So, just how did this trip to Germany come about? It was an idea that was actually originally mooted by the much maligned Martyn McGarrigle, whom was breeded by a man who has since emigrated to Duisburg. Obviously, as a result, Martyn has been to Germany several times and has been able to pass judgement on what a fantastic country it is.
But the plan never really got put into place until my search for employment ended just before christmas Christmas, so organizing a trip abroad for the first time in nearly 3 years was a main priority with my newly found wealth.
And as a new football fan tourist scumbag, Germany was by far away the most appealing destination on the list. I had officially jumped on this nauseous German football bandwagon last season, but unlike most people, this didn't just come about because of the rise to prominence ofthe trendy hipster club that is Borussia Dortmund, following their success in the Champions League. Instead it came more directly as a result of regular watching the Bundesliga highlight show, which is the only good sporting programme that ITV have ever put together. The more this made me research and read up on German football and its culture, the more I read the more I wanted to go out and experience it myself. This was undoubtedly strengthened by Martyn's tales from his times out there, as well as another friend in Neil Moors, a Dover/Dortmund 2CW who regular travels around Europe watching them. And no, he became infatuated after spending time out there during the 2006 World Cup, rather than just bandwagoning on their recent success!
So why was Düsseldorf selected as our destination, rather than one of the more perceived glamorous cities like Munich, Hamburg or Berlin? Well, various reasons actually.
- Fundamentally, it is located in a great region for football. Unlike the North East of England, which gets falsely listed as the footballing hotbed of the country, the Nord-Rhein region of Germany is undoubtedly one of the areas that is best in terms of high density of big football clubs. Within a few hour radius you have (or had) top-flight clubs such as Monchengladbach, Dortmund, Schalke, Levurkusen and Fortuna Düsseldorf - all of whom with the exception of Levurkusen attracted average attendances easily within access of 40,000. Then in the 2nd tier you have the giants of FC Koln, as well as decent sized clubs in MSV Duisburg and VFL Bochum.
This meant they'd be a high percentage of games on in the region to attend. I initially looked at games being hosted on the 11/12 weekend of May, but that date clashed with the possibility of Dover making the play-off final so out of precaution I had to shun that idea. Choice well made in the end, even if I had to witness yet another promotion failure! I have a similar dilemma this year; in that a perfect weekend in May, which I can witness both Hertha and Union play on the same weekend in May clashes with our play-off final. You just never know if these risks are worth taking.
So instead I had to opt for the final weekend of the season, which ended all the way on 18/19th of May for them. The only problem for this was that the only two bundesliga matches on that weekend; Gladbach vs Bayern Munich (which ended up being a thrilling 3-4 scoreline in what was essentially a dead-rubber!) and Borussia Dortmund v Hoffenheim. Both of which were highly appealing fixtures but the difficulty of obtaining tickets would become a long running pain in the arse saga. The Gladbach fixture had already sold out within months of the fixture occuring! And obviously Dortmund are a hugely popular club, even with their 80,000 capacity stadium, so even a nothing match for them against a team at the bottom of the table would be of high interest, particularly given they eventually reached the Champions League final which would only occur the following weekend.
On the Sunday, MSV Duisburg's home fixture against SC Paderborn was a 100% definite fixture to attend, as it's very nearby to Düsseldorf and Martyn has an affection to the club having seen them play several times. - Cheapness. We managed to book our return flights through an easyjet sale, meaning we'd pick them up for a measly £52. To be honest, it absolutely staggers me that you can pay so cheap for something that must cost so much in fuel and the expertise it takes to fly a plane. All while that £52 would not have even covered some return train tickets to Salisbury on our play-off final weekend. True, Düsseldorf is only about 90 minutes away by air, but it still continues to amaze me how cheap it can be to fly away to other countries yet get mugged off for so much by our supposed public services.
And even better, our hotel would only work out at about £18 per person, per night, for what would be in an excellent location, and, as we'd later discover, ridiculously good value for the facilities on offer. So that's three nights and travel to Germany sorted for just over a tonne. Brilliant value. - Düsseldorf has a reputation for one of the best nightlife cities in the country. Their aldstadt (translating as "old town") boasts what is called 'The Longest Bar In The World', which is essentially what it does on the tin; a huge strip that is covered in drinking establishments and restaurants. Whether or not the boastful claim is 100% true I do not know, but it would certainly be able to cater enough entertainment spots for me and my gang of non-league football fan virgins.
In addition to myself and Martyn, this gang of non-league football fan virgins consisted of Russell Laughton, Kieran Dodd and Christopher Hunt, all of whose names any of you regular readers should be familiar with by now. This is a very well-rounded group, as all of us with the exception of Chris are good-looking, young, single lads who will fuck anything that walks on the basis that; A) - It has a vagina and B) - that it has a pulse.
Well, we would if were capable of receiving the consent. It's the thought that counts though, innit?
As with every other single holiday abroad in my life, up until my trip to Barcelona a month later, we would depart from Gatwick airport, which would have been fine by me if we were not flying from the much more inferior north terminal.
Instead of the feeling of pure excitement that had overtaken me in the build up to this trip, I was in an utterly foul mood when I greeted the others outside this terminal, as we had travelled up from different ways. This was because of the useless cunts at the rip-off legal touting website that goes by the name of seatwave.com .
In the few weeks building I had become increasingly restless and worried about getting my grubby mits on some Dortmund v Hoffenheim tickets. Throughout the week I had tried by several possible means of getting my hands on some, which was a task no doubt made extremely more difficult by the need of having to get hold of 5, which was certainly not aided by the non-existent help of the others in the group, bar Martyn. I had tried communicating with several German sellers on an ebay classified ads page, which people who are unable to attend games use to pass on their tickets. Or, in some cases, to just fleece people off. But this was an unfruitful challenge, with many sellers not communicating back to me, probably due to my copy and pasting from google translate. That, or a reluctance to sell to an outsider from a different country.
I began looking into other options. The Gladbach v Munich game was a no-go, with the ticket prices and availability rates being even more of a pain in the anus than Dortmund was. Games from lower divisions were looked into but even Pressuen Munster from the third division were sold out due to an important promotion clash, which was a similar problem from the even further afield VFL Osnabruck. Eintracht Frankfurt v Mainz would have been another good one, but unless you use the quick but expensive trainline, it's a bit far away for a day trip and that was another one that eventually sold out due to Eintracht being on the verge of securing European qualification.
So in the end I had to do what any desperate person does in this situation - sell out any of the few morals and inkling of self-respect you had left by getting yourself mugged off by obtaining tickets through rip-off third party website. The ticket itself was about £40, but seatwaves extortionate postage and 'booking fee' costs took it to over £56 each for myself and Doddy, with the others opting to risk it on the day as Martyn had a few contacts that could have sorted us tickets. £56 may be a ridiculous amount of money to spend on a football match - but I was prepared to pay a premium for what I would consider as one of those lifetime experiences that shouldn't be passed up on. This was a chance to see the Champions League finalists - a young vibrant team that will undoubtedly be slowed ripped apart over the coming seasons as we have already seen with the sale of Mario Gotze and Lewandowski wanting to move as well - in one of the noisiest stadiums in Europe packed with 80,000 mentalists. I had already got a stupidly good deal on the flights and hotel - so paying over the odds here wasn't a problem and I was just relieved to have sorted out the situation.
Well, so I thought, anyway. Despite receiving guarantees from seatwave upon booking that our tickets would arrive in time - there were still no signs of them on the Thursday, 3 days after booking. We were told they would be couriered by Wednesday. Instead we were informed that they were still in Frankfurt. So then a day later - by the time we were due to leave to go to the airport - they still had not arrived. Eventually they turned up at Dodd's house at 12:45PM on the Saturday.
I was absolutely fucking livid about this. Not only would my uncertainty of getting tickets continue into Germany - but I would have to use up my spending money paying over the odds on buying a ticket. My 330 euro spending money turned out to be more than enough needed, thankfully, and I eventually got a refund, plus managed to find a ticket cheaper than I had shelled out with for the first place. But although everything had worked out well in the end, this whole episode - and the whole shoddiness of this website - means that I urge any of you to not consider buying from websites like these - regardless of how desperate you are.
But, alas, my mood began to improve in the build up to boarding the flight in the airport. We congregated in a very shoddy weatherspoons - that was undergoing reconstruction - to kill the time. And to drink a few pissy lagers before we could start on the proper staff on foreign land. £3.70 is something you should never have to part with for a pint of piss (aka carlsberg) but as the cheapest thing on show, it had to be done. And even better, I never had to pay for my 2nd pint - they completely forgot to charge me. I stood there at the bar like a plank for a couple of minutes ready to pay - but I never got asked the question. Being the morally repugnant and petty theft that I am, I graciously accepted this kind donation.
It wasn't too long before we were ready to board our 15:30 flight to the promised land. I hadn't been on a flight since my 2010 LADZ holiday to Ayia Napa, so I was quite looking forward to the weird sensation that is flying a plane. One part of me finds the whole thing quite nerve-wracking and uncomfortable - it feels unsafe even though you know the chances of something going seriously wrong are even slimmer than Dover Athletic's chances of ever getting promoted from the Conference South. But part of me just loves it, I always feel seriously in awe of the job that pilots do. Yes, I know most of their work is computerized, but it's such a strange feeling being thousands of metres in the sky and being able to land flawlessly from such a high distance. I'm sure I'm not the only strange person that possesses these weird, almost philosophical thoughts when they're flying.
But, just as I had perched my fat arse by the window seat - the first time in my life I had found myself lucky enough to get that - we began to notice something wrong. Martyn and Russell, who were immediately behind us in the boarding queue, had not yet surfaced on the aeroplane. Then Chris's phone rang. It was Russell.
"Martyn is unable to get on the flight. He has taken his step-dad's passport by mistake. I'm going to wait here to see if anything can get resolved, but if nothing can I am just going to have to board the flight without him".
Amazingly, as a no-hearted bastard who constantly takes the piss out of him, my initial feeling was one of overriding sympathy. The other main thought though was 'how the fuck do you manage to get that far without having the correct passport'? Surely that's one of those things you religiously check when you go away, to ensure you have it with you at all times. But as it emerged - at the grand old age of 22 - his own mum packed his suitcase and everything else with it. Which gave him a reason to lay the blame firmly at her feet.
But who the fuck gets their mum to pack for them when they're that old? Some might find it sad that people still live at home when they're 21, but that just really takes the piss. And hugely reduces my sympathy as a result.
This provoked, according to Russell, a hugely entertaining, albeit embarrassing, confrontation at the airport with his mum/step-dad on the phone which as you can imagine, contained quite a few fair expletive deletives being shouted down the phone. Which eventually resulted in his step-dad hanging up on him and Martyn throwing his blower against a wall. Easyjet staff, although apparently helpful and sympathetic in the situation, were unable to find him an alternative flight for later in the day, so we had to head Düsseldorf bound without him.
Following research into various alternatives of what to do, he eventually found a flight for the following early morning from Heathrow, meaning that he'd only miss the first night. It also meant that his mum would front the £200 bill that this late replacement flight would cost.
