BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Argentina had just sealed its ticket to the World Cup final with a 3-0 victory over Croatia on Tuesday, but most of the Argentines at the party just wanted to snoop around this stranger’s house. .
There was a retiree taking selfies at the corner cafe.
A cleaner leaned out the window of an empty bedroom.
A tattoo artist checked an upstairs clogged toilet.
And the owner of a hotel, who had brought his mother-in-law, was walking around barefoot.
“When I walked in, I started crying,” said Osvaldo Bonacchi, 52, an air-conditioning repairman, starting to cry again on the spiral staircase leading to the carpeted attic, where someone said there was a sauna.
She had lived nearby for 15 years and always wondered what it was like inside.
“Being here is a dream,” he said.
The battered three-story brick chalet in a quiet Buenos Aires neighborhood once belonged to the Argentine soccer hero Diego Maradona, and in this World Cup it has become one of the busiest places in Argentina to watch a match.
A local businessman bought the house last month and opened the doors for the latest games, paying for drinks and more than 1,000 pounds of meat for hundreds of friends, neighbors and strangers who flock around Maradona’s backyard pool to cheer on the national team.
“We started letting people in, and then they broke down and started crying,” said the home’s new owner, Ariel Fernando Garcia, 47, of the first party.
Source: Clarin
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.