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The following takes place between Tuesday, 7.25.2006 and Wednesday, 7.26.2006
This here is the Stadium Media Center (SMC) in Dortmund's Westfalenstadion.
This is the SMC's Ticket Distribution Center. Every SMC will have long queues here. It was a problem for journalists who were on the waiting list. Some people try to cut the queue for a match ticket, they have no manners but the organizers didn't do anything about it either. In the future, FIFA should do a better job handling journalists on the waiting list. There's gotta be a way to avoid those queues, the pushing and people trampling on each other.
Above is another image of the SMC in Dortmund.
To be continued...
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The following takes place between Friday, 7.21.2006 and Tuesday, 7.25.2006
This is what the Stadium Media Center (SMC) looks like in Stuttgart's Stadion Gottlieb-Daimler. It was June 16, an entertaining Group C match between the Netherlands and Ivory Coast. All SMCs are equipped with dozens of desks for journalists, a bunch of volunteer staffs for media services, a city help desk (for hotels, transportation and city info), televisions, and a cafe. Well, we had to pay for the meals served at the cafe, but it was cheaper than the ones served inside the stadium.
The thing that bothered me most was the internet access. We had to pay for our own LAN or Wireless access, which costs 460 euros if you want the entire package throughout the tournament. That's a major rip-off! It also costs 290 euros for all Group stage matches, or 170 euros for broadband internet access per match. To have an ISDN telephone connection at the media stand you'd need to pay 250 euros. Man, what a rip-off. The funny thing is, I was actually gonna go for it. I was about to get the 460 euro deal, broadband internet for the entire tournament, and my credit card saved me from doing so. They wouldn't accept cash, and since my Standard Chartered Gold Visa was already over the limit, I couldn't get the damn internet. 
They did have a few laptops that could be freely used to surf the internet, but all you could do was surf and print the pages. That's it! That also means you can't access your Yahoo!, Hotmail or Gmail accounts, and you can't even save things to your USB thumb drive. They blocked all the other possibilities. So in the end, I would send my news from my apartment in Berlin, or an internet cafe. The deadline was 7:30 p.m. Medan time, but getting my reports sent on time by e-mail was never really a problem.
To be continued...
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The following takes place between Thursday, 7.20.2006 and Friday, 7.21.2006
The accreditation itself gives me access to the Public Area (Accreditation Zone 3) and Stadium Media Center (SMC; Accreditation Zone 7) in all 12 host cities. A photographer would have an additional Accreditation Zone 1 stamped on their accreditation to get to the field, while a broadcast journalist would get Accreditation Zone 8 to access the broadcast area.
An accreditation does not guarantee a journalist access to get inside the stadium. All photographers, press and broadcast journalists must apply for a media match ticket through FIFA's Media Channel at media.fifaworldcup.yahoo.com -- this media ticket will allow access to get into the press tribune inside the stadium (Accreditation Zone 6). Journalists are given a deadline to request a match ticket. If they're successful, then a notification e-mail tells them to pick it up at the SMC. If not, you'll be put on the waiting list.
Sometimes I got a media ticket straight away, but sometimes they'd put me on the waiting list. That was alright. For the matches where I was on the waiting list, I'd go to the stadium anyways. Most of the time they'd have extra tickets for journalists. Usually, I'd get a ticket because some journalists cancel their ticket in the last minute. Either that or they don't show up at all. Even during the England games where I'd always be on the waiting list, I'd show up anyways and later get a ticket. England and Brazil were the most popular teams among the media.
To be continued...
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The following takes place between Wednesday, 7.19.2006 and Thursday, 7.20.2006
The picture sucks. First of all, they only used what appeared to be a cheap webcam. There's a row of 4 computers for journalists to take their photograph. Behind each computer there's a volunteer staff (mostly young women) to handle the pictures which is then sent to a printer desk where the journalist will pick up their accreditation.
I didn't have to wait long for my number to be called up. They tell me to sit down and face the camera, but that's about it. I wasn't ready to take it and the lady didn't even tell me when she took it (which explains why there's no smile on my picture). By the time she finished, she tells me that she's already taken three shots. I was like, "That's it? We're done here??? That was quick!" But she tells me that out of the three she took, she'll pick out the best one. So I was like, "Okay!"
Within minutes, the accreditation was issued to me. By the way, I did this on the day after my arrival in Germany, at the Media Accreditation Center in Frankfurt's Waldstadion. After taking my picture, they called me up to pick up my accreditation, along with a 160-page media guide and a small booklet about the accreditation. I was saying to myself, "Not bad at all. Good service, but my photo could've been better. Thanks anyway!"
To be continued...
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The following takes place between Tuesday, 7.18.2006 and Wednesday, 7.19.2006
Many events were held at the Adidas World of Football in Berlin: Gerd Müller presenting the Golden Boot trophy, Franz Beckenbauer presenting the Golden Ball trophy, and the adidas +Challenge (a 5-a-side football tournament between the world's greatest under 15s and under 17s football players representing 41 countries). One impressive event came from the Adidas Juggling Team: Jacek (Germany), Youssef el Badey (Netherlands) and Claudia (Brazil).
Jacek holds the world record for juggling the ball with his head 173 times in 30 seconds. Youssef el Badey has travelled all over the world showcasing his juggling skills, and is now a professional futsal player in Belgium. As for Claudia, she's the only woman to be in the record books for her juggling talent. Through the streets of Rio de Janeiro, Claudia juggled as far as 14,8 kilometers in 4 hours and 40 minutes without dropping that ball. She's also known to take off her shirt without the ball reaching nowhere near the turf, as pictured above. To top it off, Claudia performs a set of push-ups with the ball tucked behind her neck. It was a sight that caught us men drooling, and cheering hysterically.
To be continued...
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