Football

When we scheduled our visit to Bali for Phill’s birthday, Eric consulted a calendar and realized that the NFL Super Bowl would be airing not too long after we got there. Unfortunately, his favorite team, the Dallas Cowboys, did not make it to the big game, but he still wanted to figure out a way to watch it from abroad, especially after being able to figure out how to watch the opening weekend in Budapest.

Luckily, it turned out to be pretty easy. We were staying in the resort town of Seminyak, and the main street was filled with quite a few tourist restaurants so he figured at least one would be showing the game. With the time difference, the game started at 7:30 on Monday morning – s the phrase “Super Bowl Sunday” is inaccurate!

Eric woke up early and walked out to the main street. After a few blocks, he saw the Nirvana Burger Bar, which had multiple big screen tvs and plenty of people watching. He found a table and ordered a papaya juice – it just seemed too early for alcohol.

One downside of watching abroad was that he didn’t get to see the commercials! The Australian channel was simulcasting the American feed for the game action, but the commercials were all low-budget Australian ones. He also missed the halftime show; instead, they just rebroadcast the Good Morning America pre-game show, so he was left wondering what all of the social media references to sharks and lions was all about!

We had already booked a day trip to the Bukit Peninsula leaving at 10, so Eric ended up missing the second half and the exciting end to the game. But he still is happy to say he was able to experience watching the Super Bowl in a foreign country!

As you may know, Eric is a pretty big sports fan. He knew that coming on this trip would limit his ability to follow his favorite teams back in the US, but he still would like to try when possible.

Eric’s favorite sport to watch is football, and his favorite team is the Dallas Cowboys. We were in Budapest on the first Sunday of NFL games, so he researched where it might be possible to watch the game. We were on our way to a British pub that might have the game on when we stumbled onto something even better: a Hungarian American sports bar! We knew we were in the right place when we saw that it was called “The Endzone” and that there were people in NFL jerseys outside. Here’s a website for the bar (in Hungarian): http://www.endzonebbqpub.hu/

It wasn’t just Americans in the bar either… we did meet one, but there were quite a few fans speaking Hungarian as well. The favorite team of the bar seemed to be the Giants. Maybe it is because Europeans seem to really like New York.

We ended up leaving at halftime because it was after midnight, and the Cowboys were playing terribly. It was still a fun first experience of watching the NFL in a foreign country!