So, it all started on the Thursday evening at the very impressive London St.Pancras where we boarded the Eurostar to Brussels.
Once we arrived at Brussels, we found a neat little bar where we hung out for a few hours before our next train. We decided to have a Barnet vs Leicester Table Football Match. Unfortunatly we were defeated, twice.
Bees: 
Blues:
Our next train was a 9 Hours sleeper special to Hamburg, which departed just before midnight. We decided to buy some beer, which came from what supermarkets will look like in the future...
We made friends with a scouce bloke on the train who lived in Brussels & was going to see his missus in Gothenburg! He was pissed as well, which made for some funny conversations.
We were rudely awoken by some dodgy driving at Dortmund at 4:30am (After about an hours kip) after the train had split (One section went to Berlin), we decided to take a look around. There were still shops open in the station concorse so we decided to go & get a bite to eat, and we obviosuly had to take a few pictures as well.
Our Train Arrived at Hamburg Hbf at 8:30am. It was quite an impressive station!
We had plenty of time to waste so we had a look around the city. They seemed to like the churches over there......
We headed over to the St.Pauli Distict of Hamburg on the underground and had a look around there. Although it was slightly grim, the docks were quite impressive. Oh and all the locals, were complete nutters. One of them glassed Chris on the underground, for no reason!
We then checked in to our £12.50 Hotel (Well it only just qualifies as a Hotel..) on the famous (Or infamous) REEPERBAHN. The Reeperbahn is certinaly something, and rivals Amsterdam for sure. Sex Shop followed by strip club, followed by "Dollhouse" etc.....
We managed to pass the time easily. Our first game would be Fc St.Pauli vs Fc Carl Ziess Jena, at the Millentor stadium. (The game was in the 2nd Bundesliga).
Ticket -
Stadium -
Fanshop - 
The stadium was quite old, and Pauli had been selling out virtually every gamesince they got promoted last year, so they decided to re-vamp the stadium. The South Stand was virtually complete, although the roof hadn't been done yet. The old south terrace is still there but with a completly new seating section behind, I think we can all see which was more popular, shame the English Authorities don't think the same way.
Our stand (The North stand) was also an open terrace, but they had added seating onto the back of it as they realise that there is a huge demand for tickets at Pauli.
From inside the stadium it became more obvious of where people wanted to be...Although there was nothing stopping people with seated tickets going onto the terrace, maybe explaining why the terrace was packed to the brim.
The Jena fans were located just to our right (Seperated by a fence). They must have sold out their terrace as their fans were also in the stand along the right hand side, in the seating area, strangly most of them stood in the seating area. It was quite impressive to see so many fans making a 400 Mile round Journey (Equvilant of Leicester - Plymouth). They made a fair bit of noise & had a good selection of flags, baloons & they even set off some sort of firecrackers at one point, much to the displeasure of the home support.
The fans came round and handed out huge bags of shredded paper (Makes my confetti efforts look puny) which were held up like PomPoms, The South Stand, where the Ultras stood, looked quite something...
They then decided to light sparklers! (Health & Safety - EAT YOUR HEART OUT)
The game was a cracker. Jena were a man short & a goal down but railled and scored twice. They looked to be taking the 3 points away but in the 89th minute Pauli got an equaliser which meant that Jena eneded up bottom of the table, despite putting in a great performance!The Attendence, with extensions, was just over 20'000 which was just short of a new record for St.Pauli.
Afterwards the terrace was covered in shredded paper!
The South Stand at Night:
Atferwards we headed back to the reeperbahn and we hit a few pubs, one which consisted of some Jena fans who sung us a few of their songs! We also had a Bees vs Blues re-match of Table Football, but we lost, again....
On the Saturday we had to be up early to get into the centre of Hamburg for our 5Hour train journey to Bochum for our next game.
City Hall -
Hbf (Train Station) -
We travelled through rural germany, changing twice and taking in some nice towns along the way. The Journey was 5Hours and cost 35Euros for the 5 of us. Compare that to the prices in the UK! (182 Miles for about £7 Quid!)
