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Bum-Bum Situation
Dec. 22nd, 2023 07:03 pmLast Friday flew to Germany for the AFC Portchester fans’ friendship visit to Mülheim. I got a taxi from Düsseldorf airport straight to the hotel (stung me for 72 euro), hoping to catch Rot-Weiss Mülheim’s home match that evening. But by the time I’d got checked in and unpacked, it was 7.25 when I set off from the hotel, with the game kicking off at 8 pm, and the ground was a fair walk away.
I would just have made it if I hadn’t taken a wrong turning and ended up lost. Looked around for a taxi, found a taxi rank but no taxis came. And as I was standing there, a gang of youths went charging past as if on the run. As they might well have been, because police sirens wailed seconds later. Went on the Uber app, but they couldn’t get one to me for another quarter of an hour - which would have been hopelessly late getting me to the ground. I had to admit defeat and turn back to the hotel.
Went walking in a square around the nearby streets but didn’t find a takeaway anywhere. Returning to the street where the gang had rushed by, there were now shards of glass on the pavement and police questioning people. That was enough to send me scurrying back to the hotel and settling for a bag of crisps from reception and an Alpine milk Ritter Sport and a Warsteiner Radler beer from the vending machine.
Missing this game was particularly galling, not just because it was down to my mistaking the route, but because seeing a game on 15 December would have got me an Allan Simonsen badge on the Futbology app, and in 2024 most of the badge days fall on stupid days like Thursdays so my next chance to get a new Ballon D’Or birthday badge won’t come around until next December.
Spent the evening in the hotel room catching up with the posts on a friend’s music group on Facebook - meaning I got a long succession of Christmas songs when in a far from festive mood. I was at least able to sing along whole-heartedly to A Winter’s Tale, wishing my lost love Sarah were there.
Lewis, Chad and the other two who I didn’t already know, Karl and Justin, arrived at the hotel around midnight. We sat around on the comfortable chairs in the lobby chatting for a while then retired to our rooms, agreeing to meet for breakfast at 9 am.
Breakfast was a buffet of slices of cold meat and cheese (including some excellent Emmenthal which I indulged in generous helpings of each day), yogurt, and bread rolls (I made sure I got a couple of tasty brown ones coated in seeds each morning). Not spotting water anywhere, I had to ask one of the hotel staff “Wo ist das Wasser, bitte”. She showed me a bottle of water standing in ice behind the fruit.
We went walking round the town centre in the late morning and early afternoon and stopped for a coffee in a cafe. After seeking in several places, I found postcards of Mülheim in a bookshop and bought one for Ann. They didn’t sell stamps, but the lady said the stationer’s across the corridor sold them. They did, but only in tens. So I was obliged to buy ten 85 cent stamps and ten 10 cent stamps to make the 95 cents needed to post the card. I guess the others make interesting souvenirs.
We were seeing the third team of Mülheimer SV 07, the team we were visiting, as the first-team match we’d intended to see had been moved to the evening before, when Lewis and Co were still airborne. We were happy enough, as the thirds play in the German ninth tier and our Portchester team are in the English ninth tier so we appreciated the symmetry.
The clubhouse was nice, with plenty of room, and two big screens showing the Bundesliga - on German TV, they hop from match to match depending where the action is getting interesting, while showing goal flashes from the other games in a corner. And it’s actual live match action - no ban on televising Saturday 3pm football here.
We met Markus and Jörg, the two Mülheim fans our Supporters’ Club had been corresponding with. They gave us a great warm welcome and introduced us to several of their friends. We all talked about football, they told us about the German game and asked us which English professional teams we followed. As well as Mülheim, the local lads all followed MSV Duisburg, the local big club, once of the Bundesliga but since fallen on hard times and struggling in the third league. The Germans all said their favourite English team was Queens Park Rangers, probably because, like Duisburg, they play in blue and white hoops. I’ve always liked QPR, funny enough.