With a solution found, the sympathy naturally soon turned into hilarity - meaning he'd have to take the brunt of a lot of piss-taking not only throughout the weekend - but ever since he has come home as well. It's the sort of thing that could only happen to him and that's why looking back on the whole episode, it was so fucking funny.
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| One of the various spoofs that appeared in the aftermath of the incident. |
Anyway, moving on from the world's biggest idiot. Let's talk planes. Planes are great, aren't they? It was good to get my flying nerves out the way with after a 3 year absence. I always hate the take off more than anything. I love the extreme speed you start running up the runway with but as soon as you go into the sky I hate going upwards and upwards, looking out of the window with unease as the plane tries to settle at a level in the sky. But after a little while, and once you're level, you get used to it. Not that we had too long of a period of settling - with a 1h 25m flying time. Technology can amaze me sometimes - obviously the difference in speeds of a stopping train with a set route are slightly different to that of a aeroplane - but I still find it strange you can get from London to Düsseldorf quicker than you can from Herne Bay to London.
Landing is undoubtedly the most enjoyable part of flying. Going back into low altitude, looking down on the landscape from so high up, then the thrilling bump you get when you actually land. I enjoy it when the pilot gets a round of applause from everyone, despite him only doing his job. It's quite an English thing though, isn't it? Thanking a bus driver or taxi driver at the end of the journey. Well, it seems so from my experiences anyway.
One thing I do hate about fellow passengers though is the mad rush to get off the aircraft as soon as it's landed. Why the desperate rush? Just find it fucking rude when people push out the way just because their lives are so important to wait an extra 2 or 3 minutes. Cunts.
Less moaning now though. We had just arrived into the promised land and without the need to wait bloody ages for baggage to come through, as hand luggage was more than sufficient for us. So, after I stopped for a quick dump we quickly navigated through Dusseldorf's sizeable airport through to its train station - courtesy of some cool shuttle thing that runs being glided through the air. We needed to transfer from Dusseldorf's flughafen bahnhoff (saying this in a German accident was quite addictive) to it's main station, where our hotel would be situated nearby. The cost of a train ticket for this 10 minute journey? €2.50. Much the same as RIP-OFF BRITAIN THEN.
It would also be evident that the chav culture wasn't just restricted to our waters as well. The first people we encountered while waiting for our train were a group of FILA tracksuit clad scruffy Germans who were playing shit music from out of their phones while swilling from beer cans. Which sounds very similar to us on away day. In fairness though - they seemed to be very much a minority breed over there across the 3 days that we spent there.
Quite amusingly, this train was actually delayed by about ten minutes, just moments after I'd been bringing up the old cliché about the Germans and their efficiency. But some stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason - 'efficient' would be a commonly used word and theme throughout the weekend.
Take the train itself, for example. When it eventually rocked up I was in awe of its beauty. I'm not one to masturbate over trains like our friend Josh 'east kent railway' Watkins but I was amazed by this train, that was very high horizontally. This is because it has both an upstairs and downstairs, with seating on both levels. Take note English railways on busy commuter lines. (I have no idea how viable this would be to implement over here but I'll pretend to be outraged and know what I'm talking about anyway).
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| These type of trains are common across Europe, I am told. But I live a very sheltered life and was very intrigued by it regardless. |
Within a short time we had arrived at the main bahnhoff - which is a very large station boasting of around 20 different platforms. The main concourse is pretty large and possessing several shop and food outlets. Because Dusseldorf is of course a pretty huge place - it is the capital city of the Nord-Rhein state, one of the leading German international finance and business centres of the country and has a population of 1.2 million within the immediate urban districts.
Unfortunately I'd been a bit ill prepared though and had forgotten to print out a map for the hotel location so we ended up going through the wrong part of the station. Here I seized the initiative though. I thought 'here we are, in Germany. Shouldn't we spend less time worrying about checking in and not waste any time in getting our first beers in?' so I suggested we go to this pub/cafe we'd stumbled across outside the station while going the wrong way.
And a good decision it was too. My fondness of the country immediately grew after a few brews sitting out in the fresh open air. I love the culture of most continental bars, the way that they are run like a cafe or restaurant. No need to go up and order at the bar, just let a waiter come to you to take orders and then take it out to you. And then pay for the bill at the end.
Obviously this is infeasible to do in the busier bars and pubs. It can turn out to be a bit of a pain in the arse when you're in bigger groups; everyone trying to foot their part of the bill but not having the correct change - but it's a far better and more engaging way of going about things.
One thing that is striking about going to European countries - well, certainly in Germany and Spain within the past few months - is that serving beer in pint glasses seems to be a predominantly British thing. Over there it is all measured in litres - usually served in either 0.4l or 0.5l glasses - a bit short of the classic 568ml we're used to. This is probably for the best though - virtually every beer in Germany is much stronger and much better than most of the popular brands in our country. Lager can also go flat quite quickly if you're not drinking at a quick pace which is why drinking in smaller quantities is sometimes better.
It's a shame we're accustomed to such shit in the UK. My first beer that I sank in the ze Deutschland was a Konig Pilsener - a lovely lager that as we'd soon find out, is very mainstream in that part of Germany. At €2.80 a 0.4l glass it was pretty reasonable value too. I decided I had to try all 3 beers of the menu that I had never heard/tried of before.
Paulaner was next up, which I'd regret, as I'm really not a fan of wheat beer. The fact it had 'weissbier' on the menu might have given away a clue, but as your average thick-as-pig-shit little Englander tourist this didn't clock on. Don't get me wrong, I can appreciate wheat beer, but it is very much for an acquired taste and it's not for me. I think it's more the after-taste than anything else.
The final unheard of beer on the menu was Schlosser. Russell had ordered this before us, which to our surprise, was a dark colour. Over in the UK I'm really not a fan of darker ales, I always try to stick to the lighter, golden ones. But these 'alt' beers as they're known, are bloody lovely. They took a bit of getting used to at first, but most of the ones we tried over the course of the weekend were really nice and went down well.
Another thing I had to do over there was smoke. I'd actually kicked in the glorious habit nearly 12 months ago, courtesy of the aid of electronic cigarettes. But the e-lite cigarettes have began to grate on me and recently I've slipped into bad habits of smoking again at the weekends. I never feel the urge to smoke outside of when I'm drinking but that is when I get nicotine cravings. I really shouldn't as I know they're even worse for me, an asthma sufferer, so I won't expect sympathy if I died of a smoking-related illness. But paying €5 for a 24 packet of cigarettes these days is an absolute novelty, so when that opportunity comes along you have to clog your lungs up. Any non-smoker will not understand the sheer sensation of inhaling a cigarette while supping a nice pint in a beer garden and I would not expect you to. But trust me, there are very few feelings that can be replicated like that.
Then again - even Roussell - who has never touched a cigarette in his life - has a perchance for smoking cigars when he's on the sauce. Quite knows why some non-smokers see this as more justifiable I don't know - but even at this stage he managed to peer pressure Doddy into smoking one as well. His attempts at lighting and smoking it were quite comical to say the least.
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| Doddstopher failing to inhale properly. |
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| Mussel enjoying the first of many alts. |
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| Not sure why he's looking pleased with himself. |
One thing that also impressed us early on was the amount of Fortuna Düsseldorf gear around the city. Of course - this shouldn't be unnatural in the own city's club! But you never underestimated the power of glory hunters in big cities where there isn't a successful football club. Their return to the Bundesliga in 2012-13 after a long absence naturally saw a huge increase in crowds thanks to the glory hunters from around 30k to 45k. But they've never been an historically successful club given the size of city - their most notable achievement in the game was a European Cup Winner's Cup defeat to Barcelona in the late 70's. They even spent most of the noughties in the 3rd and 4th tiers, with average attendances ranging from 5k - 14k during that period.
So to see quite a bit of local pride in the team was nice, main shops and takeaways decked out in Fortuna gear. We even saw a Fortuna sticker in the toilet at Gatwick Airport which was quite a coincidence!
Anyway, after settling into our new surroundings in style, without managing to chuck any bar chairs around, we decided to try and find our hotel. Which quite frankly I was dreading. With the cheap cost and the ability to private room for 5 people, I was expecting some cramped dirty crack-den with bunk beds and unwashed sheets. We'd got briefly lost trying to find it, going down a few of the wrong streets. We'd actually walked straight past it. It was a 2 minute, at max, walk straight from turning left of the main station entrance. An unbelievable location for us as it would turn out.
Even more astonishingly was how nice our hotel was. Swanky rotating doors to get in there. A reception that boasted a fit receptionist and a drinks machine serving plenty of lagers and wines, of which I immediately snapped up a large bottle of warsteiner that cost €3. Even the lift to our fifth floor apartment was super efficient, going at speeds of which our super slow one I lazily take at Sainsbury's to go up one floor can only dream of.
Our room was unbelievable for the amount that we paid for it. I had something along the lines of a travelodge or premier inn pictured in my head. Which for budget hotels, actually tend to be more than reasonable.
But this was something else. A cosy, comfortable 5 bed-room *shag pad consisting of two floors; the downstairs with 3 singular comfortable beds, a decent sized bathroom and a balcony. The upstairs had a king sized bed, a free-to-use safe and a massive wardrobe. We also had free wifi, which, although I find incredibly sad when people go away on holiday and constantly post shit on the internet, was useful for me in the mornings when I'd wake up hours before anyone else because I'm a terrible sleeper. Anyway, the point that for what we paid, and for the quality of location and hotel room, it was an absolute steal. It just goes to show you can travel abroad for a short break without spunking too much money on it.
*Well of course no shagging went on, unless a few of the lads made love to their left hand. That's for their own discretion though.
So to see quite a bit of local pride in the team was nice, main shops and takeaways decked out in Fortuna gear. We even saw a Fortuna sticker in the toilet at Gatwick Airport which was quite a coincidence!
Anyway, after settling into our new surroundings in style, without managing to chuck any bar chairs around, we decided to try and find our hotel. Which quite frankly I was dreading. With the cheap cost and the ability to private room for 5 people, I was expecting some cramped dirty crack-den with bunk beds and unwashed sheets. We'd got briefly lost trying to find it, going down a few of the wrong streets. We'd actually walked straight past it. It was a 2 minute, at max, walk straight from turning left of the main station entrance. An unbelievable location for us as it would turn out.
Even more astonishingly was how nice our hotel was. Swanky rotating doors to get in there. A reception that boasted a fit receptionist and a drinks machine serving plenty of lagers and wines, of which I immediately snapped up a large bottle of warsteiner that cost €3. Even the lift to our fifth floor apartment was super efficient, going at speeds of which our super slow one I lazily take at Sainsbury's to go up one floor can only dream of.
Our room was unbelievable for the amount that we paid for it. I had something along the lines of a travelodge or premier inn pictured in my head. Which for budget hotels, actually tend to be more than reasonable.
But this was something else. A cosy, comfortable 5 bed-room *shag pad consisting of two floors; the downstairs with 3 singular comfortable beds, a decent sized bathroom and a balcony. The upstairs had a king sized bed, a free-to-use safe and a massive wardrobe. We also had free wifi, which, although I find incredibly sad when people go away on holiday and constantly post shit on the internet, was useful for me in the mornings when I'd wake up hours before anyone else because I'm a terrible sleeper. Anyway, the point that for what we paid, and for the quality of location and hotel room, it was an absolute steal. It just goes to show you can travel abroad for a short break without spunking too much money on it.
