Thousands of Dutch and Swedish fans march to Houston Stadium ahead of World Cup match

Thousands of fans from across the world — representing two teams in the FIFA World Cup — marched across Houston for miles to make their way to NRG Stadium.

The match ended with the Netherlands beating Sweden 5-1.

Dutch fans from the Netherlands went on their world-famous "Oranje Fanwalk" ahead of the match, led by the Orange Bus, which has been touring across Texas for the past week.

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Just minutes into the walk, Paul van Duijvenvoorde, a Dutch traveler and a fan of the Netherlands soccer team, said this was the hottest fan walk he had ever been on.

"This is crazy," he told Houston Public Media, marching across from Roberts Elementary School, sporting an orange Netherlands jersey with a curly orange clown wig. "I won't take my shirt off, but I'm soaked. It's totally crazy."

Other Dutch fans were decked out in any orange costume they could find. Two fans were spotted with orange traffic cone-styled hats on. One fan wore a Fred Flintstone costume with an orange wig, as though from a Troll doll. Paul Hirschel and Caroline Dessing, two Dutch fans from Rotterdam, were dressed as orange variations of the Statue of Liberty.

"We thought Lady Liberty stands for democracy, for freedom, for international friendship," Dessing said. "And those are all the things that are very important to us and to the Dutch community of football lovers."

The march began outside of Rice Stadium, about a two-mile walk down Greenbriar Drive. Along the way, Rice Village residents cheered the march along. Firetrucks sprayed water on some of the fans to beat the heat. Many of the fans walking along the way remarked on the heat at one point or another — including one who was overheard saying, "A sparkling rosé sounds divine right now."

Appropriately, many Dutch fans stopped at the Dutch Bros, a coffee shop across the street from the university.

Leading the way was the iconic orange bus, which was transported from Europe to the Port of Galveston earlier this year. It traveled to Dallas for the Netherlands' match against Japan on June 14 before returning to southeast Texas.

Aboard the orange bus, Netherlands fans hyped up ahead of the match to the tune of the team's unofficial hype song, Snollebollekes' "Links Rechts." The song is in Dutch; Houstonians, though, mumbled along to the unmistakable melody.

Many of the fans were from across the globe, but a great number of them were Houstonians looking for a taste of international excitement. Some just did the march to say they did, peeling off when the crowd reached NRG Stadium. Others, like Noe Contreras, had tickets to see the match.

"Seeing all the cultural fusion that we're seeing here, it's amazing, honestly," he told Houston Public Media.