The Germans kept us supplied with plastic half-litre glasses of the local beer, König Pilsner, all afternoon - as soon as we were spotted running low a fresh trayful appeared. This included during the game - in Germany you’re allowed to stand at pitchside with a beer. The pitch was a 3G with just a metal perimeter fence. Lewis put up the flag he’d had made, bearing the crests of AFC Portchester, Mülheimer SV 07, Portsmouth and MSV Duisburg. We were wearing our Portchester colours and tried out a couple of our Arancione songs, to the amusement of the locals, then spent the rest of the time making up chants to suit Mülheim. We sang ‘North Rhine Westphalia’ and ‘Mülheim ist blau und weiss’, both to the tune of La Donna e Mobile. An opposition player receiving treatment sparked Lewis into a quiet wistful solo chant of ‘You’re going home in a Pompey ambulance’; I gave it some local colour, singing similarly softly ‘You’re going home in a Mülheim Krankenwagen’. The others, after confirming with me that Krankenwagen was ambulance, found the word most amusing, and from there on whenever a player went down they chanted ‘Der der der der der der, Krankenwagen’ to the tune of Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag. There was no shortage of excitement, though, alas, the away team emerged 7-3 winners.
After the match the Germans had laid on taxis to take us back into town. We went to a bar called Rathstuben, where a punk band called Pinkapank were on. A rumour had circulated round our party that the band would be playing Christmas songs, but, alas, that wasn’t the case. I just had to sit through two hours of German thrash metal. On the bright side, I had managed to bag a stool.
We went on to Ali Baba’s kebab shop, where Oli, one of the Germans, insisted on buying chicken Doner kebabs for everyone. Absolutely lovely they were; the rest of the Portchester lads agreed. Lewis promised to reciprocate their hospitality when they come over to Portchester, planned for next season.
Sunday we met up with the locals again at MSV Duisburg v Dynamo Dresden. Markus and Jörg had warned us that we were on the same terrace as the ultras, so advised us not to wear any colours other than Duisburg’s. None of the hats I’d brought passed muster, so I just put my coat hood up for the journey to Duisburg, deciding to buy an MSV hat when we got to the stadium. Lewis was similarly after an MSV scarf.
The stadium was a most impressive sight, and definitely wouldn’t have been out of place in the Bundesliga. We met the locals at the ground, said our goodbyes to Markus who was in hospitality that day as it was a family member’s birthday, then we Portchesterites hit the club shop. I soon found an MSV hat, and couldn’t resist an MSV Christmas jumper reduced to 30 euro and a set of signed photos of the Duisburg ladies’ team.
We rejoined the locals and headed over to a youth hostel across the road from the stadium, where outdoor stalls were selling beer, Glühwein and pork Frikadellen. The others just went for König Pilsners from the beer stall; I went for Glühwein and a Frikadelle, both first class. We stood around chatting about MSV’s prospects for the game; none of the locals expected much as Duisburg are struggling at the wrong end of the table while Dresden are league leaders. A large banner on the stadium proclaimed that there would be 12 minutes of silence ‘for German football’. Jörg explained to us that fans throughout Germany are holding these silent protests, against the German FA’s proposals to abandon financial fair play and the 50+1 ownership rule.
“They want the Bundesliga to compete with the English Premier League,” Jörg explained. “They should not, because it is just not possible. They should appreciate and market what we have.” When we got in the ground, I was in full agreement with Jörg. German fan culture leaves ours standing. A few minutes before kick-off the club anthem played over the tannoy and everyone joined in singing with gusto. As the team were read out, the announcer would say each player’s first name and all the crowd bellowed his surname in reply. Three players, presumably the most popular, had the announcer pausing before giving their name, for the crowd to give a round of applause.
We were on an old-fashioned terrace. It was just like standing on the terraces at Portsmouth in the 1990s. We’d followed Jörg’s advice and gone in the left pen - the ultras were in the middle pen - and he’d added “Do not take photos of the ultras. They’ll come over and make their displeasure known”. The first twelve minutes were indeed played in dead silence, though we Portchester lot were all ecstatic when Duisburg took the lead in the fifth minute.
When the clock reached 11:50 both sets of fans counted down from ‘zehn’ to ‘eins’, then on 12:00 the ultra leader said a few things with feeling over his megaphone. When he’d finished both sets of fans chanted ‘Scheiße DFB’ (shitty German FA) for over a minute. After that, both the Duisburg ultras and the Dresden fans at the opposite end of the stadium bounced up and down waving flags, letting off pyro and making noise non-stop for the rest of the game. As the main couple of chants were sung repeatedly, we soon picked up when to shout ‘EMM’ … ‘ESS’ … ‘FAU!’ and ‘Duisburg!’ I learned most of the ‘Zebra-Streifen weiß und blau’ song.
