Win or lose, the World Cup Fan Fests in Russia are a resounding success

The first time you ever set foot inside, outside or anywhere near a FIFA Fan Fest, you know you're part of something special. You don't need to love football, or even know football to get caught up with the excitement of thousands of fans from around the world who have gathered to watch a game together, to cheer on their teams from a place where their stars won't even get to see them. It's a love that only knows to give.

My first experience of a Fan Fest was in Saõ Paulo, Brazil in 2014. I kept asking myself on the way from the hostel, and through much of the beginning of the festivities, what the hell I was doing there. I had no business gaping at a giant screen among a crowd of Brazilian, Colombian, German and God-knows-what-elsian football lovers halfway across the world trying to follow a game I don't understand. But of course, I did. I was here with my husband, the football fanatic on his dream tour -- a dream he has been reliving every four years since 2006 when he visited his first WC in Germany.

Cut to Moscow, four years later, and where I headed to the first Fan Fest of the season to watch the inaugural game of the 2018 World Cup between Russia and Saudi Arabia. All alone. Bull (that's what I call my husband on social media) was held up by work responsibilities, but since our plans were made, and I don't have a job, I decided to forge ahead and Bull would join me a week later. So I would actually be in Russia when the World Cup started, the way Bull would have wanted it to be. Plus I could not miss out on this, watching the first kick-off along with all those amazing people on a giant screen in a place of local historical and cultural significance.

The transformation is complete.

Are Fan Fests worth the hype?

During every FIFA World Cup, the host country is flooded with fans from participating countries (as well as non-participating countries like India), and FIFA arranges official Fan Fests for visitors and locals in all the host cities. Often these events are held in places of historical, cultural and tourist significance. When Rio de Janeiro was one of the host cities for the 2014 WC in Brazil, the Fan Fest was held at the Copacabana beach. It cannot get hotter than that.

It often translates into solid business for local pubs. In some cases, it was difficult to find a table when a game was about to kick off.

The Fan Fest venue itself is fitted with multiple screens to relay matches, food stalls, official fan shops to buy souvenirs and jerseys, smaller shops for local curios, play zones for children, and lots of open space to sit, stand, jump as the occasion may be. The centre of focus, of course, is a giant screen under which stands a stage for live performances. Visitors are treated to cultural programmes, live bands or DJs to warm up the mood before kick off.

The city comes alive with FIFA Fan Fests

I have visited Fan Fests in six cities in Russia this year, some alone, some with Bull, when we had match tickets in those cities, and the entertainment programmes have appropriately featured everything from a hard rock band to folk dances. My personal favourite was in Volgograd where a group of angel-voiced women enthralled the audience with soulful to peppy songs on a stage by the riverside. We had tickets to Nigeria vs Iceland match that day, and we needed to head out for the stadium, but could we just stay for this one more song?

Bull sat on the steps chatting with some Iceland fans, but I had to join in the (much, much) younger girls who were on their feet swaying to the music. They finished with a short rendition of a Russian song -- Kalinka Malinka -- that seemed familiar to the Icelanders. And surprisingly to me and Bull too, it's the tune to which Vishal Bharadwaj set the Russian themed love song in Saat Khoon Maaf.

Serendipities and just plain aha moments abound in these fests. The Fest venue is usually cut off to traffic, and in most cities, we walked the last couple of hundred metres to the entrance gates. Sometimes those walks transformed into a merry feast by itself. In the European tradition of street performances by artists, musicians hold little concerts outside the gates. The route to the Fan Fest in St Petersburg goes along a canal with little footbridges, and along the sides of the canal were more musicians, some painters, and a man who was painting, printing, spraying, burning a piece of canvas to create magnificent moonlit cityscapes (that's the best description my limited vocabulary can sum up).

There are stilt walkers, pantomimes, street dancers, and at one point in Nizhny Gorod, I saw an eight-year-old rapping. The Fan Fest there is adjacent to a little fortress, and one of the roads out of the venue leads downhill through the city's most buzzing restaurant and pub district. The street, closed off to traffic, transformed into a full-blown fiesta of its own. We passed at least half a dozen live performances, and if memory isn't playing games with me, a Spiderman and an Ironman, but please don't ask what their show was.

We were in search of any local restaurant that would serve the city's famous fish soup, “ukha”. Turns out we would be lucky to find a table, as the England vs Tunisia match was scheduled for later and fans took up every table in every bar with a TV screen. Thanks to a young lady at a mobile store with exceptional English, we found more than a table. It was a gem of a cosy yet classy restaurant with a view of this entire magical street, just one drunk English couple for company. As a bonus, they had ukha!

World Cup is where people happily play into every national stereotype

As supporters of various nations in their team jerseys congregate, the stage is also set for some competitive display of tribal fealty. Banners rise. Mascots appear. Slogans ring in the air. Picture the mad fans in outlandish costumes trying to get camera attention in the stadiums, unrestrained by narrow aisles and stadium decorum.

In Brazil, there were some of the loudest and flashiest fans. Most visiting fans were from Mexico and Colombia. I had assumed it was because they were the neighbouring countries. I was so, so wrong. Here in Russia too, Brazil's green, Colombia’s sunny yellow, and Mexico's green jerseys with giant sombreros make up formidable numbers. The biggest number of fans, however, must have been from Peru.

The team’s historical return to the World Cup after a gap of 36 years was celebrated by jubilant fans who loyally followed their heroes to every host city, to the stadiums and the Fan Fests, through the many misses and the one redeeming victory in Sochi.

And of course, it isn't enough to just show up in team colours. Many fans upped the ante with full-blown costumes and/or a flag draped on their shoulders like a cape. I feel surrounded by superheroes all the time. The most popular way to support the national team, however, is headgear. Coloured wigs, clown hats -- beer hats if you're from Brazil -- and sombrero if you're from Mexico. It is the one-time people happily play into every national stereotype. Unless you're Japanese or African, in which case you just cheer for your team like gentlemen.

After the Japan vs Colombia match in Saransk, we drifted along with the crowds from the stadium to the Fan Fest, and as the day went by, more and more people kept pouring in. They filled up the Fest grounds, the streets outside, and every bar in the vicinity. A majority of them were Colombians in their faithful yellow jerseys, having their beers and settling in for the next game on TV. If I hadn't personally been in the stadium earlier that day, I would never have believed their team had lost.

Of traveling solo and watching out for racists

My fondest memory of clashing with fans has to be from my first day in St Petersburg. I was still alone, wondering if I hadn't been too greedy coming ahead without Bull. The cautionary tales about travelling solo and watching out for racists were still clouding my ability to live in the moment. I had still not figured out the local transport quite so well (over the following days I've learnt to read signs in Cyrillic script, which has changed the equation drastically).

I finally relaxed. I wasn't wrong in coming here, after all. I had to be right here, right this moment, to be a part of this.