When we got to Bochum, our hotel Ibis was right next to the train station where we proudly displayed our teams colours.
It was just one stop on the underground to the Stadium as well, where we met up with the Bochum lads in the pub. Some barnet songs were sang whilst the rest of the germans decided to sing "Ve Von Ze First game at Vembley, Virst Game at Vembley" to us. It was all laughed off.
Actually I think that might become my new 'anthem'.
Anwyay, we moved onto the stadium after a few refreshing beers. The RewirpowerSTADION. Very similar, from the inside, to the walkers stadium. But this one has a soul & atmosphere. The game was Vfl Bochum vs Fc Energie Cottbus (Bundesliga)
40 Minutes before kick off, we headed up into the 'OstKurve' terrace where we were going to watch the game. It was packed, already! - :
When the teams come out, the fans sing "You'll never walk alone". Which was actaully quite good, everyone got their scarves out!
The Bochum fans had told the club of our arrival & they put a message on the big screen for the bees, No mention of the blues though. Ah well, always next time! !
We were in their home end, not far behind the Ultras, who were excellent. Lots of flags and displays and constant noise. They didn't like it when the team got booed off at the end either
The Cottbus fans didn't bring that many, but it's a fair old treck (Over 600 Mile Round trip!!) They had one half of the opposite end in seating, which was just about empty & a small terrace, which was nearly full.They looked like they were having a good time, although you couldn't really hear them - No banter!
The game was an absolute thriller. Bochum took a 2-0 lead and then a 3-1 lead but After the 3rd goal they conceeded straight away, an awfull mistake by Jan Laštůvka (Remember him Fulham fans?) which by Cottbus back in the game at 3-2 and you could see an equaliser coming on. It happened & the full time whistle blew at 3-3. A cracking game from the neutral but the Bochum fans were not happy, wasting a game to a team in the relegation zone!
Over 22'000 fans attended the game, whcih was probably the least 'attractive' fixture of the season. It was quite wierd as the stadium (Which held 32'000) looked quite empty, just the terrace was packed!
Afterwards, It was picture time.
Beautifull Sunset over the stadium:
We headed back to the hotel, for a freshen up, where we decided to parade our scarfs!
We decided to meet up with the Bochum boys again at a different bar, where we spent far too much money on beer ( I didn't think I would ever say that). The highlight of the evening had to be when they ordered a metre of beer - Basically 9 Pints - We shared them out though!
The Bochum fans had already got the Barnet Flag up!
A slcie of the action:
It was a fun, but long night. We even joined the Bochum fans in a round of You'll never walk alone, again. The bar even played it over they speaker system! We got back in at around 2am after a Mr.Chickens at silly O'clock. The worst part was that we knew we had to be awake at 7 in the morning!
On the sunday, we were rushed out of bed by Chris to get our train to Brussels, the hangover wasn't too bad, but we were just genrally knackered. 15 Minutes into the train journey I realised I'd left a bag, so I went back on my own, and met up with the others in Aachen.
We changed at Aachen & Liege (Belgium now!). Very picturesque scenery on the way.
Some of the sights:
Koln (Cologne) & the River Rhine:
Stella Artios Factory just outside Brussels in Leuven:
In one of the toilets on the train, I found a St.Pauli sticker - HSV is Hamburg, St.Paulis more sucsesfull rivals.
How about one for forest?....
Me having a look at the sights out the window
The gang:
We arrived in Brussels, and had a few hours in the hotel to recover before our game in the evening. Chris managed to get us lost so we got a bit of sightseeing in!
The Grand Platz -
The South Tower:
Chris, Ben & Olly decided they were too knackered to goto the game in Waregam (remember them? PLayed Newcastle in the UEFA cup a couple of years ago) which was an hours train ride away. But feeling a bit fresher me & John decided to do it.
It was surreal game, it was a local derby between SV Zulte Waregam v KAA Gent but we didn't see any fans on the train, which came from gent! It was only about 2 Minutes from the stadium we spotted the first fan. We had to rush around a bit & just missed Kick Off...