On the pitch, alas, the Zebras’ lead didn’t last, and Dresden ended up winning 4-2. Hats off to the Duisburg fans for never letting the atmosphere flag. On the walk back to the S-Bahn stop Lewis and I agreed that MSV are now our German team. “They’re not mine,” said Chad, as he’d already told us his favourite German side is 1. FC Köln. To get to the S-Bahn we had to pass a police van; the policeman told us to hide our Duisburg hats and scarves as “there are people up there with a different opinion”. We loved that German way of phrasing it.
From Mülheim Hbf we went back to the hotel to dump our purchases, and the wealth of stickers the Germans had given us, then walked over to the Schloss, where there was a Christmas market on complete with people in medieval costume. After moseying round that market we moved on to the Advent market in the town centre. Copious amounts of Bratwurst, and Glühwein in my case and König Pilsner in the others, were consumed at both. After spotting a pub called Kölner Hof, guaranteed to appeal to Chad with his love of the city of Cologne, we went there to round off the evening with one last drink and a relaxing chat.
Flying home from Düsseldorf on Monday, after checking in and going through to departures I found to my dismay that all the airport’s eateries were on the side of the barrier I’d left behind. I had to make do with an avocado baguette and a Belgian waffle from a coffee stand.
Emerged from the customs channel into Heathrow Terminal 2 Arrivals just as a brass band struck up We Wish You A Merry Christmas. That was a lovely feeling, as if they were playing for us to welcome us home. They turned out to be the Salvation Army band. After they confirmed that they accepted foreign coins I donated my euro shrapnel.
A decaf mocha while I waited for the bus to Woking. Train home, reflecting soberly that, thanks to my mounting credit card bill, that was going to be my last trip abroad for a good few years.
Back to work Tuesday. Spent the evenings catching up on the TV shows I’d recorded while away.
Today brought a letter from my former car insurers. When my last car was written off four years ago, they’d undervalued it when making their award. So I have a cheque for £634 coming in the next fortnight. Right now that was the best Christmas present I could have asked for.
Ann and Steve just dropped by for a chat with my Christmas card.
I would just have made it if I hadn’t taken a wrong turning and ended up lost. Looked around for a taxi, found a taxi rank but no taxis came. And as I was standing there, a gang of youths went charging past as if on the run. As they might well have been, because police sirens wailed seconds later. Went on the Uber app, but they couldn’t get one to me for another quarter of an hour - which would have been hopelessly late getting me to the ground. I had to admit defeat and turn back to the hotel.
Went walking in a square around the nearby streets but didn’t find a takeaway anywhere. Returning to the street where the gang had rushed by, there were now shards of glass on the pavement and police questioning people. That was enough to send me scurrying back to the hotel and settling for a bag of crisps from reception and an Alpine milk Ritter Sport and a Warsteiner Radler beer from the vending machine.
Missing this game was particularly galling, not just because it was down to my mistaking the route, but because seeing a game on 15 December would have got me an Allan Simonsen badge on the Futbology app, and in 2024 most of the badge days fall on stupid days like Thursdays so my next chance to get a new Ballon D’Or birthday badge won’t come around until next December.
Spent the evening in the hotel room catching up with the posts on a friend’s music group on Facebook - meaning I got a long succession of Christmas songs when in a far from festive mood. I was at least able to sing along whole-heartedly to A Winter’s Tale, wishing my lost love Sarah were there.
Lewis, Chad and the other two who I didn’t already know, Karl and Justin, arrived at the hotel around midnight. We sat around on the comfortable chairs in the lobby chatting for a while then retired to our rooms, agreeing to meet for breakfast at 9 am.
Breakfast was a buffet of slices of cold meat and cheese (including some excellent Emmenthal which I indulged in generous helpings of each day), yogurt, and bread rolls (I made sure I got a couple of tasty brown ones coated in seeds each morning). Not spotting water anywhere, I had to ask one of the hotel staff “Wo ist das Wasser, bitte”. She showed me a bottle of water standing in ice behind the fruit.