*Well of course no shagging went on, unless a few of the lads made love to their left hand. That's for their own discretion though.
By the time we had checked in and got changed ready to go out it was already half ten in the evening. The first call of action for us was to find some restaurant to eat in as we were fooking starving, most of us having not eaten since Gatwick airport when boots were selling some sandwiches at some actually reasonable prices.
We eyed up a few places but then eventually settled on some Dubrovnik restaraunt a few minutes away from our hotel, mainly because it also had an English menu which is helpful to us little Englanders.
What's more embarrassing, and does nothing to help shed the ignorant Englander image, is that none of us could remember or work out which country Dubrovnik is actually from. It was only when I came back to England that I realised it was Croatia, as my Dad has holidayed there in the past few years. For some reason most of us thought it was either Czech or Hungarian.
The food was a bit interesting. We were all given a basic salad as a free complimentary starter and as somebody who is commonly known as 'salad dodger', I actually rather enjoyed it. This was in no doubt due to the spicy thousand island style dressing it came served with.
I went for some sort of mince meat kebab roll dish that was served with chips, spicy rice, onion salad and a spicy tomato relish. T'was rather decent actually, even if I don't favour the french fries style of chips that most non-British countries favour. Nothing outstanding, but did the job. Chris and Doddy went for a more exotic dish in the 'jaigersnitzel', which is essentially some breaded chicken in a jaiger made sauce. It looked like a fucking dog's dinner, but I'm informed that it was actually ok.
With complaints of bloatedness coming from a few of the wimps I associate myself with, we embarked on trying to find our way towards the aldstadt... which google maps would estimate on being a 20 minute walk away for us. That was about correct, but took us a bit longer thanks to us naturally going down a few of the wrong streets. And at this stage of the game you don't want to waste valuable drinking time. Next time, just get yourself a cab or hop on a tram and don't fuck about. We eventually found the entrance to this old town, which quite disappointingly seemed quite dead. Over the coming days we found that we had actually been in the quieter end and had not been near the much livilier and more vibrant end of town. But nonetheless we managed to have a pretty decent night.
First of all we rocked up in this very traditional Germany pub that is run in a very unusual manner. All you'd do is walk in there, sit at a table, a waiter would come over and serve you all a half pint of Uerige; an alt beer brewed locally in Düsseldorf. It was the only beer that they served.
And fucking hell, it was a strong tasting one with a distinct flavour. Most of us struggled through it. It was one of them beers that although I didn't particularly like the taste of it, I appreciated its qualities even if it wasn't for me. I'm not sure that makes particular sense, but whatever.
Then next up we found an Irish bar where we would remain for the rest of the evening. Accuse us of being unadventurous, fine. But this was a really good pub with good entertainment and a really friendly atmosphere, that we needn't get our kicks from anywhere else.
When deciding on which beer to buy I was just informed by the fluently-English barmaid (who was absolutely gorgeous to order beers in pils (traditional lager) or alt (darker lager) rather than attempting to read about the beer name. So hereafter I finally managed to master my first German phrase since arrival - "Ein pils/alt bitte".
Like I say, this was a good establishment. We went upstairs which although hot, sweaty and stuffy, had karaoke going on which is always good fun. I was struggling to get into the groove at first but Doddy had no such problems. It only took him one pint before he was up embarrassing himself on stage by singing Oasis's worst song, Columbia. He has an obsession with singing that and cigarettes & alcohol. Fair play to him. He's utterly dreadful, has never hit a right note in his life but he always loves getting up and having a go anyway. His rendition to Limp Bizkit's 'Rollin' was undoubtedly one of the worst things I have ever seen in my life, yet it was hugely entertaining.
What does interest me is how Germans (and other European countries) take such a big interest in our culture, and how seemingly nearly everyone is capable of speaking the English language to a certain degree. Virtually every single song being sung by the Germans were by either British or American artists - which was hugely entertaining in some of their thick German accents. There was one German who was so German he couldn't have possibly been any more German - as if he was a total parody.
But it's strange how little interest we take in learning other languages in our country. Is it just classic little Englander ignorance? Do we just find it difficult to learn other languages? Or is English the most popular and easy to learn language? Probably a combination of all factors.
In fairness, normally at least two of German/Spanish/French languages are taught on the curriculum in most schools but not many students take it particularly seriously. I took up German as a GCSE subject because it was compulsary for us to learn either that or French. Virtually everyone I knew hated German and French lessons and hated the restrictions our school put on us by making us learn a subject we didn't want to do. In fact I took it as so much of a doss lesson that I ended up failing in the subject and being kicked off the course before our exams took place.
I regret that now of course, I would love to be fluent in a different language as for me, there are few more impressive things than the ability to be bilingual. (For example, I was at a party on Saturday where a girl could speak perfect - as far as I know! - Italian, which notched the sexiness rating up by a few marks). But at that age you don't know what you're taking for granted - at the time ripping the piss out of the string of replacement teachers we had while our main teacher was on maternity leave seemed like a far greater alternative. You can't beat the few cheap laughs you get out of your mates by standing behind your 60+ year old weird female teacher with a lisp by standing behind her and mimicking shagging motion.
It didn't help that I struggled at the subject anyway - I've always been much better at the thinking, writing based subjects rather than anything else - which may or may not surprise you.
But I loved it when some of these Germans were getting proper into our music. Naturally, we had to put up with some of the classic shite karaoke songs - i.e anything by Abba, Queen or Robbie Williams's 'Angels'. But whenever anything by Oasis, The Verve or Artic Monkeys came on we were fucking loving it.
The song that they all seemed to go most mental for though was something that none of us had ever heard of before - 'Lemon Tree' by a German music group called Fool's Garden. All the lyrics are complete in English so we naturally assumed it was by an English band. But evidently not. It was really catchy and addictive though, and the main priority for most of us when we got home was to download that song.
My other favourite pastime in this bar (and most other places) was ogling snatch that none of us would ever have a chance of pulling in a million years. I don't want to sound like I'm needlessly having a wankfest about everything German, because although you get fantastic looking women everywhere on this planet - bar Wales and Scotland - their women are particularly special. I remember the lazy stereotype in my early school years that all German women were ugly ginger women with hair armpits and vadges. The type of girls that you used to see in the school textbooks did little to dispel this theory.
But I knew that myth was a myth when I went on holiday to Spain just shy of my 15th birthday. I hadn't been completely ruined by the pies, pasties, and watered down lager that the DAFC-supporting lifestyle kills you with back then and was actually capable of pulling girls. In fact I pulled a very fit one - who I could barely communicate to without the help of her older sister and sister's mate - who became so infatuated with me that she left her boyfriend for me. This was just shy of the early Bebo/Facebook days being widely known and used so we never managed to keep in contact for much long. Which is a fucking shame. I'd love to see how much Laura (LA-OW-RAR) has blossomed since then. Although on the flip side, I'd imagine she'd be mortified on the reverse situation.
So it didn't come as any surprise to me how beautiful some of this crumpet was. There was some absolutely drop-dead gorgeous blond piece who I'd honestly rate as a good 9. I was virtually having to nurse a semi lob-on while
We stayed here until closing time, which was about 2.30-3 ish. We opted against trying to extend the evening by finding a club as Chris was struggling with fatigue, and I was struggling with my guts a bit. I had to release one of my most rancid dumps to date in their poor bogs, of which its well-being I still fear for even today. Think of Hiroshima in shitting terms, and you'd get the picture.
So while it wasn't a wild, unforgettable, THE LADZ WILL NEVER FORGET THIS, type of night, it was still a pretty enjoyable one and an early insight into German culture. It also meant that because none of us were particularly hammered and it was still (relatively) early, we'd be pretty refreshed and fit for a big day in Dortmund once we'd have 6 hours or so sleep.
Not for me though - I am a terrible sleeper and always have been. When I'm really hammered I can just about fall asleep anywhere - pub toilets, train floors, sofas, I even fell asleep while on my knees at a house party and no, I don't know what I was doing in that position either! But generally I struggle to get the recommend 8 hours, mainly because I am so terrible at sleeping in. Once I wake up, whether its just because I need a sip of water or a piss, that means I'm up for good. No going back.
So I was up at 8AM on this occasion, which wasn't ideal but luckily I felt more than fine. I actually used this to seize the initiative by getting washed, changed and explore a bit of the immediate area as I needed to find some deodorant, coke (not of the 'aine' variety,the sugary stuff) and a bratwurst, which was the obvious cultural thing that was on the must try list.
I couldn't find any bastarding deodorant - most of the local shops didn't seem to stock it. Either German men like to smell or its only available in the bigger supermarkets - who knows? Neither could I see any culinary outlets selling bratwurst - apparently it isn't an early morning breakfast item......pah. If food is good then it's good at any time of the day. Is there anything better than a reheated chinese or indian first thing in the morning? No, thought not. Fuck etiquette.
By the time I'd got back to the hotel to wake up the others it was soon time to head back again. I was given the responsibility of meeting Mcpassportgle from the BAHNHOF and directing him to our hotel, which just for the record, had an explicit sex shop next door to it (more on that later). He was actually in fairly high spirits given his disastrous ongoings only 18 hours earlier. I think he was just relieved to actually be with us. And, for as annoying as he can be, I *think* we were all pleased to welcome him, as there's always a story that's unfolding when you're with him. We also required his rare expertise and contacts that would be helping us get tickets.
We were all out of the hotel room at about 10:15, which is no short miracle when you consider how long Chris Hunt takes to get ready. By this time the kebab place over the road had FINALLY opened and it was time to get my hands on some bratwurst. Except I didn't fancy just a bog standard bratwurst. I wanted currywurst, so that's exactly what I had.
Here's my little Englander attitude coming into play again; what I had naively assumed here was that I'd just given a bratwurst to munch on that had been flavoured with curry seasoning. Instead it came in a tray, chopped into several small pieces and was covered in a curry sauce and herb spices. It was fucking beautiful. I doubt I'll spend a better €1.80 in my life. I never actually ate another currywurst or even a normal bratwurst again over the course of the weekend, which is a shame.
With time at a premium, we quickly sought out the 10:40 train to Dortmund, which takes roughly about an hour or so with various stops. That might seem like a long journey for somewhere that is in the same region, but it's easy to forget just how big a country Germany is in landscape!
At the station earlier in the day I had seen loads of Fortuna fans, ready for their trip to Hannover for a vital relegation scrap game for them. Outside the drop zone by a point, they would have to match or better Hoffenheim's result at Dortmund, and Augsborg's home match against one of the poorest teams in recent Bundesliga history; Greuter Furth. So it was a massive day for the club of the city we were staying in, if they wanted to extend their return in the Bundesliga from beyond 1 season.
