Experiencing the FIFA World Cup in Russia

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Have you ever dreamed of going to Russia? Ever imagine yourself attending the FIFA World Cup? My friend and fellow traveler, Roger Dávila Jara, did exactly that this past summer.

I think Roger’s story is an excellent example of how to get out of your #comfortzone, which is why I am so inspired to share it with you all here. He fearlessly followed his passion and dove in to a completely unfamiliar place with an entirely different language, alphabet, and currency.

Read on to hear Roger’s story about experiencing the FIFA World Cup in Russia.

If I’m going to be honest, I have always had many hesitations visiting Russia. As an American, I feel like so much of our news and politics unfortunately sheds a negative light on the country.

For many of us, there are a lot questions about Russia and even worries about safety. After sitting down with Roger and hearing his stories, I gained an entirely new perspective on the country, its culture and the people, which I am excited to share with you all in this post.

If you don’t know already, the FIFA World Cup is the largest soccer (or football, as it’s called in most countries) tournament in the world. Roger, who is Peruvian-American, has been a fan of Peru’s team for as long as he can remember.

Back in 1997, it was the closest Peru had been to qualifying for the World Cup since 1982 – but we lost to Chile. As a kid, I remember how much I was crying and how sad everyone was about that loss. That was the day, when we lost, I became a fan of the Peru team.”

In fact, no other country has gone longer between World Cup appearances than Peru. After 36 years, in November of 2017, it was announced that Peru qualified for the 2018 World Cup! The country broke out in celebration immediately the next day. The government even made it a national holiday!

The people of Peru love this sport!

Without further ado, here’s my Q&A with Roger about his experience at the FIFA World Cup in Russia:

Q: What inspired you to go to Russia for the World Cup?

When Peru qualified for the World Cup in November, that was the day I knew we were going to Russia. I told my brother, my cousins, my aunts, my uncles… “We’re going to Russia.” Nobody believed me. It’s such a big thing – going to a country you don’t even know.

But I said, “You know what? I’m still going.” So that’s when I thought, it’s possible. It started to materialize, but first we needed to get tickets.

Q: How did you secure your tickets for the World Cup?

The FIFA ticket process was crazy. It’s separated by three phases before the actual event between November of 2017 and June 2018.

For us, we found out Peru was in the World Cup in the second phase, so we were already trailing behind on finding out how to get tickets to the games.

Tickets are hard to come by. We wanted to be sure to go to at least one Peru game and one Colombia game, but the Colombia game that was available was way out in the middle of Russia.

So, we entered the third phase, which is set up like an online queue on the FIFA website. You have to wait your turn – some people wait hours, some people don’t get their tickets.

Q: How did you go about getting the tickets for the games you wanted?

I had five computers and three tablets open at midnight to see if we could get a really good place in the queue… and we got lucky.

Lo and behold, my dad’s computer had only a 15 minute wait time. Everyone else’s was like a 45 minute wait or more — it’s literally a lottery. I was rushing on the computer, heart racing, trying to click fast – because there’s other people who are also online as you.

And we got the tickets we wanted! Peru vs. France and Colombia vs. Poland.

I was celebrating – jumping down – at 2 AM at the morning. I think I only slept for two hours. For sure we were going to Russia now!

Q: How did you budget for the trip?

Between all the cities we went to in Russia and also traveled to in Europe afterwards, we spent a total of $2,200 – including airfare and Airbnbs. I was proud of that – people were spending like upwards of $5-6,000. It’s possible to make this even lower.

Q: How many months in advance did you book your flights and hotels before the tournament in June?

We booked our entire trip in early May. We got our flights ready go and we stayed in Airbnbs for the entire trip – Airbnb exists in Russia, too.

The Airbnb hosts were totally hospitable. They knew that the influx of people going into the country were English speakers, so they were able to help us out with everything.

Q: Any delays or bumps in the road during your trip?

Well, on our way to Russia, we were supposed to fly from London to Istanbul and then go to Moscow. However… we missed our connection to Istanbul.

We spent a couple hours exploring London and actually the same day we arrived, England played a game in the World Cup, so we were like… We need to check this out. As soon as that game was over, we were like, let’s get out of here — we need to catch our flight. But it was out of Stansted instead of Heathrow. This was our first day!

We overestimated our time. We were using a rental car and planned on dropping it off there – but it was in the middle of nowhere. Our flight was leaving at midnight and we got there right at 11pm…. check-in was over!

Q: What did you end up doing?

So, we found another flight to get to Moscow with a layover in Genoa, Italy. London to Genoa for three hours, and then from Genoa to Moscow was a three hour flight. We finally got to Moscow at 6pm.

Q: Once you made it to Moscow, did you find the public transit easy or difficult to navigate in the city and through the rest of the country?