We went walking round the town centre in the late morning and early afternoon and stopped for a coffee in a cafe. After seeking in several places, I found postcards of Mülheim in a bookshop and bought one for Ann. They didn’t sell stamps, but the lady said the stationer’s across the corridor sold them. They did, but only in tens. So I was obliged to buy ten 85 cent stamps and ten 10 cent stamps to make the 95 cents needed to post the card. I guess the others make interesting souvenirs.
We were seeing the third team of Mülheimer SV 07, the team we were visiting, as the first-team match we’d intended to see had been moved to the evening before, when Lewis and Co were still airborne. We were happy enough, as the thirds play in the German ninth tier and our Portchester team are in the English ninth tier so we appreciated the symmetry.
The clubhouse was nice, with plenty of room, and two big screens showing the Bundesliga - on German TV, they hop from match to match depending where the action is getting interesting, while showing goal flashes from the other games in a corner. And it’s actual live match action - no ban on televising Saturday 3pm football here.
We met Markus and Jörg, the two Mülheim fans our Supporters’ Club had been corresponding with. They gave us a great warm welcome and introduced us to several of their friends. We all talked about football, they told us about the German game and asked us which English professional teams we followed. As well as Mülheim, the local lads all followed MSV Duisburg, the local big club, once of the Bundesliga but since fallen on hard times and struggling in the third league. The Germans all said their favourite English team was Queens Park Rangers, probably because, like Duisburg, they play in blue and white hoops. I’ve always liked QPR, funny enough.
The Germans kept us supplied with plastic half-litre glasses of the local beer, König Pilsner, all afternoon - as soon as we were spotted running low a fresh trayful appeared. This included during the game - in Germany you’re allowed to stand at pitchside with a beer. The pitch was a 3G with just a metal perimeter fence. Lewis put up the flag he’d had made, bearing the crests of AFC Portchester, Mülheimer SV 07, Portsmouth and MSV Duisburg. We were wearing our Portchester colours and tried out a couple of our Arancione songs, to the amusement of the locals, then spent the rest of the time making up chants to suit Mülheim. We sang ‘North Rhine Westphalia’ and ‘Mülheim ist blau und weiss’, both to the tune of La Donna e Mobile. An opposition player receiving treatment sparked Lewis into a quiet wistful solo chant of ‘You’re going home in a Pompey ambulance’; I gave it some local colour, singing similarly softly ‘You’re going home in a Mülheim Krankenwagen’. The others, after confirming with me that Krankenwagen was ambulance, found the word most amusing, and from there on whenever a player went down they chanted ‘Der der der der der der, Krankenwagen’ to the tune of Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag. There was no shortage of excitement, though, alas, the away team emerged 7-3 winners.
After the match the Germans had laid on taxis to take us back into town. We went to a bar called Rathstuben, where a punk band called Pinkapank were on. A rumour had circulated round our party that the band would be playing Christmas songs, but, alas, that wasn’t the case. I just had to sit through two hours of German thrash metal. On the bright side, I had managed to bag a stool.
We went on to Ali Baba’s kebab shop, where Oli, one of the Germans, insisted on buying chicken Doner kebabs for everyone. Absolutely lovely they were; the rest of the Portchester lads agreed. Lewis promised to reciprocate their hospitality when they come over to Portchester, planned for next season.
Sunday we met up with the locals again at MSV Duisburg v Dynamo Dresden. Markus and Jörg had warned us that we were on the same terrace as the ultras, so advised us not to wear any colours other than Duisburg’s. None of the hats I’d brought passed muster, so I just put my coat hood up for the journey to Duisburg, deciding to buy an MSV hat when we got to the stadium. Lewis was similarly after an MSV scarf.
The stadium was a most impressive sight, and definitely wouldn’t have been out of place in the Bundesliga. We met the locals at the ground, said our goodbyes to Markus who was in hospitality that day as it was a family member’s birthday, then we Portchesterites hit the club shop. I soon found an MSV hat, and couldn’t resist an MSV Christmas jumper reduced to 30 euro and a set of signed photos of the Duisburg ladies’ team.