With time running out to catch our intended train, we attempted to purchase tickets, which would cost €37 for a group of 5, working out at just under €7.50 each. But as the machine wouldn't accept €50 notes we were unable to sort it out in time as machines are the only possible way to buy tickets in German train stations. Lucky escape for us as we wouldn't need them
Here's the thing about Germany rail service; buying a ticket does not seem to be a necessity (if you're not moralistic enough to care about paying for the train service). The whole transport system seems to be entirely based around trust. No station operates with barriers. Ticket conductors, I am told, are very rare, unless you're on one of the high speed rail networks. We did not see one throughout the entire weekend; not on rail, not on metro, nor on the tram. That said, if you're really unlucky to get clocked by one it's a fixed €40 fine on the spot, and they don't have ticketing machines you can buy from like you do over here.
But this is the same thing I hear from pretty much everyone who's ever been to Germany. It all seems to be very relaxed.
Even more so is that German football tickets include free transport to and from the game. The extent of which it applies to seems to differentiate from each person you speak to. The main consensus seems to be that it only includes within the immediate city, which is what Dortmund's shows on the match ticket. Others argue that it can be from anywhere within the state of that club's football team. And some just claim that you can pretty much blag your way anywhere with a match ticket.
It just doesn't seem to make much sense to me. How does it get implemented? There doesn't seem to be any official rules of what time you can and can't stop using them. We didn't travel back from Dortmund until pretty late. When does it suddenly become invalid to use them?
The whole thing is pretty complicated but for one thing it shows me is this; German football is run the right way and prioritizes the fans' needs much more than any over footballing governing body.
Anyway, back on topic. Train to Dortmund. We'd picked up a few snifters for the journey, mine being a diebels (alt) and veltins (scummy enemy Schalke pils). After a few stops away we met one of Martyn's acquaintances, Mirko, a German of Serbian descent, who we'd get to know a lot over the course of the weekend. Even early on it was easy to on with him - a funny bloke who has the sharp, dry wit which seems to be very typical of ze Germans.
He'd be supplying us with a couple of the tickets as his STH girlfriend - who is the actual Dortmund supporter - was unable to attend. He actually supports Duisburg but they attend each other's matches together. That's a true 21st century romance for you. So when he offered two BVB tickets at 50€ a piece, I gratefully, impatiently and possibly, quite selfishly, snapped one of them up. I was just that desperate to get my hands on one that I paid for the first one I had sight of - which actually cost 21€ more than its face value. Whether Mirko was mugging me off or not I really couldn't have cared less, it was just a relief and the over exciting feeling that I'd actually be attending a Borussia Dortmund match finally began to sink in. Although I did harbour genuine feelings of concern that 1 (or more) of the others could potentially miss out on the game. I would have hated that. But if I'm honest, and this will sound incredibly selfish - I would rather anyone missed out other than me.
Mirko was more useful in more ways than one though. It was good to have someone with us who fully knew what he was doing (as some of us need to be spoon-fed) and someone who was bilingual so we had someone to play the third person go between man, which is the role Russell took over in Barcelona a month later.
He soon explained why tramps travel around different trains and at stations, collecting beer cans and bottles from people. I assumed it was just some weird ritual thing and they'd want to drink the dregs out of them. But no - they actually get paid to recycle all these cans and bottoms so they all go round and become super competitive about it. Talk about putting the homeless to good use in a scheme that works well for both parties. Talk about that German EFFICIENCY.
He also said that conductors never bother with trains going to Dortmund on a match day because they know that everyone will just be using a match ticket. And quite evidently, as a club that average 80k attendances, they draw a lot of support in the region from all areas.
We eventually arrived into Dortmund around Midday, after a short delay outside the city (INEFFICIENCY). Arriving into the station concourse at that time on a matchday was a bit surreal. Already it was impossible to not see a sea of yellow and black merchandise wherever you looked and the sheer enormity of this club was already clear to sink in. Amazing. I loved the whole culture of it out there. Everybody just stands outside the station, casually drinking beer from cans and bottles that are readily sold at several kiosks within the station. And the thing is, these beers are so bloody cheap considering they're sold at a station! Some cans of decent beer like bitburger and konig were available from 80cent. I personally had a couple of big bottles of Dortmund Korunder for €1.50.
That's the great thing about it - such relaxed laws to public drinking. There's not any trouble for games like these - people are just there to enjoy themselves and the police let you get on with it without treating you like you're an animal.
Sadly, football fans in our country get marginalised because unfortunately there were, and still are, a minority of dickheads who use alcohol to get fuelled up into provoking violence. That's why we'll never have such relaxed laws, particularly regarding drinking at matches. Not everyone is (relatively) harmless, albeit slightly loud, annoying and boisterous pissheads like we are.
Here we managed to sort out another couple of tickets. Russell, the jammy, tight, peanut-headed bastard, managed to get a face value ticket of €15.50 from one of Martyn's contacts, whom I don't think we saw again after. He'd have to go into the nordtribune stand though - opposite the famous 'yellow wall' 25,000 capacity terrace I would be situated next to. Not that that's a bad thing of course!
Soon after we'd eventually meet Mirko's friend Chris, a heavily tattooed and pierced bloke who had a perchance for cannabis. He'd attend the match with us and drink before and after the game with us too. I think he was the one who sorted about Mcgiggletits a ticket, meaning only Doddy would have to be catered for now.
I amused the pair of them by constantly repeating some deliberately false German phrases that had served me so well in pulling that German girl in my early teenage years.
"Ich habe geshwommen" - I have swimming.
"Lutsche meine schvans" - Suck my cocks. Which apparently translates as me sucking my own dick. No wonder why she never gave me a chewy.
It's a very good ice-breaker, they both found it highly amusing, no matter how often I repeated it. A bit like this blog then. Very repetitive and droll material, yet it is still always a winning formula.
Back to INEFFICIENCY now. It turns out these shameless capitalist bastards, like England, charge you to have a piss at some of the major train stations. 1 bloody euro just to have a piss. Mind you, they do give you a 50 cent off of your next piss voucher, which I found highly amusing. It's still in my wallet, in fact. Prepared for the future.
Chris and Mirko soon led us off to one of the metro stations to take us directly to Westfalenstadion. Inside these metro stations they have kiosks selling beer, even in spite of people not be allowed to carry open beers onto the metro. Of course nobody abides by this, particularly on a train rammed full of BVB mentalist pissheads. We picked a good time, a good train and a good carriage to get on as it happens. There were a load of raucous Dortmund fans making a fucking racket, banging against against the walls and windows, singing lots of songs. They sang an amusing ditty about Klass-Jan Huntelaar that roughly translated to something like;
"He is dutch and he's a cunt. Hunte Hunte Laar"
Which just evolves into a chorus of "Huntelaar, Hunterlaar, gaylord Huntelaar"
And various other derogatory lyrics, which I am informed are rather unpleasant. It's just funny the way Germans singing it more than anything. Manuel Neuer seemed to be the subject of quite a few chants as well, as they're obviously not fond of a player with Munich and Schalke links. And the fact he's a bit of a bellend anyway.
The stadium is pretty much on the outskirts of nowhere. Just one huge fuck off stadium built on the edges of the city with very little else around it. Even so, the short walk through to the main stadium park from the metro station is hugely mildly awe-inspiring.
If the huge sight of yellow and black clad memorabilia everywhere at the station was impressive then it absolute unbelievable on the Westfalenstadion on a matchday. In the build up to kick-off as thousands and thousands supporters populate the area it just sinks in what an enormous club they are.
Over in England there is a lot of scepticism over people wearing club colours. "Ah it's gay - grown men shouldn't wear replica shirts. Casual clothes and stone island jackets are the way forward". It is a view I certainly don't and never have subscribed to - whether that's because of my homosexual leanings I do not know.
But that's the main impressive thing about German fans on a match day. Virtually every single fan was decked out in memorabilia of some sort. Shirts, scarfs, hats and even a lot of people wearing BVB trainers and jeans. I'm not saying that seeing a flood of club colours on a club match day in any other country is an abnormality, but in the case of Germany it seems that 99% of fans are wearing their clubs colours in some form. Which in my opinion, is great.
This is further solidified by how ridiculously busy their main club shop was. I was hoping to pick up a scarf or something but it literally operated on a one-in, one-out policy. And remained that way for ages after the final whistle. Even their replica shirts were still retailing at €59, such is the demand over there. All the other memorabilia stools were so busy with queues I just gave up on getting myself a bit of merchandise. Not that they particularly need the money anyway!
We arrived outside the stadium a couple of hours before the planned 3:30PM kick-off so had plenty of time to soak up the atmosphere and sort Doddy out a ticket. He managed to find one through yet another contact of Martyn's (christ knows where he knows them all from) and only had to pay €30 for the privilege. So in the end the whole panic for tickets was completely unjustified. In fact, there were so many Dortmund fans holding up a spare ticket, indicating they were for sale. I have no idea how much they were expecting to receive for them but they didn't just look like your usual scamming touts. So I think that anyone would be able to go out there tickletless and people to pick one up without being completely ripped off.
We spent the vast majority of this build up just sinking beer from the beer stools, standing around and socializing with the locals. It's a bit different to our bog-standard pre-match ritual in England where we go round and get pissed in a host of pubs before moving onto the ground at 2:45pm. But it's good. It works. I'm not sure what they do when the weather is shit but fortunately we enjoyed warm/humid temperatures through the day.
Only problem is we were all split around different areas of the ground, aside from me and Chris being sat in seats together. We were at the sudtribune end, while Martyn, Kieran and Russ were all scattered around the nordtribune. Mirko and Chris devised a plan to sneak us onto the sudtribune terrace, the 24,500 capacity terrace which is the largest in Europe, and always completely sold out, as that's where they were. They tried getting us through their block entrance but once our electronic tickets obviously wouldn't scan, they were unable to blag us through to the guard. Instead they devised a plan for us to sneak round to that part of the stadium and they'd get us through with their tickets.
Obviously, as someone who is just used to travelling around to dumps with tin sheds built up a drunk scaffolder which masquerade as their main stand, I was quite struck by the sheer size of the ground upon walking through the entrance. I have been to some big grounds in the UK such as the Emirates, Anfield, Wembley, St James's Park and SOL but Westfalenstadion is easily the most impressive to date (although I loved SJP). It's a proper football ground. I'm not sure its just the fact it has two fuck off big terraces at each end, although obviously that's a main plus point. It's really enclosed with low roofs and steep stands which means that the atmosphere there is electric.
One pain in the arse thing, as a one-off tourist, is that they operate a weird policy when it comes to buying drink and food in the stadium. You have to obtain one of these electronic stadium cards, which staff with machines go around and allow you to top up by with a minimum of €10. You then just scan the card once you've ordered. It's quick, it's EFFICIENT, when you're operating a stadium with the vast quantity of people like Dortmund do. It just makes life difficult for the tourist one-off part-time like me. But they should be catering towards their regular customers, not me, so I'm fine by that.
I think you have to buy them from somewhere before the game. Thankfully, by some luck, I managed to obtain one after some random old fella took pity on me not being able to order so gave me one of his spares. Which I duly topped up by €20.