Anyway, the stadium was quite nice with some little lakes & a load of ducks right outside. It was similar to wolves stadium with Two double-tiered-stands on either side, but behind one goal was no stand, just advertising & behind the other was an old stand which had been closed and had advertising hoards put infront of it. Wether they had done it just for our game, as it was on Tv, we don't know!
We stood on a little terrace down one side, near their Ultras, who were the least impressive out of the three games, although they did have there own bar inside the stand...
The Gent fans seemed the travel quite well, ok it was a derby, but they had half of the upper tier of the stand we were in and half of the lower as well as some obscure temporary stand that was constructed. The game wasn't played at that bad of a quality, certainly better than I thought it would be. It was deadlocked at 1-1 for the majority of the game untill Waregam brought on substitute Leandro Barrios Rita does Martires (Or Leandriniho) aged just 20. He took the game by the scruff of the neck and scored a 25 yard belter to win the game as well. He looked a quality player, the sort we need!
The atmosphere was lacking when Waregam weren't in front, and when they got going there wasn't enough numbers, but still it was a good experience
Afterwards we headed back to Brussels for the night, were we met up with the others who'd already been out on the booze. They found us a neat bar where we found possibly the world's greatest beer....Kwak!
Chris & the Barnet lot had to be up early to get the Eurostar as they would be going to work on the Monday morning, luckily we'd booked ourselves on a later one, so we decided to get drunk, again. We headed, like true Englishmen, to the local offy, where we found Belguims Strongest beer weighing in at a massive 12%. Obviously it didn't take very much of that stuff to get us drunk!
Ben was gutted when the beer ran out...... 
I foolishly decided I wanted a picture with the city flag at silly hours in the morning, whilst drunk. Here is the very dodgy outcome:
On the Sunday we had a beautifull sleep before heading off to catch the Eurostar at midday, we obviously had to have a beer before we left as well.
We also went and stocked up on the bottles to bring home!
We arrived back in St.Pancras in the afternoon.
We headed off to Chris' place in Barnet as we were completly shattered!The Tuesday looked good, we had all day to look around London, and then the prospect of going back to watching some English Football - Leicester were away at Watford.
Our First objective was to find Underhill....(Home of Barnet!)
As the song goes...."From Underhill to Wembley!"
Well keep the Blues flag flying high!
We found this awesome place in Barnet:
We had to find Chris in his workplace in the centre of London, so we went and did some Chineese Tourist-esk sightseeing! Although I doubt many were in the Business area of London somehow...
We had a little spare time so we decided to go to the Science Museum (It was free! !) where we found Mika Hakkinen's F1 Mclaren. This was the car that he crashed at Monza and nearly lost the world championship to Schumacher.
So onto Watford, after faffing around on the tube we eventually got to Vicarage Road. 1'100 city fans had made the journey, which was quite refreshing for a tuesday away game. Anwyay, we played crap and we had nothing against their big man at the back - Danny Shittu - It came as no surprise that we lost 1-0.
Picture from inside the ground:
On the wednesday we split up, I went down on the train to Exeter (to Visit my sister) whilst Ben headed home to Leicester.
Whilst in Exeter for the day, I visited the most narrow street in the world - Parliment Street and also saw the biggest weathespoons in the country.
(Some of those random facts you can tell your mates about..)
I finally got home on the Thursday evening!
Saturday's entertainment was the 'mouth-watering prospect' of Norwich at home. I couldn't contain my excitement to be back at the Walkers.
( I hope you noted the sarcasm there...)
Stephan, the drunk Bochum fan that we were with in the pub on saturday gave me one of his 'Azzuro Fan club' stickers (they're the Luxembourg branch I guess) I told him I'd stick it at the back of the Walkers stadium, and there it is at the back of block F1 in our "kop".
We went onto win 4-0, so the sticker is our new lucky charm. Lets hope the cleaner hasn't removed it, if they have, we know who to blame when we loose our next home game...What a perfect way to round off a great trip. Cov Away should be a laugh on the 23rd as well....