As soon as we got there, we were trying to figure out how to order a taxi. But the taxi system in Moscow is really easy, and they have Uber there and they also have their version of Uber called Yandex taxi.

Transportation is really good, plus everywhere we went in Moscow and Russia – everyone used Google Translate. We didn’t have any issues translating with others, and even found some Russians who spoke Spanish, too.

I learned a couple Russian phrases, too, and my theory is if you know how to speak a little part of it – they’ll know you’re trying.

Q: How did you travel to each game?

It took us a whole day to get to our first game – Peru vs. France in Yekaterinburg. It’s a 28 hour train ride. The whole scenery when you look outside the train – it’s beautiful.

There’s types of vegetation and greenery you don’t see anywhere else in the world, and you get to see how big the country is.

Q: So tell me about experiencing the game!

For Peru vs. France, the stadium seated 45,000 people. I kid you not: 40,000 were Peruvians. Red and white. Everyone was dressed in our colors.

Maybe 5,000 French folks were there. Just recently our fanbase – the Peru National Team fanbase – FIFA gave us an award for the best fanbase for this season. It’s literally called the “Best” Awards. I got to be a part of that!

We went full on, full force, singing all the songs. Happiest day of my life! I was so excited. We were lining up to try to get our face painted, mingle with everyone…. everyone was just so ecstatic to be there.

Even before the game started, we heard a roar from inside the stadium. We started hearing people sing one of our national anthems, Contigo Peru. We looked at each other and we were like, We’ve got to get in there.

We ran up the stairs and got into our seats and started singing right along.

Q: Who won the game?

We lost, unfortunately, we lost to France. It was 1-0 and we played our hearts out. And, France ends up winning the whole World Cup.

So, we can safely say, we got to see the champions. People started crying, people were so sad about it. But I was so happy to be there.

There were Russian fans standing behind us who were supporting Peru – and as a thank you, after the game was over, I took a picture with them. I was sad but, I had a smile on my face. T

his is what I had waited for my entire life! I told them, Thank you so much for rooting for us.

Don’t cry – because against all odds, our team made it to the World Cup.

Q: What were a few favorite things you discovered in Russia?

All our airplane flights were consistently on schedule, right on the dot. We even landed 40 minutes earlier than expected. The best!
The black burger. It’s a burger covered in black squid ink. Even the buns are tinted in black ink!
Vodka and beer. Russians love beer just as much as vodka. The vodka was really good there! You have to drink it straight, though – don’t mix it with anything, otherwise Russians will look at you really weird.
Sushi was really good in Moscow. We went to a 24-hour sushi restaurant that had a great review on Yelp – and oh my god, it was incredible.

Q: Do you have advice for travelers interested in going to Russia?

Don’t be afraid of the unknown that you see in front of you. A lot of us are afraid of the unknown… “What are these strange letters? What’s on these billboards?” I was prepared for it, but no matter how prepared you are, you’re still not going to be prepared, which ends up being a great thing. You lose that fear of the unknown once you get there and start learning about the culture.
Throw all our misconceptions out the window. Russians are not the people you hear about on the news and see on TV. They’re really friendly and will help you out. We were looking for an electrical adapter at a grocery store once, and a woman overheard our conversation in English. She literally went up to her house to get a spare adapter, and gave it to us to keep for free!

Q: How do people usually react when they hear you’ve been to Russia?

People are surprised when they hear I went to Russia. Here in Los Angeles, I never get a negative reaction though. It’s just surprise.

I see so much stigma against Russia these days – which I threw out the window before I even left for our trip.

Here in America, people see it as ‘they’re the enemy.’ But at the end of the day, the people over there are essentially like us — they don’t really care about all that.

They actually love American culture. I met a guy on a train who couldn’t stop saying, “Oh I love California! Surfer!” At the end of the day, they don’t hate us… we shouldn’t hate them.

All it takes it talking about it.

Q: Would you go back to Russia?

Yes – I would still visit even if it wasn’t during the World Cup time. I just love the people there.

Whatever misconception you might have about Russian folks – they’re really the nicest people you could ever meet. Really hospitable. That’s why I would like to go back.

There’s so much more I need to explore. Moscow’s a big city, and all the Russian cities have such different cultures. In Kazan (where we saw Colombia vs. Poland), the people practice Islam. Yekaterinburg is also so different. I need to still see St. Petersburg. Russia is big!

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Thanks again, Roger, for speaking with me and sharing stories about your incredible experience at the World Cup in Russia!

Questions? Comments? Please feel free to send me an email at jen@jenontherun.com or leave a comment below. For more travel tips & advice, check out my post on the Top 10 Must-Have Travel Essentials.

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