We walked up several flights of stairs (no esculators or lifts like most of these modern stadiums) as our tickets were right up in gods of one of the corners. We drank in our main concourse (Brinkhoff, €3.70) before striking up a conversation with some supporters because neither of us had a lighter. They offered us a cigarette as well as a light, which was very generous of them. We had a very awkward conversation with them where neither parties could particularly speak well in each other's language. Chris was wearing his Dover jacket, which for some reason they were unable to recognize, so we had to embarrassingly try to explain that we play in 6th (joint) tier. They then began to mention that they liked Liverpool because of their whole fan culture with the Kop decked out in scarves and flags, so I had to try and explain the true evils behind that club. "Liverpool ist scheisse und sie sind fotzes" is about as far as I could manage. We then asked them if they had plans to attend London/Wembley the following weekend in which we could just about make out that flights had gone up to ridiculously extortionate prices, and even sharing lifts to drive across the continent was unviable because of the costs. I do not envy the problems that fans of humongous clubs like this have to go through for their bigger games, that's the one thing we take for granted as non-league dogshit.
They were good lads though. Very friendly and kind to us, outsiders. Virtually all Germans across the weekend were. When you're in your primary years you build up a negative perception of Germans purely from what you've been learning about the world wars. It's only once you begin to meet and talk to a lot of them you'll realise they are very similar to us culturally and personality wise. I learned that when we had a load of exchange students study in our 6th form for several months. We had one kid, Bernd, a kid from Cologne I made good friends with who undoubtedly debunked the myth about Germans having no sense of humour. He became very popular instantly.
With 5 minutes before kick-off I was eager to get into my seat and experience the pre match build up, so I made Chris neck his pint down. It turned out are seats were the second highest row in the entire stadium. We were right up in the gods. We were able to see the pitch and all the players perfectly. The only thing we couldn't see was the upper tiers of the nordtribune - because the roof is so low . That's the one downside to the continual expansion the stadium has seen over the years. It meant we were unable to see Hoffenheim's travelling horders, which amazingly was a figure within the 3k region. As expalined early on, it was an enormous fixture for them, but Hoffenheim are such a shit, bankrolled nothing club, who are the antithesis of German football, so even then it was surprising they filled their allocation.
Nonetheless, even without the most ideal seats in the house, it was fucking incredible spine-tingling stuff. Just to the left of us was the yellow wall in all its glory. The noise that comes from that end is unbelievable.
Chris eventually got through on the phone to Mirko and Chris, whom he had agreed to try and sneak round to meet them. Me, being a massive pussy and not wanted to miss much of the game, or risk being thrown out before kick-off, opted to stay on my own where I was. Possibly a bad decision that I'd regret though, as Chris had no problem getting onto the sudtribune.
Still, I had no problems being on my own, it gave me a chance to reflect on it all. I was a bit nonplussed by Dortmund's pre match singing of You'll Never Walk Alone, which seems to be very popular across Germany. It's a great anthem, but it has no relevance to them. It should be restricted to those two of the scummiest clubs in Britain.
Dortmund named a pretty much full strength team in this match of no importance to them, with the exception of Mario Gotze, whom was now mysteriously injured following the announced imminent sale to Bayern Munich. But I'd still get to see the likes of Reus, Hummels, Lewandowski, Blaczakowski and co. Which no offence, Modeste, Simpemba, May and Ademola, is a bit of an upgrade of what I am used to seeing.
This was a pretty strange match. Dortmund, who were never at their sharpest, clinical best, were in full control and never looked in danger of losing the match. Lewandowski gave them an early first-half lead, tapping in from a rebound, which I thought would open up the floodgates having seen some of Hoffenheim's defensive 'performances', which has seen them been rooted in the bottom 3 for virtually the entire campaign. Throughout the rest of the game it only looked like that this would be the case. Blaczakowski missed a one-on-one in the 1st half and then their goalkeeper drew fine saves out of both Grosskreutz and Gundogan in the 2nd, tipping the latter's long range effort on to the bar.
But having found themselves restricted to only one meaningful attack in the 1st half, Hoffenheim suddenly found themselves 2-1 up with 2 penalties in the space of 5 minutes. First of all Hummels carelessly hacked one of their players in the box in the 77th minute, then soon after Weidenfeller brought down their attacker after he'd been rounded which earned him his marching orders.
The result? Two excellently dispatched penalties by Salihovic, the latter one which beat Grosskreutz, who had taken over the gloves.
But the biggest drama was saved into the deepest minutes of injury time. BVB, pushing further and further forward in search of an equaliser found it. The ball broke lose to Schmelzer, who drilled in a shot across the box that managed to evade everybody, including the goalkeeper.
Cue scenes of wild celebration. Hoffenheim, the common evil to everybody, relegated to the 2nd division courtesy of a 94th minute goal. Or was it? Nope. Several Hoffenheim players circled the linesman in anger who eventually caved into pressure, and ruled that Lewandowski, who was miles offside but failed to connect to the ball, was interfering with play.
It was of course the correct decision, but it was fucking gutting to see themselves worm out of the relegation scrap. Due to Fortuna weakly surrendering in Hanover, they ending up occupying the 16th place, meaning they'd be in a relegation play-off against 2nd division giants Kaiserslautern. Which the jammy bastards then duly went and won over 2 legs. All despite Dortmund fans (quite sourly you might argue) shouting "Kaiserslaughter" to the Hoffenheim fans after the game.
So not the best preparation for themselves ahead of the CL final a week later, particularly with the shocking defending for the two penalties. But while BVB were not anywhere at there best, it was a thorough priveledge to watch such a good side. Just watching like how quickly they closed Hoffenheim down and pressed to win the ball back. Fluid, quick-countering attacking passing which real potency to attack, unlike the dull ball-retention bollocks that Barcelona and Spain
To be honest, I spent and equal amount of time studying and watching the sudtribune on in awe. The noise decibels that come out of that end are fucking incredible. And, quite bizzarely, the noise levels began to rise even louder when they went behind. I know its easier to back the team when there's little pressure or anything riding on the game but the way it seemed to inject even more life into them was absolutely top notch. I know this sounds quite cringeworthy the amount I am slobbering over them here, but Dortmund really are a terrific club, and, while I know the wankfest can get quite tedious, they are one of the few genuine European superpowers who are thoroughly likeable (unless you're a Schalke fan). While I certainly wouldn't say I support them or will adopt them as a foreign team, they are certainly a club I have my full admiration towards.
An unbelievable first experience into German football, I absolutely loved it. Smoking and drinking within sight of the pitch, an atmosphere so loud that my ears were ringing out whenever I left my seat to the concourse, the bond and mutual respect between players and fans. It's no wonder why it's become so fashionable to jump on the German football bandwagon. Some bandwagons are bandwagons for a reason and the explanation for this is simple; virtually every aspect of the matchday experience is vastly superior to that of anywhere in England.
I left the ground a good 20 minutes after the game, with my ears still ringing out from all the noise. There was the usual post-match ritual of the manager, good old Jurgen Klopp, making a speech to the crowd. Thanking them for their support, that sort of bollocks. Then the players stand together and raise their arms towards the fans which then gets cheered. It might sound a bit lame but its good to see that bit of mutual appreciation.
We had arranged to meet up outside the main Dortmund club shop, of which I wast person to surface.
"Well, that was pretty special, weren't it lads?"
Met with begrudging nods of agreement.
I was fucking gagging for a pint at this point as I was unable to buy a pint at half-time. Insufficient funds on my card apparently, which by my mathematical workings was complete and utter bollocks. So finding a beer stool was a main priority. A few of the lads mentioned they wanted to search the club shop but what was stupidly busy. Anyway, after following Chris through the hordes of people, I quickly stopped and looked behind me to see where the others were. By the time I had looked forward again, everybody had gone missing from my sight amongst the huge volume of humanity.
I'd just assumed they'd all gone into the club shop so waited outside by its exit. After 20 minutes of looking in from the outside, it was obviously that that's not where they were. So I began to panic a bit, thinking I'd lost everyone and they'd all left without me. I still need to be spoon fed so trying to navigate myself in a European country was a daunting prospect for me. The problem was it was impossible to get any phone signal around here for obvious reasons. I had several unreturned messages and calls from Russell and Chris. Then eventually a text message filtered through from Russ.
'Where the fuck are you? We're at beer stall 30 metres away from the club shop'.
I felt like a massive twat at this point, as my unease and frustration began to reach breaking point. I'd been looking all up and down the road yet still couldn't see them anywhere. I'd literally stopped for a couple of seconds and managed to completely lose everyone. I'm obviously not very good at this whole big crowd thing.
I was fucking relieved to get back on the lovely German beer though, as Mirko and Chris took us around several beer stalls around the stadium before taking us on the metro to a pub within the city centre. This looked more like a traditional English pub and even had a bloody darts board. Albeit a shit, plastic, electronic machine one.
I instead read some German football magazine that was lying around and this is where I'll say something on the complete reverse and say this; we have the strongest all-round football pyramid in the world. This is a similar statement to saying "bears still shit in woods" but I thought I would weigh things up a bit while I sit here masturbating about German football.
Although the Bundesliga is clearly streets ahead in terms of average attendances to any other top league in the world, this is no doubt aided by their sensible ticketing prices and the lure of terracing in a lot of stadiums. Would our top flight attendances reach a similar level if we had it as good as they do over here? Arguably they could.
But one thing that became evident to me reading this magazine is that a lot of German clubs, with the exception of a chunk of 2nd liga clubs and a few fallen giants in the lower tiers, their attendances are pretty shite compared to ours. Frankfurt, for example, has a 700k urban population alone. Yet the 2nd team in its city, FSV, can barely muster 5,000 crowds.
Then you look further down the pyramid and it becomes clear that Germany also have the utter shite thing of having reserve teams of the big clubs clogging up the pyramid. The Dortmund fans I were speaking to the match mentioned to me earlier in the day how good it was that their 2nd team had avoided relegation from the third tier earlier on in the day. I was just thinking "no it isn't". I'm so glad we don't have that sort of nonsense over here.
We have the only pyramid system in the world where a 5th tiered team will get mocked as being tinpot for getting sub 1500 crowds. That's the one great thing about football in our country - there's such a great diversity of clubs. Germany, by contrast, goes regional at its fourth level, which a lot of the leagues are made up by reserve sides.
Just thought I'd get that little pearl of non-wisdom off of my chest. The Dortmund Korunder in this pub was very nice, but I'd began to feel very bloated by beer and was almost on the verge of having a tactical chunder in their toilets. I manned up though, continued, got on with it and began to feel better for it.
Unfortunately though, things rarely got better from here onwards though, thanks to the dreadful planning of Martyn.
We were convinced by him to head back to Düsseldorf via Duisburg, where he needed to pick up the match tickets from (his dad had kindly paid for them for all of us) and a host of other stuff including his camera and some money. Why we couldn't just do this the following morning I do not know, but it killed the rest of the day.
Duisburg is on the direct route back to Dussledorf, but by the time we had reached Martyn's dad's house, via train and metro, it had gone 10PM. Undoubtedly not helped by the 20 minute walk from the metro station which Martyn claimed "was only round the corner". The only redeeming feature of this needless trip was a great pizzeria house right near Martyn's house, which provided some much needed grub having not eaten since that Currywurst at breakfast. It looked like your average grotty pizza place but it was actually very nice. Thin based crusts and proper ingredients. I opted for a scampi pizza, which was pretty damn decent and unusual for me to go for seafood instead of my usual perchance for meat and spice. Instead Russ had lots of meat and spice, which I am led to believe gave him a nasty ring sting in the morning, but was worth it for the taste. Kieran "I don't like cheese but I love pizzas" Dodd just went for the very homo-erotic ham and pineapple combo.
