Our last full day in Qatar. Crazy to think. It seems like it all happened so quickly! But, it doesn’t matter. We have to focus. We HAVE to get into somewhere to watch the final. Our plan is FIFA FanFest. Knowing that we have failed to get into the official one in Brasil (although we made it into the overflow one) and into the official one in Russia (you may recall we had to run back to a Mexican pavilion to watch it it there). So today, we will be there SUPER early. We haven’t even watched one game there yet (since we’ve had tickets) so we should, shouldn’t we? 

So off we went! First back to Msheireb station to try to see the Conmebol booth while it was open. Our first fail of the day. Great start. We got some similar pictures to last night, but then we had to continue on. You can tell we’re Marta fans.

We walked quickly through the Souq, and that’s where we found the other important animal here. Again, we’re not sure if they were for sale or it is just their “stables” area, but nonetheless we were invited in to see and touch the camels themselves. 

Then we wanted to take Al Bidda metro to the Corniche station for the FanFest. We were turning into Qataris, wanting to take some sort of transport for something that wasn’t very far. But! We had a good reason! We needed/wanted to be there extra early to guarantee our entry. So we walked up to Al Bidda station. Closed. Probably too many people changing lines underneath. Walk further. We walked and walked. And finally came to a shuttle bus going to FanFest. 

Finally we made it. One of the volunteers was saying that 2,000 people were already there, but that 40,000 could get in so there was no problem. We were hopeful. Got there about an hour before FanFest opened at 4 pm with the game starting at 6 pm. Why they wouldn’t open earlier on a game day, I will never know. Especially the final, you know you’ll get a lot of people. And that’s exactly what we got. 

And remember. This is about 3 hours before the game. Packed. And, which will become important later, notice that we are on the outside line. Just something we would like you to notice because not 20 minutes later another line had formed. Sweet. 

And then it just got worse and worse. People started filling in the space between lines. Soon what had been three lines became 5, then 6, then just a bunch of people. Once 4 pm came we started slowly advancing little by little. But then people started just trying to run in… so they blocked it off. Then a trickle again. By this point people had lost it and started pushing to get in. The police just asked everyone to stop pushing, but no one could do anything about it at that point. Once we started getting crushed and the game started to get closer and closer we decided to bail. For some reason at that exact moment everyone decided to push forward. 

There were a bunch of children around us and them, along with their parents, started screaming. We eventually made our way out of the crowd, and it was just a mess. 

The police were not ready, even though an Indian couple we talked to in line told us that the exact same thing had happened for the opening game. And after seeing the control they have at stadiums using barriers and personnel… So, incredibly frustrated, we sped away to the next metro station, West Bay. Here they were controlling people. 

But it honestly felt like it was just more so to do something, because it did not feel like it was too full once we were eventually inside. With 10 minutes before the game, we caught the metro in downtown Doha. You can imagine how stressed my travel partner was.. we got to Al Messila station once the game had started. And got on the shuttle just as Messi was taking his penalty kick. We thankfully got a video call from home so we were able to see it. My friend scared all of the people on the shuttle when he yelled “goooooool”. And then, we were at the Caravan City. We could finally enjoy the incredibly stressful game!

When Argentina won everyone cheered where we were, and we don’t think there was a single Argentinian there (we had met some earlier that bought tickets for 5,000 USD each). After that we went baaaack downtown to see if anything was happening. At all of the metro stations we got the same announcement “do not go to Lusail station, the metro and vicinity are beyond capacity wait times can be of up to 3 hours”. Good thing we were going towards downtown and not the stadium. 

The Argentinians hadn’t made it downtown though. If they stayed for over 40 minutes after the semifinal win, who knows how long they’d be today. Instead we found some Argentinian fans from Qatar, Bangladesh, and India. 

And then we saw something we hadn’t seen yet, Souq Waqif closing down. Super strange. 

We saw some more dancing like we’d seen the other night, and then it was baaaaack to the metro to go baaaack to Caravan City. This may be our last look at Souq Waqif. 

Even Msheireb Station was still quiet, although we heard the same announcement of not going to Lusail Station. 

Then, back to Caravan City, it was time for a bit of Omani street food, and time to sleep. Good night from Doha!