Think, Laugh, Cry #47

Tens of thousands of foreign soccer fans descended on America expecting hostility and found Waffle House, Buc-ee's, and Walmart instead

THINK

A German soccer fan named Freddy walked into a Waffle House at one in the morning somewhere in the American South, ate a small mountain of food, and reported back to the internet that it was great, the prices were fair, the staff were friendly, and that he would absolutely be coming back. Ten out of ten. By then he had already stood inside a Buc-ee’s and typed, in something close to awe, that he could not believe a gas station could be that big.

Elsewhere in the country, fans from Morocco were filming themselves in the cereal aisle of a Walmart, stunned by the sheer wall of choices, and a generation that grew up on neighborhood markets was wandering American supermarkets the way earlier tourists wandered cathedrals. Somewhere along the way, Walmart quietly became the unofficial attraction of the tournament. Nobody planned that. Nobody could have.

And almost none of it was supposed to happen.