It was us three that would have to get the metro home to Düsseldorf on ourselves as well, with Chris, Martyn and Mirko getting a lift with his old man. By the time we'd walked back to the metro station, *waited for the train and used the excruciatingly slow-stopping service, we didn't arrive into the main station until gone half midnight. Which obviously isn't too late for a night out. But we were so shattered at this point and had been without beer for a few hours which meant that the momentum had completely gone. It turned out that by the time we had got back to our hotel room, Chris and Martyn had completely passed out too.
*One positive though, is that Martyn's Dad was completely sound (like father, unlike son) and had met us three at the metro on our own to ensure we would get back alright and spoke to us for a good ten minutes or so. Nice touch.
Here's the thing. When you go out on trips like these you really feel it is necessary to smash it as hard as possible every night regardless of the situation. But there was really no point here. We just felt completely fucked and needed the sleep. And in hindsight this would turn out for the best. It meant we'd saved more money on a night out and we'll be even better recovered to smash it on the Sunday, which turned out to be the eve of a bank holiday for them and thus a great night to go out. And when you look at things on in reflection, I can safely say I had a fucking brilliant day and experience, had been on the piss all day and thoroughly loved it, which is something that not every night out can guarantee. So while it could be perceived as a night wasted, you've got to take the positives and remember what a smashing day it was. It just meant that, following a relatively quiet first night and a non-existent second one, there would be absolutely no excuse to not go all out for it on the final one.
And I will leave this blog on this....... TO BE CONTINUED.
(I will edit this blog and finish it at a later point. I've been typing for a ridiculous amount of hours already and I'm sure you're as bored of it by now as I am. I'll repost it once its finished. If you've not already had enough of it as it is).
Hello again, I'm back to complete this dribbling German football spunkfest that I had left on. Right now, where were we?
Onto Sunday, the day where we would be taking in the final day of 2nd Bundesliga season at MSV Duisburg's ground, just 30km up the road from Düsseldorf. The game would be another dead rubber, with MSV's opponents SC Paderborn (the British Army base which is right on the edge of the region but a 2 hour drive away), also nestled in a lower half position with no danger of relegation.
In all honestly, I had become so engrossed in my quest for Borussia Dortmund tickets that I had neglected my attentions towards this fixture. I had of course searched up pictures of the ground, and had also looked at the club shop online in the hope of cheap replica shirts, because buying one of theirs would obviously be much cooler and niche than a Dortmund one. And thankfully they were, an end of season sale with all shirts reduced to €20 meaning it would be a necessity.
The most striking thing for me about this game was the ridiculously cheap pricing for it. You have to see it to believe it. €13 for an adult to stand on a large terrace directly behind the goal. Or in our case, €8 for an under 21/student price. For a second division game in a 32K capacity stadium. Mental. When you factor in the currency exchange rate, cheaper than most Conference South/North grounds. Ridiculous. And this is the norm every week.
So although the German football having cheap ticket prices has been exaggerated a bit in the press and by all the 15 year old #AMF wankers, it is genuinely true that the matchday prices out there are a damn sight more reasonable and realistic. The German pricing model doesn't deserve to be mocked, as it has been as the wankest has continued to grown, it should be greatly admired.
On one hand you could argue that with Duisburg's well-documented recent financial problems, they should have been charging fans a lot greater than that. But, thankfully, principles seem to come first beyond the desire to exploit paying customers in some cases.
But, needless to say, as I arrived back into our shores on Monday evening to discover that Dover had decided to combat our falling attendances (our lowest average gates since 2004/05 last season) by increasing our matchday prices to £13, I was thoroughly fucking depressed about it. Yet at the same time, was resigned to being expectant of the whole changes, as we're English football fans and we don't give a fuck about being mugged off.
Especially as this day out at MSV Duisburg would be one of my most favourite football experiences ever, when you compare it was cheaper to the currently abysmal matchday experience that Crabble has had to offer over the past few years.
The good thing about wimping out of the previous night with fatigue meant that we were all fully refreshed with 8+ hours sleep, and no signs of any hangovers having stopped drinking a good few hours before going to bed. Which meant we could go out and find some decent grub for breakfast while Christopher Hunt did his usual trick of taking much longer to get ready than any ginger heterosexual male should.
Most of the lads ended up buying some sandwich baguettes from some food stalls outside the bahnhof, which having tried the chicken breast and some kind of mayo variation, I can confirm were very decent.
I instead went to this strange bakery/baguette place over the road, which looked like it might have been some chain outlet. Anyway, the concept of it was very decent. All the sandwiches, pizza slices and savoury products were laid out in food compartments and you just go up and place whatever you want on a tray, then just purchase at the till. You can eat upstairs or just bag it and take it with you. Anyway, the choice was overwhelming. It was like choosing what to name your first born son. I ended up settling for a hot BBQ rib sandwich with cheese, along with a nice chocolate coated pretzel. Just my usual standard healthy breakfast then. It was fucking ace, I have to say.
I think we departed Düsseldorf station around the same time as the previous day, despite it only being a 15/20 minute journey away. But kick-off time was an early 1:30 one, so it would be necessary to soak up the match day experience. Having already picked up our matchday tickets from Martyn's Dad the night before we could legitimately use the rail transport by valid means. Except for disorganised Christopher, who contrived to lose his match ticket and thus had to fork out for a new one at the ground.
I picked up undoubtedly what was the worst beer of the weekend in the newsagents. Some icy lemon flavoured lager can, which was respectable at 5%. Not a very respectable taste though. I thought it would be decent on the account that I occasionally like turboing my pints on nights out with some poofy alcopop, but this didn't give off the same guilty pleasure sensation.
As with Dortmund the day before, we congregated outside the main entrance of the bahnhof and bought a few cans of beer from the kiosk, where several other Zebras would be drinking in amongst the scorching heat and sunny skies that would arrive for the entire day.
One thing me and Russell picked up on here, as we had done the previous day, was the extremely diverse demographic of football fans in ze Deutschland. By that I mean that you will see a lot more women, punk & gothic people, children and elderly than you do in England. I'm not saying that here in the UK that the match attending population is completely made up of young and middle aged blokes who just want 6 hours peace from the fucking missus rabbiting on as they struggle to come to terms with their sexless marriage, but I'd confidently bet that if you looked around a German ground on a matchday you'll see a bigger range of people from different ages and backgrounds than you would in England. Particularly women.
Another thing more noticeable is the club colour co-ordination of fans, which I have already divulged a lot about with Dortmund. But one thing more noticeable with Duisburg is the amount of fans who tie club scarves around their wrists. It turns out that this is because it easier to wave them around at the game.
But we would also see several people with skirts/kilts made out of scarves, just tied around their trousers/shorts. They looked quite impressive, but obviously a little homo at the same time. There were also quite a lot of "fuck Hoffenheim scarves" spotted out and about during the day, as Duisburg for some reason must seem to dislike them even more than most of the football population out there does!
After a short while admiring female police officers casually walking around with pistols in their pockets, we embarked on the short 10-15 minute metro ride to close outside the stadium.
Like Dortmund, the ground's a bit out of the way of the town centre. It's close to a lot of the housing population though. The ground, from the outside, doesn't strike as anything particularly inspiring. It looks like your bog standard 30k identikit bowl, that would be lumbered with the likes of St Mary's, Pride Park or the Crisp Bowl place that Leicester play at. Except MSV's stadium roof isn't fully enclosed.
Our first call of action was to visit the club shop. Being the impatient, queue-fearing bugger that I am, I was considering giving it a miss with a long line of people waiting to enter on a 'one in, one out' policy, but the urge to get that shirt was too strong. We only had to wait ten minutes anyway.
The good thing for me about these end of season sales is that the smaller sizes all get snapped up first, leaving fat bastards with oversized guts and tits to try and squeeze into a shirt that is probably still too small for us. Germany and Spain unfortunately don't seem to suffer from the same obesity problem that us poor Inglander's easily get sucked into, so XXL always seems to be the largest on offer. This didn't phase me though, even though I knew I would look like Michelin Man wearing it. I opted for the nike-made home QPR-esque one over the plain black away one. Chris got greedy and purchased both, while Russell luckily managed to pick up the only non-XL or above sized replica shirt in the store, and a load of free bedroom-style match posters.
So this officially made us into deplorable football tourists, but we looked damn good in our new colours.
Soon after we began to make our way through the turnstiles and up a flight of stairs onto the main outdoors concourse, in which everyone would all be body searched.
The concourse is very open and large, with loads of outdoor tables and benches, a few main large food/drink kiosks underneath the stand and several other food and beer kiosks spread around, meaning it was very quick and EFFICIENT to get something if you wanted it.
With the weather as marvellous as it was, this sort of stadium plan is great for having pre-match beers and mingling with other fans. It's a very friendly atmosphere and vibe you get around the place, although obviously with nothing riding on the game and it being the last game of the season, it's obviously easier to be in a relaxed mood.
The beer sold was obviously Konig Pilsnerer, which I can't complain about at a respectable €3 a pint/half litre/whatever the fuck the measurement is.
I had a few sneak peaks into the stadium before the game. The whole policy towards the terracing seems very relaxed - there didn't seem to be any policing or ticket checking to make sure that people were going into their designated blocks. Probably because the game was nowhere near sold out, I don't know.
As you can see, a very impressive two-tiered modern stadium. With a stand-wide level of terracing behind the goal, as well as a small section of terracing in the corner at the over end for away fans. Aesthetically a very pleasing stadium - just a bit oversized for MSV Duisburg's average attendances which seem to fluctuate between 12-14k in the 2nd tier. Their two singular top-flight seasons in the later noughties, the latest one being in 2007/08, saw them average 22.5k, which is much more respectable compared to its 31.5k capacity.
So the stadium is a little bit wasted on them, although on the basis of this game, they still manage to produce a fucking excellent atmosphere despite the ground being less than half-filled.
With about twenty minutes until kick-off, we made our way onto the terrace in order to find a good spot, as obviously it is the most popular and most populated part of the ground. We eventually found a place that would just about provide enough space for us five, which was fairly low down and just to (our) left of the goal. About 15 metres to the right of us were where all the Duisburg ultras were congregated, whom were already looking impressive with their flag displays and making a right racket.
In front of us was a huge netting, obviously in place to stop fans from throwing shit onto the pitch. Which is fair enough as it doesn't really obstruct the view in any form.
The next few hours and beyond would increase my love for German football and kick-start a newly found love affair for the Zebras, nicknamed as such because of their hooped style kits, and which the animal is incorporated into their badge.
Some of the things I so loved about the MSV match experience makes me a hypocrite, because some of it is exactly the sort of thing I hate and cringe seeing as English football grounds. For example, in the build up to kick-off, the PA announcer is very engaging with the fans. As with Dortmund the day before, the announcer would read out the team sheet by just stating the player's first name, which nearly every single home fan in attendance would respond in unity by bellowing out the surname in flawless synchronization. And trust me, there is no greater sounder than hearing 12,000 Germans shouting out the word "Koch"!
