Newcastle - Very Tired + Hungover + Smelly = Dedication.

So, after landing at Luton airport in the morning, we were soon on our way to the next match. It didn't matter if we were tired and hungover. We are HARDCORE! (If I can claim so myself!)


Brinner, with a slightly better looking eye was getting stuck into some of the treasures we brought home with us. We picked up Woof and he soon got involved with the german food.

A de-tour via Leeds was in order where we picked up our two festival-goers,

Spoony:

And Ramp:

As you can imagine they were both pretty tired and hungover too after 5 days of festivities at Leeds Festival.

They were pretty smelly too. Nice. (Erm why did we agree to do this again!?!)

The "Where I am" look:

I'm sure they were still pissed!

We soon passed the angel of the north:

And found ourselfs in newcastle!

(Sadly there was no fog on the tyne)

We parked the car, where Spoony decided to pass out !

We then headed off to the nearest pub as anyone who's tired and hungover would do.

Oh yeah, there was a game on today!

We set off from the pub and headed to the ground:

And the stadium really is as impressive as everyone tells you. So expect lots of photos...(Sorry!)

There's no mirrors hear I promise!

Out of no-where it started to POUR with rain just before kick-off. My idea of staying in the pub for an extra pint definately looked like a bad idea now! Thank god we were undercover.

The teams come out..

The Match;

Well Leicester played amazing in the first half but couldn't quite convert the play into goals. As I'd predicted at half time Newcastle came out for the 2nd half, and city didn't. The game finished 1-0 to newcastle. The away fans had seen a decent performance and left knowing the team had done them proud.

On the way home, we got lost leaving the city and we think we crossed the Tyne Bridge. Here was our attempt to phot it in the dark and rain whilst driving!

A very long and extreamly tiring journey home but all well worth it. (I think!)

What a weekend.

Germany 09 Take 2 - Part 2!

An early start saw us on the train, heading to a city I'd stopped off at before - Aachen. Though this time the stay was going to be slightly longer! I was hungover to the max. And this terrible photo just about makes me look as bad as I felt!

We were off to Aachen to see Aachen new stadium. The Neu Tivoli... They couldnt have had a much worse start to their new ground, as our favourite Antifa team from Hamburg (St.Pauli for those that don't follow the blog) battered them 5-0 in the first game at the stadium.

Things can only get better I guess! We arrived a little late to the stadium having arrived at Aachen train station not quite sure how we were gonna get to the stadium!

There appeared to be two new stadiums as well, just to be confusing!


You'd have to be blind to miss Allemannia's though!

Inside and we'd only missed the first 5minutes or so, but the massive home terrace was PACKED. We could harly find a spare place to stand across the whole end !

The stadiums was certainly impressive..and erm..yellow! And it was built for half the cost of Leverkusen's 8'000 extension!

Said Packed home end!

The opponnents were FSV Frankfurt, not to mistaken for the huge club Eintracht Frankfurt, this is the cities 2nd team, and clearly, the lesser supported of the two. Not a great following, but no-one was expecting much!

Yellow! Yellow! Yellow!

And soon the (2nd) Bundesliga kicked into life, with what its known best for....GOALS GOALS GOALS! (Or should that be TOR TOR TOR?!)

Scarf action. (I think everyone had got a scarf!!) But us! :(

Happy Aachen fans!

1:0 You say?

Benjamin Auer. He scored in a the 3:3 draw for Bochum when we came over in 2008, our first taste of German footbal, he's Now the front man for Alemannia.

Scarves? This can mean only one thing!

Yep, you guessed it. TOR ! !

So 2-0!

This didn't stop the linesman from being strange..he kept entering the field and drifting from his line for no reason. Very strange. This really bugged me as well.

After getting the essential bratwurst at H/T we moved to seek a better position. Where better than right behind the goal next to the Ultras!

Who were protesting against something!

They weren't the greatest ultras ever and certainly sounded better when we could hear them from outside! However a good effort.

And the game was dead and burried when Aachen made it 3-0.

So happy fans come the F/T Whistle.

We didn't hang around long afterwards as we were heading all the way back to Dortmund for our journey home, but there was a chance to get one look at the impresive Tivoli before we hopped onto the busses to take us back into the city.

The busses went past the old stadium, which you can just make out.

The bus dropped us off in the middle of No-where in Aachen, so we kinda bimbled through the city, in no rush as our flight home wasn't until tomorrow morning! It turned out to be a pretty fine city. Well worth a day's visit!

I told you everyone had an Alemannia scarf! :)

After a boring train ride we got to Dortmund, where we were unsure what to do, so we decided we'd go try find their stadium and THAT terrace. After fumbling around we eventually found a train that could get us out there and back. Happy days!

10 mintues from the main train station...and there she was! The SignalIdunaPark. Phwoar!
Stood right next to 'her' was the everly impressive reserves stadium. Phwoar!

There was no places we could go to get a great shot of the stadium so instead I took lots of poor ones!

The size of the place isn't justified by these photos!

THAT Terrace ! This was as close as I've ever got to it...for now ;)

Club shop!

More stadia phots (sorry!)

Before I decided to show them who the real team in this region were (BOCHUM!)

Brinner "Didn't want any trouble" !

We headed back on the train to Dortmund Hbf, before heading to the airport. We found ourselfs on a bus, where brinner was feeling the bundes-lag as I am now calling it.

The airport was a bit in-the-middle-of-nowhere....But there was still a Maccies just down the road. Time to get rid of our spare pennies in erm...style?

Our flight wasn't untill early doors in the morning, and we'd decided to just camp out in the airport as it'd have been impossible to get their on time if we booked a hotel in central dortmund. What we hadnt expected was that the airport would be completly empty!

We'd stocked up on Kicker magazine's (which are awesome!) to provide some "reading" throughout the night!

Ghost Airport! There was just one plane there, and no people. But us! The airport was a bit creepy, so we decided to head over to the petrol station acros the road (ok this is only just starting to sound un-real!) which was blaring out some very odd music (Even for Germans!) across its forcourt! This is at 1am as well!

We decided a beer was in need to round off a strange but magnificent trip

Spirits were high - And so was the Alcohol % !

We set up base on the viewing deck for the night.

Can you see a plane Brinner?

I show off my array of new scarf's - "Hey, at least i'm not cold"

Brinner declares his eye fit for use again!

But still fails on the bandits! Hmmm?

Adolf paid a visit lately?

After several delays to our flight we finally found ourself back in the UK in the not so lovely Luton at 10am.

With next to no sleep over the night, we would soon be setting off for our trip to Newcastle ! Not the shortest of drives!