Night Celebrations on Tverskaya
On the evening of the quarterfinals of the European Championship, I was providing a "Moscow By Night" tour for my current clients, four ladies from Seattle in the USA. We started our tour right before the game at 10:30 p.m. local time. Of course, I wanted to hear this game and asked my clients if they wouldn't mind if I turned the radio to a very low volume to be able to hear if the Russian team would win the match in Basel. After our team beat Sweden on June 18th and went into the quarterfinals of Euro-2008, it was already an historical event of the last twenty years. This would be difficult because the Dutch team was the favorite to win.
Roman Pavlyuchenko's goal at the 56th minute of the game gave hope to the millions of Russions who watched the game this night that we would have a chance to win. I remember screaming after the goal, "Wow, goal, unbelievable!!" My clients were in the same festive mood, too. As my clients and I toured the most famous sights of Moscow at the night and I told them the historical facts for each sight, I was becoming more and more curious about the outcome of this game! There were still several minutes remaining until the end of the game and it seemed that we almost won, but then the Dutch player, Ruud van Nistelrooy, scored the tying goal in the 86th minute.
Then while there was 30 minutes overtime in the game, we almost finished the night tour and proceeded to visit the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. After seeing the panorama of Moscow Kremlin from the Patriarchy Bridge, we were returning back to the car when we heard the excited screams of the young people by the river. On the car radio we heard that at the 112th minute, Torbinski and then Arhavin made our hopes and beliefs come true --- Russia won 3:1. At the end of the game when we were almost finished with the night tour near St. Basil's Cathedral, we saw thousands and thousands of people coming into downtown Moscow to greet and celebrate with cheers of "Victory!"
Many people came out onto Tverskaya Street on this night with our national flag of Russia. It seemed as if the entire town was outside celebrating! Horns were honking everywhere from Kaliningrad to the far east of Vladivostok. It was the most exciting evening ever for our nation and now we are hoping to win the semifinals against Spain on Thursday, June 26th in Vienna. ROSSIJA VPERED!!! (Eng: RUSSIA GO AHEAD!!!).
Local time - 2:13:05 - about 1 hour after the historic game. Thousands of people came onto Tverskaya street (downtown of Moscow) at night to greet each other with important victory of Russian national team over Holland in European football championship Euro-2008 - we in semifinals - great victory and important event in Russian football during last 20 years!
Traffic on Tverskaya street stopped for the whole night. You could see Russian flags everywhere, people started to walk around, between cars and hag each other with greetings of Our Victory. They told a lot of pleasant words about our team and Hiddink, Our Trainer from Holland, who became in Russia already as National Hero and almost everybody exclaimed slogan "Rossija Vpered!!!" (Eng: "Russia Go Ahead!!!"). The slogan is very popular this year and currently interpreting as the National Strategy of our state.
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