The best thing of all though is their match-day hymm. Now, this is something I don't oppose in English football. How ever deplorable we find the scum clubs that sing them, anthems like "you'll never walk alone", "marching on together", "goodnight irene" and "blowing bubbles" can sound spine-tingling when several thousand people are singing them in unity.
But MSV's club song trumps any of those. It is the most addictive, catchy, best-sounding football song I have ever come across, which I have studied, watched and listened to so many times now that I don't even need to google the main chorus lyrics any longer. It goes;
Wir sind zebras weiss-blau,
Unser club, der MSV,
Und wir stehen fur euch immer hier,
Denn heir zwischen Rhein und Ruhr,
Ja da gibt es einen nur,
MSV, unser club, im revier.
Which, if you believe google translate, will roughly translate as;
We are zebras white-blue,
Our club, the MSV,
And we are always here for you,
Because here in the Rhine region,
Yes since there is only one,
MSV, our club, in revier
The youtube link above is the finest example of their hymm in action with a full-house singing it. Skip to 2:40ish onwards for spine-tingling amount of noise without the song being played over the PA.
That's not the only club song they have though. Just prior to kick-off they play a much shorter club-made theme which is very catchy, which they also play as their goal music. Yes, goal music. The thing that I am forever fucking whinging about, especially after the embarrassment I personally felt after gangnam style was heard over the Crabble PA system following Calum Willock's stupendous bicycle kick against Welling.
So it would be hard and extremely hypocritical for me to justify why it's ok that German football clubs use it. Well, it depends on the situation really. Bayern Munich and a few other clubs use the seven nation army theme for when they score. That's just shit and generic. But this MSV one is a personal club made theme and clubs like Mainz also have great club specific goal songs.... and it just works. I don't know why. I can't really explain it to be honest. Some things work in other football cultures, but won't work in ours. I find some of the foreign ultra style stuff brilliant and spectacular... but even though I admire their efforts to be one of the very few clubs in the country to consistently create an atmosphere at their home ground, there is just something cringeworthy, shit and tacky about Crystal Palace's recently adopted ultra scene that doesn't feel right.
Luckily I'd be hearing this goal music quite a few times over the course of the next 90 minutes, as I'd be fortunate enough to witness a super match, thanks to a very open, end-to-end, attacking game in which both sides decided to go for it with nothing but pride to play for. 5 goals were shared between the two sides; three of them in Duisburg's favour, meaning they would end the day leapfrogging their opponents in the league table with a final 11th placed finish.
Now almost three months have passed, my knowledge of event-by-event of most of the action has obviously been restricted quite a bit, so I'll just have to list what happened in a chronological order!!
Duisburg took the lead only 12 minutes into the game, which was certainly against the run of the play. Early on they had their high defensive line badly exposed in which their goalkeeper had to be called into action a couple of times. So when Timo Perthel, a midfielder, let loose from 20 yards and smashed the postage stamp of the net, it was very much a pleasant surprise.
The tv screens in the ground screening the video replay suggested that it might have took a deflection on the way but it was a good enough hit in its own right. It can't have done the lad much harm anyway - he has since earned himself a move to Bundesliga new boys Eintracht Braunschweig.
The joy was short lived though. Paderborn were deservedly on equal terms only 8 minutes later. More kamikize high-line defending saw them exposed on the break and the ball eventually broke loose to Elias Kachunga, who's shot eventually crossed the line in the slowest way imaginable.
Duisburg re-took the lead in the second half from the penalty spot, again despite being second best up at the this point. From what I recall, it was a clumsy handball in the box which didn't provoke many protests from the away playing staff. Bosnian hardman defender Branimir Bajic stood up and sent their keeper the wrong way with a well-placed spot-kick.
Their attempts to hold onto their narrow lead lasted slightly longer this time - by a whole 10 minutes rather than 8. Zebra's goalkeeper, Felix Wiedwald, had been one of their best players up until this point, when he had an absolute mare dealing with what seemed like a straight forward free-kick. But he fumbled from it, allowing a grateful Paderborn recipient to tap in the rebound.
Things seemingly went from bad to worse. Bajic turned from hero to villain shortly after, receiving his marching orders for a professional foul. A Paderborn player went to race through on goal and Bajic responded by pulling him to the floor, in what was one of the most stonewall sending offs I've seen in a long while. I can confirm, as with Weidenfeller and Dortmund the previous day, that the Germans also continue our bizarre culture of clapping off players who have got themselves sent off, and thus jeopardizing their teams chances.
But this was actually a blessing in disguise. Going a man behind completely rejuvenated Duisburg, who had been second best for most of the contest. And eventually in these final 15 minutes they conjured up a winner, courtesy of midfielder Soren Brandy. A well worked move saw him released into the box. He had his initial shot saved, but then cleverly rounded their goalkeeper with the rebounded ball, before lofting in a shot from a very narrow angle, which somehow evaded the head of the covering Paderborn defender, before dramatically crossing the line after clipping the underside of the crossbar.
There was no comeback for the away side this time though. In fact, even with the man disadvantage, Duisburg saw out the remaining minutes with relative comfort, in fact even going close for a further goal before the final whistle closed the curtains on another season.
I gather I had been rather fortunate to witness such an entertaining game; others inform me that some of the games out there can be rather turgid. But this was serious end-to-end stuff, with both sides showing clear signs of defensive frailties but at the same time constantly looking inventive and probing going forward. How would I compare the standard of football to the championship? Difficult to tell, really. I'd harbour a guess at it being slightly below that level. With the exception of Eintracht Frankfurt's impressive 6th placed finish in the Bundesliga, the majority of promoted sides from the 2nd division don't seem to fare particularly well in the jump to that level.
This had honestly been the most I had enjoyed a football game in fucking ages. As well as the on-field entertainment, I spent a large chunk of the game just observing and enjoying the atmosphere and surroundings around me. For example, club employees walking around the terraces with huge beer backpacks, selling glasses of konig for €3, without even having to go back to the concourse to buy one. That's just fucking brilliant. Being able to drink and smoke in view of a football match is an alien concept in itself, but not evening having to move off your feet to buy a drink just takes the biscuit. A freshly poured lovely glass of beer while watching football in the sun. What can possibly beat that?
I'm not going to claim that the atmosphere was the best, most deafening one I have ever been a part of but it was still loud, and consistent throughout most of the match. They seem to adopt a few of the traditional English songs but also have a good few ones of their own. A lot of piss-taking of Fortuna Dusseldorf obviously ensued following their relegation the day before with the two clubs obviously enjoy quite a fierce rivalry, given the proximity of the two places. It's not as big as the Dusseldorf/Cologne derby, but it's a pretty big feeling of mutual hatred from what I understand. Duisburg traditionally being more of an industrial city with working-class roots clashes ideologically with Dusseldorf's more financially wealthy status, from what I can understand.
So a lot of catchy "scheiss Fortuna, scheiss Fortuna, Hey, Hey!" chants were made throughout the day, and carried on into the Altstadt in the early hours, with perpetrators Martyn and Mirko being rather fortunate to not get a slap.
The above video highlights some of the atmosphere throughout the home terrace on that day. Also have uploaded a few videos on my facebook profile, for those of you unfortunate to be my 'friend' on there.
The most fascinating thing of all though was just watching on and studying the Paderborn fans out in the away end. You could barely hear them much over the constant stream of noise coming from our end, but they were clearly having the wildest end of season party of their lives. It's hard to tell how many of them were in the away end. I'd hazard a figure between 500-800. But they were just proper going for it, singing pretty much throughout the entire game. At one point they divided into an East and West sides of the terrace and just began having a sing off with each other. Then by the end of it they had all taken their tops off and were just bouncing around like lunatics for no reason. It was great to watch.
Along with Dortmund, Duisburg also staged one of those big end of season mutual-appreciation love-ins between the fans and the players for a good 30 or so minutes after the game. It's great to make that sort of effort to united the bond between players and fans, especially in this day and age where the two groups are widely said to be out of touch with each other. Even if the club does sort of force the players to show their appreciation, I do think it is ingrained into them to respect the fans so the appreciation is genuinely mutual.
At the end of the game Duisburg players and staff all held aloft a specially made banner reading "Ich guten wie in schlechten Zeiten. Danke". Which translates as "In good times and bad, Thank you", referring to their then ongoing financial problems leading to question marks over the clubs future.
Sadly, these good times and bad times will have to be endured in the third tier for the time being. Following a rejection of licence from the 2nd liga, due to German football's tight financial regulation rules, Duisburg found themselves demoted. Which, while not knowing the ins and outs of the whole situation, is definitely a bit of a shitter in terms of possible plans to watch them away in a different German city. The 2nd Liga has a host of big city clubs including Hamburg, Munich, Dresden, Berlin and Cologne. The 3rd tier seems a lot weaker in terms of weekend potential, with the possible exception of Rostock, which is bloody isolated from any sort of reasonable sized airport.
Sounds like it could have been a lot worse though - it initially seemed that they were going to be demoted all the way into the 4th tier - the Regionalliga Nord.
In conclusion though, this was honestly the most I have enjoyed a football match in a very long time. It was everything all the brochures said. I am aware I'm sounding like a bit of a drip here, but it was everything that football should be and it certainly proved to me why the German football wankfest has been circulating at such an extraordinary pace in recent years, as we all become increasingly disillusioned with the dull, sanitised matchday experience that most English football games have become.
I'd honestly say that for as terrific an experience the Dortmund game was, this actually topped it for me. I don't know if it was just that we were all there together this time and got to experience being on a proper terrace, and that I am naturally a smaller crowd person as it is, but there was something about MSV that certainly made me develop a huge soft spot for the club while over there. As Russell asked; "is it just the way to fall in love with the first foreign clubs you watch while abroad?". Who knows. The experience could have been just as good at Bochum or Union Berlin, for example. Maybe we just fell in love with the whole match day culture. Who knows. But there's no going back now. In terms of foreign football allegiance I am a fully fledged Zebra right now ;-)
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| Look closely and you can see Paderborn fans on the bottom left. |
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| Take note, Crabble. EFFICIENT queuing system for a half-time pint. Pre-poured pints, meaning people get served within 90 seconds. Such an amazing concept, innit. |
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| Why I love Germany defined in one simple photo; it costs exactly the same for a beer as it does for a mineral water. |
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| The unlikely lads, complete with Mirko, Daniele (Mirko's girlfriend) and some random Duisburg fan wearing a Millwall shirt. |
After a while we were eventually taken to a pub, which is a good 15/20 minute walk away from the stadium. Me, Doddy and Russell managed to get a lift with Daniele there but Martyn was forced to walk with Mirko in the sweltering heat - his punishment for fucking us over the night before with a needless trip to Duisburg.
What a pub these guys selected for us - the perfect sort of place for a Sunday session on a warm afternoon. Not only was the barmaid one of the most jizz-worthy ladies I have ever set my eyes upon, but it had a sizeable beer garden, sold a large selection of pub food similar to that of an English pub, and most importantly, it had a ridiculously amount of variety of bottled beers, ales and pints on draught.
What I found most interesting was that they sold a wide range of different British ales - all bottled - which as Chris Collings would be horrified by - were all stocked in fridges. The thing is though, as ale out there is an imported novelty, they seemed to be fucking expensive. Your bog standard generic ones like London Pride and Bombardier were advertised at €5.