We rejoined the locals and headed over to a youth hostel across the road from the stadium, where outdoor stalls were selling beer, Glühwein and pork Frikadellen. The others just went for König Pilsners from the beer stall; I went for Glühwein and a Frikadelle, both first class. We stood around chatting about MSV’s prospects for the game; none of the locals expected much as Duisburg are struggling at the wrong end of the table while Dresden are league leaders. A large banner on the stadium proclaimed that there would be 12 minutes of silence ‘for German football’. Jörg explained to us that fans throughout Germany are holding these silent protests, against the German FA’s proposals to abandon financial fair play and the 50+1 ownership rule.
“They want the Bundesliga to compete with the English Premier League,” Jörg explained. “They should not, because it is just not possible. They should appreciate and market what we have.” When we got in the ground, I was in full agreement with Jörg. German fan culture leaves ours standing. A few minutes before kick-off the club anthem played over the tannoy and everyone joined in singing with gusto. As the team were read out, the announcer would say each player’s first name and all the crowd bellowed his surname in reply. Three players, presumably the most popular, had the announcer pausing before giving their name, for the crowd to give a round of applause.
We were on an old-fashioned terrace. It was just like standing on the terraces at Portsmouth in the 1990s. We’d followed Jörg’s advice and gone in the left pen - the ultras were in the middle pen - and he’d added “Do not take photos of the ultras. They’ll come over and make their displeasure known”. The first twelve minutes were indeed played in dead silence, though we Portchester lot were all ecstatic when Duisburg took the lead in the fifth minute.
When the clock reached 11:50 both sets of fans counted down from ‘zehn’ to ‘eins’, then on 12:00 the ultra leader said a few things with feeling over his megaphone. When he’d finished both sets of fans chanted ‘Scheiße DFB’ (shitty German FA) for over a minute. After that, both the Duisburg ultras and the Dresden fans at the opposite end of the stadium bounced up and down waving flags, letting off pyro and making noise non-stop for the rest of the game. As the main couple of chants were sung repeatedly, we soon picked up when to shout ‘EMM’ … ‘ESS’ … ‘FAU!’ and ‘Duisburg!’ I learned most of the ‘Zebra-Streifen weiß und blau’ song.
On the pitch, alas, the Zebras’ lead didn’t last, and Dresden ended up winning 4-2. Hats off to the Duisburg fans for never letting the atmosphere flag. On the walk back to the S-Bahn stop Lewis and I agreed that MSV are now our German team. “They’re not mine,” said Chad, as he’d already told us his favourite German side is 1. FC Köln. To get to the S-Bahn we had to pass a police van; the policeman told us to hide our Duisburg hats and scarves as “there are people up there with a different opinion”. We loved that German way of phrasing it.
From Mülheim Hbf we went back to the hotel to dump our purchases, and the wealth of stickers the Germans had given us, then walked over to the Schloss, where there was a Christmas market on complete with people in medieval costume. After moseying round that market we moved on to the Advent market in the town centre. Copious amounts of Bratwurst, and Glühwein in my case and König Pilsner in the others, were consumed at both. After spotting a pub called Kölner Hof, guaranteed to appeal to Chad with his love of the city of Cologne, we went there to round off the evening with one last drink and a relaxing chat.
Flying home from Düsseldorf on Monday, after checking in and going through to departures I found to my dismay that all the airport’s eateries were on the side of the barrier I’d left behind. I had to make do with an avocado baguette and a Belgian waffle from a coffee stand.
Emerged from the customs channel into Heathrow Terminal 2 Arrivals just as a brass band struck up We Wish You A Merry Christmas. That was a lovely feeling, as if they were playing for us to welcome us home. They turned out to be the Salvation Army band. After they confirmed that they accepted foreign coins I donated my euro shrapnel.
A decaf mocha while I waited for the bus to Woking. Train home, reflecting soberly that, thanks to my mounting credit card bill, that was going to be my last trip abroad for a good few years.
Back to work Tuesday. Spent the evenings catching up on the TV shows I’d recorded while away.
Today brought a letter from my former car insurers. When my last car was written off four years ago, they’d undervalued it when making their award. So I have a cheque for £634 coming in the next fortnight. Right now that was the best Christmas present I could have asked for.
Ann and Steve just dropped by for a chat with my Christmas card.
