally met! ;-) ). When we were walking towards the stadium and we kept passing all these Dutch fans who were talking Dutch, the three of us got a very weird feeling: all of a sudden we were able to understand what people were saying around us (well, I understand Armenian as well, but this was obviously different) and -worse!- we had to watch what we were saying, because they would be able to understand us. I guess there have never been this many Dutch people in Armenia at the same time! The stadium itself was less than half full. One of the Dutch newspapers picked up on this, saying this was due to the high ticket prices, though they mentiond 12 euro as being the price of the cheapest ticket, whereas in fact it was the price of the most expensive ticket (they were sold for 6000, 5000 and 3000 drams). However, even 3000 drams for a ticket is a price many Armenians cannot afford.

In the stadium we were sitting among the Armenia-supporters. We met Armenians from Holland, Iraq, Vienna, Lebanon. There were even some Lebanese-Armenians who had come to Armenia especially for this match! In the stadium we also ran into many Armenian friends. During the match Sanne, Marieke and I got some text-messages and phone calls from Holland, asking where exactly we were sitting (nice seats behind the Dutch bench, if you happened to see a banner saying "Sanne groet thuis" - that was us). At one point Sanne got a text-message from Holland saying that their tv-screens went black, apparently there was a temporary problem transmitting the images. We obviously had a big laugh about that!

I am not a football-fanatic, nor am I very nationalistic or chauvinistic or particularly attached to Holland. So before the match, I wasn't 100% supporting Holland, part of me was also rooting for Armenia, I guess it was about 50-50. The Dutch would win anyway, but I wanted the Armenians to play a good match. However, once the match started, I noticed that the 50-50 percentage changed dramatically in favor of the Dutch. ;-) Knowing myself (or at least I thought I did...), I didn't really expect that to happen. I didn't think I would be yelling and rooting for the Dutch and waving the Dutch flag the way I did. I guess I am not as Armenian as my Armenian friends keep telling me. ;-)

After the match we went for a drink and a bite and my boyfriend and I went to Monte Christo for a while before heading home and getting to bed at five in the morning. I woke up today with a hangover and a lack of sleep, so I am taking it very easy. My boyfriend had to go to work today (he is really suffering now!), but he just called me that he had his one big dream fulfilled: before the Dutch team left their hotel this afternoon, he managed to get a picture of him and Marco van Basten, the Dutch national coach and one of the legends of Dutch football and my boyfriend's hero in a way. A good end to a fun weekend!

Okay, I'm off to the kitchen now to make myself some more coffee.