Nearly everyone's first purchases in there turned out to be complete and utter duds. Doddy and Russell contrived to individually purchase alcohol free beers - both of them claiming to be completely oblivious to their 'errors'. I chose a fensburgh gold because I liked the design of the bottle - a strange lid with a cork in it. Sadly the taste didn't live up to expectations - it was probably the worst beer I tried of the weekend.
Chris on the other hand just decided to have a total YOLO and selected four random fruit flavoured beers at random - which it turned out were a pathetic 2.6% and tasted like a watermelon flavoured lambrini. Which would all be well and good if he was a 13 year old pikey with a vagina.
Some of our eventual buys turned out to be a lot more fruitful, and in these cases, quite literally. I regretted not buying any grub in here in the end, as I looked on enviously at Christopher's strange combination for a burger. It had a pitta style outlayer, instead of your typical bun. Inside the juicy homemade burger was garnished with coleslaw, a pineapple ring, and most weirdly of all, some kind of peanut butter paste on the roof of it. Sound vile? Probably? Tasted good? Orgasmic, apparently. All with proper steak cut chips as well, not your silly continental pommes frittes bollocks you get everywhere. This pub clearly modelled itself on a traditional one, except we didn't engage in the obligatory Englishmen chair throwing antics.
Some of us were roped into buying and testing what is called "pink elephant beer", which comes in a small 300ml bottle but costs about €5 for the privilege. But you can see why. It's about 8.5% strong and is a fruit flavoured beer - plum and grape I do believe. It is good. Dangerously good. Dangerously deceivingly strong - something you could easily neck back in a session (if you can afford to) without realising the actual strength of it!
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| Alcohol free TWAT! |
This really was a good pub, one I could have easily have spent the rest of the day in if I had the whole time in the world. But we didn't. We had to travel back to Dusseldorf in the later afternoon to ensure we actually had a proper night out on the altstadt so we could completely damage our livers for the flight home the next day. So with this we had to bid farewell to Daniele, while Mirko remained out with us to join us on the piss. So around 6-7PM, we caught the metro back to the city of our hated rivals, via a quick ice cream/beer combo stop at one of the newsagents.
Right, I won't go into too much detail from here onwards. To be honest, I've been writing on this piece for far longer than I should have done and it's time to conclude it. I'm bored, those of you who have actually got this far are also bored. It's about time I wrap this god forsaken blog once and for all and stop dragging the incredible tedium out for so long.
So here's what happened; we went into the Altstadt, with Mirko's assistance, in which it became evident that we'd completely missed off the thriving part of the town on the Friday evening. Although it was naturally quite busy because the Monday was a bank holiday for them and thus everyone was out on the slosh, it became clear we had missed out the livelier part of town.
It took us fucking ages to find a restaurant to eat in because all the street restaurants were seemingly packed out or too busy for an impatient bastard like myself. So we eventually settled on a second-rate steak 'speciality' place. Quite amusingly, I managed to order a pepper steak which included a jacket potato, which rather weirdly came clogged in sour cream. It was of course an accident, as my hatred for jacket potatoes are well documented. The worst form of potato; invented for pretentious dickheads who like to ram down your throat about how healthy they are - failing to realise that in order for them to taste half-edible you have to clog them with butter, beans, cheers or any other unhealthy filling you can imagine.
That said, the strange potato/sour cream combination worked, and was probably better than the underwhelming steak with its piss weak pepper sauce.
Funniest part of the meal though? Undoubtedly the really funny LADZ banter we participated in by
The bar/club we congregated in for the vast majority of the evening was just over the road from this place, actually. It was quite quiet in there at the time we arrived in - about half 9/10. And to begin with I was really starting to feel my typical bloatedness kick in from where I'd drunk a gallon full of beer throughout the day. I was starting to question my ability to continue through the night.
Thankfully though, Chris and Martyn's sheer stupidity handed me a lifeline. The pair of them, the twats, went to chip in for a bucket containing ice, a bottle of jaigermeister and 6 cans of energy drink. They believed it to be €19 so ordered one. When it came to paying for the bill, it turned out it was actually €90. 90 fucking euros! €19 seemed a bit on the cheap side for a nightclub for all that but that was just utterly ridiculous. What's more silly though, is that the pair of them actually paid for it instead of retracting on their purchase! When they asked if I wanted to contribute my answer was a big resounding "errr no. this is your mess, not mine!".
Even so though, Chris kept spiking my alt beer with the bottle of jaiger, which slowly began to reinject some life into me. All it took was for a good couple of tunes to come on, and thus join the others on the dancefloor, before I started to get properly back into the groove again. YEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!
And that's my advice when you're on an all day bender. Just keep going, and keep trying, you'll get there in the end.
We stayed in here for several hours. It eventually became ram packed and aside from the odd shite German song, it was a thoroughly decent evening in there. No pulling or exciting tales I'm afraid, just a good old boogie and rubbing up and eyeing up some of the several high quality sloshpots in there.
Well, quite amusingly I got a bollocking off some semi-nude pole dancer who was performing in there. I was pretending to take a picture of Doddy while just hoping to get a quick snap of her. I'm obviously not very discreet when I'm drunk.
We piled out of here about half 1 to venture onto somewhere else, but this was a bit difficult at this stage of the evening. First of all, Mirko completely took us out the way to show us the sights from the River. Which, while a nice thought, I just wanted to find another place and continue to enjoy the night. By the time we got back on the strip, bouncers were pretty reluctant to let us in anywhere with surprise, surprise, Doddy being more than worse for wear. Instead we ended up in some crap bar for an hour, in which the main highlight was some random bloke unsuccessfully attempting to pickpocket Martyn. Well, this wasn't a highlight actually. Martyn began to repeat this dull tale for the next 12 hours to anyone who would listen, and kept promising to "go and find him and bang him out". Yeah, of course.
By about 3am I had become absolutely fucked beyond repair so I decided it was the best time to cut my losses. It had been a marathon day and I had fallen fairly short in the end - but overall it had been an absolutely blinding day and a decent evening. Russell's flight to Barcelona was at 10:30, compared to our 17:30, so we had him to consider as well. Apparently his flight home was errr, less than enjoyable.
We caught the tram home to the hotel via not 1, but 2, different kebab stops. Yes, my first kebab was so utterly georgous that I had to stop for a second. I'm not ashamed to admit it.
Its another German bandwagon I will jump on. Their kebabs are absolutely outstanding. Proper panini style rather than your cheap and nasty pitta. Meat that actually tastes nice. Unbelievable jeff. Or it could have just been that I utterlutely hammered, who knows. I'm not normally a kebab man but tried one on Martyn's insistence. Choice well made.
So my, Doddy and Russell's night ended at the hotel room. Not for Martyn though, who began a desperate quest to find a whore house in a seedy attempt to get his end away for the weekend. Let's be honest, he wasn't going to do it by any other means was he?
But he didn't. Chris, who was helping him on his mission, ended up in a strip club with him instead, I believe.
What happened to them? I don't know. Chris rolled in at about 7:30am with tales of being chased down the street by a transvestite pimp. Yes, really.
And Martyn managed to wake up in the room down the corridor, consisting on 6 lads on a stag do. He had no idea how he woke up there and neither do they. It remains a great unsolved mystery to this day.
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| Oh yeah. Some random Stuttgart-based Hamburg fan we met who tagged along with us for most of the evening. |
The impending implications of the severe battering we had inflicted on our respective livers meant that my planned Monday morning and afternoon of visiting some other tourist attractions was just a naive pipeline dream. The dregs of the remainder of this fantastic trip can be summed up in the following bullet points;
- A third kebab. Yep. My brunch aka "the last supper" would have to be another one of my newly found love. Only this time I opted for a slightly more healthier falafel, which I obviously caked in chilli sauce. Tremendous stuff, Alan.
- The sex shop. Our next door neighbour, previous unvisited up until now, would have to be taken a look at. I can't stand I've visited too many of these in my lifetime, so it was a bit of surprise to see what are essentially masturbating booths. Yep. Think a photo booth, except you put money in a slot to watch an erotic video. Tissues are provided, as is a bin disposal. Like a photo booth, it's just separated by a a curtain, so you don't get much privacy. It absolutely staggers me that people actually use these things! Can you imagine having a conversation with your mum?
"Where are you off our to, son?"
"Just going over to the shop for a quick wank. Will be home for tea"
Unbelievable.
It was interesting looking at some of the strange erotic products and different category videos. I'm surprised these places still exist since the invention of the internet, but Germany clearly has a high perverted scene. The temptation to buy myself a new blow-up girlfriend was outweighed by the desire to save my remaining money for my trip to Barcelona a month later. - Cigarettes. At the Dusseldorf bahnhoff we visited a tobacconists, hoping to stock up on some goodies to flog to the nicotine dependent mugs all at home.
Me and Chris thought we had picked up the bargain of the lifetime when we picked up several 200 marlboro cigarette cartons for a paltry €2.50. It only clocked on when we had been at the airport for an hour why they were so cheap. We thought it was just because they were all in a loose box. But no. It's because they didn't actually have any tobacco inside them! They were just all empty papers with butts on the end of them, but branded like proper cigarettes. Apparently there is a way you can put tobacco inside them, but I can't work out a plausible way. Instead I'd suggest that their only function is to fool the stupid.
German Economy 1-0 Thick-as-shit-English-tourist.
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| Anyone for a ciggie? |
Seriously though, it was an outstanding trip, and one of the best weekends of my sorry life. For any of you younger (or even older) whippersnappers out there who haven't watched any football abroad or visited Germany yet - I urge you to do it. As I (re)discovered in both Germany and Barcelona a month later, there's very few better things than travelling new places and countries. As Mark Winter said to me a short while ago "I didn't used to think there was a world outside of DAFC before, Callum. But now I've realised there's more to the world than Boreham Wood away on a cold winter afternoon". And, as a stupidly loyal Dover fan that feels indebted to attend every game possible (well, not anymore, although no doubt I'll be overcome with guilt for the few I miss this upcoming season) he's right. He's a regular traveller to different games across Europe and I can see why. It's such an enjoyable and addictive thing to do. People don't realise how cheap it is to get away for 3 or 4 nights. If you stop going out every Friday night for a few months then it's easy enough to save up for these things. Luckily I work late on Friday evenings and Saturday mornings which restricts my weekend expenditure at the moment and means I can afford these things.
Which is why, for all I love Germany, Poland is next on my booked up list. Flights to Krakow in February have already been booked, such is my zest for travelling away now. It should be an absolutely outstanding four nights with the Krakow Derby (if I survive it!) and a day trip to Auschwitz on the cards. I'm still hoping I might be able to squeeze in a quick flight over to watch FC Koln with my good Barrovian friend Stuart Nichols at some point this season, but it's very much dependant on funds and getting the time off to achieve it.
Anyway. Thank you all for reading, especially those of you who have stuck and read this until the end. I sincerely appreciate it. Luckily for you guys, I will be back within the next 10 days with my annual season preview. So I will keep you all posted. Take care for now, and remember kids, never speak to strangers unless they're offering you haribo.
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