Today we had one of our first sleep-ins for the holiday and then headed into Zurich on the train to visit the FIFA museum.
The museum was opened in 2016 and has around 3,500m^2 of space inside.
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Exterior
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We tried to enter but were stopped as we had a backpack and camera case. Turns out we needed to get a locker - They accepted 1 Euro or 1 CHF (Swiss Franc) coin, or we could get a token from the front desk. Each locker was labelled with a players name - we got Francescoli, a former Italy player. Cameron wanted this one:
Once we got inside, the first exhibit was the Rainbow of shirts - a row of all of the National team's most recent shirts (including Women's world cup):
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| The Matildas represented Australia |
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| Sweden |
Some of the rainbow:
The first floor also contained a summary of the world cups:
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| The outside of the Rainbow of Shirts shows supporters of each country |
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| Australia |
After finishing up in the top area, we headed down to the lower floor.
This floor started with a glass circle of memorabilia, including original minutes and rules and some original international caps and referee equipment:
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| Referee patches |
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| International Football Association Board (IFAB) Minutes, London 1913 |
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| Rules revisions, Stanley Rous, London 1936 |
The next section was a long curving room that contained a section for each of the FIFA World Cup tournaments, with an original poster and some memorabilia, a selection of interactive displays, such as a referring game and, most excitingly for the boys, the FIFA World Cup.
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| One of the exhibit walls - The FIFA Women's World Cup |
Footballs through the years:
In the centre of the room was a list of players in each championship World Cup team with signatures (pins on the list marks that that player had signed)
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| Shirt Display |
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| Sample of sears from various stadiums around the world |
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| Mascots |
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| Cameron trying the referee game - need to view footage and decide what the ref's call should have been |
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| Tom starting the referee game |
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| Cameron re-enacting the South African 'Tshabalala' dance |
At the end of the hall was a collection of other FIFA trophies such as the U21s, Futsal (Indoor soccer) and Beach Football
The final exhibit on the lower floor was a cinema showing a set of highlights of all the World Cup games.
After that, we headed upstairs to a large open area. This section hosted an area on FIFA video games and ESport tournaments as well as the interactive FIFA Pinball area:
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| Top floor |
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| Memorabilia |
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| Selections of old balls from around the world |
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| 1895 Football moneybox |
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| Old Soccer board game |
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| The boys trying an old FIFA game |
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| Replicating(?) the celebration |
The next area was the FIFA Pinball. The kids scanned their tickets to be given a random player name, Tomas was Mena, Cameron was Ramires. Despite what the pictures may look like, the area was packed. The average wait per game was about 10-15 minutes. Most of the older kids and adults could complete the games in a minute or so, but there were lots of young kids who couldn't kick hard enough to trigger the events so they would continue kicking for 5 minutes while the parents laughed and everyone else had to wait. This was a huge problem on the 'Free Kick' where a young kid tried for 5 minutes without managing to get enough power to knock down a single target and so just kept going, or the 'Corner Kick' where a young girl couldn't get enough power to round the corner, so just kept kicking, the ball would roll back and she'd kick again.
Then there were the people who couldn't read the rules, tried to start games with cards that hadn't been registered or tried to push in. On the corner kick, Cameron was on his first of three shots, when a kid and his mum walked up to the ball return and tried to grab the ball out. Luckily Cameron managed to get to the ball first and got a death-stare from the mum, who then realized there was a line of about 15 people waiting. The final event needed the player to have completed at least one of the other events before they could play (they got one ball per game completed), A mother with two children was in front of us. At first she held the barcoded ticket too close to the scanner so it couldn't scan. Then the first ticket came up as unregistered. She only spoke German (the message on the screen about it not being registered was in German) and unfortunately everyone around us only spoke English so we couldn't explain. A man tried pointing to the screen but she just got frustrated. Then she tried the second ticket and it popped up the message that they needed to complete another game first. Again, she didn't read the screen and ended up trying again and again for about 5 minutes before grabbing her kids and storming off. So overall the 6 games took us about an hour and a half to complete.
There were 6 events:
1) Goal Kick - the kids needed to kick the ball so it ended on the marked circle and didn't go past. They got 3 shots and the points were tallied:
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| Goal Kick |
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| Too far! |
2) Hat Trick - a Ski-ball like game where the kids needed to kick the ball so that it landed in the top cup for maximum points (15,000), middle (10,000) or bottom (5,000):
3 - Free Kick - There were five targets that lit up, and they needed to be kicked down. If they kicked the lit up target they got full points, every other target was worth slightly less points. In the end they needed to kick the ball past the goalie to finish:
4 - Corner Kick - There was a curved ramp that lead to three targets. Each target is worth a full amount of points, but hitting the same target again was worth reduced points. So the idea was to hit each target once for maximum points:
5 - Dribble - The player was timed in running around a circuit and 'nutmegging' (kicking between the legs of opponents):
6 - Multi-Ball - This game was a big pinball style game that released one ball for each of the previous games the player had completed. Hitting the lit up spinners or the panels was worth points:
Final Scores:
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| Tomas |
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| Cameron |
There were two final areas - the first was a couple of Foosball tables and a chart that visitors could use coloured thread to mark their top football memories and favourite players, and the final section was "Heartbeat" a mirrored room playing some high intensity FIFA moments with fan reaction to evoke the feeling of being in the crowd:
The final stop was the shop, which sold a variety of shirts and souvenirs as well as some signed shirts:
After the museum we headed back to the hotel and Kristine noted the Rhine Falls, which were not too far away, so we decided to head out to take a look. All was well until the border crossing was closed and we had to take a detour. It made the drive quite a bit longer, but it was worth the drive:
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| Sunflower Fields |
The Rhine falls is a waterfall on the Rhine river that is 150m wide and 23m high, above the waterfall is Schlössli Wörth (Wörth Castle) and Schloss Laufen (Laufen Castle):
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