Life-long soccer fan at World Cup for fourth time

By Mary Zielinski
For Galen Graber of Wellman rooting for the home team at the World Cup soccer tournament meant alternating between Brazil and the United States. Born in Indiana, Graber spent a decade, starting at age 10, in Brazil with his siblings and missionary parents. He not only learned the languages (Portuguese and Spanish), but also became a soccer fanatic, both as a player and a fan.
“I grew up with it,” he said, noting he played in high school and college (Goshen College in Indiana where he met his future wife, Ruth Brenneman of Wellman). He stressed that “It is a very nuanced game with considerable complexity.”
This year, the 2010 World Cup in Johannesburg, South Africa marked the fourth time Graber has been at the games and was a trip that proved the most difficult “in logistics and costs.”
Aside from “being expensive to get there,” he found that prices for lodging in Johannesburg had skyrocketed (a guest house room went from $51 during the normal season to $730) and figuring out public transportation to the stadium proved elusive.
But none of that took away from the joy of seeing 14 top flight soccer games in 18 days, encountering a multiplicity of languages and cultures, and adding one more continent to his goal of visiting all seven (he has three to go).
His first tournament was in 1994 with the USA as host and Brazil the first place winner. In 1998 he went to France where the French won, followed by Brazil in second place, and 2006 saw him in Germany where Italy won. While he did not see the final matches in South Africa where Spain won, Graber was not disappointed in any of it, even if it took six hours by car to get there.
When it came to tickets, he had bought well ahead, going through the United States Soccer Federation, of which he is a member. As expected, tickets for the first games tend to be far more reasonable, like $80 versus as much as $800 for the finals.
Although it “was suppose to be possible” to get to the Johannesburg stadium by public transportation, Graber was unsuccessful. But in the process he “met a wonderful Indian couple who drove me around for five hours as we tried to figure out how to do it. We never did.” He added that “there was suppose to be a shuttle system.”
He also found that many of the visitors, when not at the games, were very interested in visiting the area’s museums and cultural activities, especially the Apartheid Museum in Soweto, the area which had been the center of heavy and deadly riots in the 1970s.
For himself there was the experience of the restaurant, Carnivore, which offers only meat, but that includes Zebra, crocodile, impala and antelope, as well as the more convention beef and lamb. The more exotic meats are served as spigots. And no, he said, they did not all taste like chicken.
On the oher hand, there was a lot of “normal” food including McDonald’s.
“There are some 10 million people in the Johannesburg area,” he noted.
Although English is very much a main language in South Africa, Graber often heard others including a number of the tribal languages.
“It is very much a mixture of cultures and languages. Actually, if you have ten languages, there are ten cultures.”
As for travel, other than the US, Europe was the easiest (“go by train”) where he found the French were helpful as he tried speaking their language, “using my phrase book and the Germans fine since he also has German as a language.
Hower, travel for Graber is virtually a way of life since he has been a financial aid consultant for 40 years and now is with with Noel-Levitt in Iowa city.
“They have 200 clients,” he said, explaining they deal with colleges and universities, public and private all over the country, helping them set up financial aid programs, including merit scholarships and to meet other goals.
“It really helps with my frequent flyer miles,” he laughed.
Did he ever feel threathened, given South Africa’s history?
“No,” he said, adding, “If you handle yourself with confidence, like a world traveler, and move with a sense of purpose, you will be fine. The body language also speaks for you.”
There is a final thing he will remember very well: the vuvuzela, a plastic horn that the audience members used constantly at the games. With some 90,000 doing it at once, “it was like a constant buzz. Just noise.”
Of course, he is getting ready for the next tournament in 2014. Because it will be in Brazil, for Graber it will be a kind of homecoming, and he plans to take his family along.