These things are so LOUD! Yesterday, before the Italian game, the three Italian places in the little pedestrian zone (two restaurants, and the café where I sometimes stop on my way home from work) had put up flags and flatscreens and were warming up for the game. They were having a vuvuzela-off with merely three or five of these things.

The noise was deafening and completely drowned out the cheerful Bollywood music from my in-ear earphones.