ABH at the HSH, Bier, Carolling and world domination!

Guten Tag, my little Christmas Elves, I have returned from the beautiful city of Hamburg with more than a few memories, and some which will last more than others!


Lets get the bad part out of the way, shall we? We came, we put out a team that everyone knew would fail miserably, and we did so, in a blaze of cold adulation from us loyal fans who spent good hard-earned money travelling great distances to support the stupid sods!


Right, thats the bad stuff done with, now on with the fantastic day itself! As we were flying from Heathrow at 9.05am, we had to be up nice and early at stoopid 'o' clock in the morning to be awake enough for me to drive us all down there and be in time for a nice cooked breakfast at wetherspoons and then fly out.


The journey itself, as you would imagine at that time of a morning, was pretty quiet, apart from the delivery lorries carrying their wares, and the odd car or two, and we had managed to get down to the Oxford services in pretty quick time, which gave us a chance to kick back and have a coffee and a stretch of the legs, before getting back in the car and tackling the fun that is the M25 and M4 in quick succession before getting to Heathrow. Well by the time we'd got to the M25, it was around 5.15am, and the traffic was just mad, like they'd just let all the cars in suddenly! That was nothing, however, compared to the absolute carnage that is the road network around Heathrow.


Now, there has been alot of talk about moving the airport from Heathrow to some place south of the Thames. Well let me tell you, if you can successfully move something the size of half of Wales, down the road without giving town planners at least 15 heart attacks, then good luck. This place is just huge!!!


The road network around the airport is a maze of islands, traffic lights and slip roads, which in hindsight is an absolute godsend as the airport is ridiculously big. We needed to get to the Long Stay car park for terminals 1-4, which would be easy if it were signposted at all before you got to the main islands that make up the labrynth of roads. I ended up taking what I thought was a decent route to the car park, as I had just seen the sign for it, however as we proceeded through the tunnel, it was looking less likely!


Remember those old action movies, where to lose the bad guys, the good guys drive their car up a narrow alley, and at the end the road narrows so much that the good guys (in small car) get through, but the bad guys (usually cops) get their car all smashed up? Well imagine that, but in tunnel form with a weird kind of cycle path running through the centre of it! That was one of the entrances to one of the hundreds of car parks we went pas, but eventually we managed to find our way to the correct one and get the shuttle bus to the terminal.

After a cracking breakfast at wetherspoons, we boarded and in typical german fashion, landed in Hamburg 10 minutes early!I had been told that there was a subway running from the airport to the city centre in 25 minutes, so after we trundled off the plane, we made our way down to the station and experienced an awesome demonstration of how a rail network should be run!



Ordinarily, in England, you pay around £5-6 for a day saver pass, however on the subway in Hamburg, you pay the equivalent to £1.85 maximum for a whole days pass on each line you need to take! Not that there was anyone checking tickets, as lets be honest, even in a credit crunch, to use the train all day for such little money means that everyone will pay for the service, therefore no fare dodgers!


The trains themselves were superb, all electrical, the driver just having to get out and see if everyone is on board, then getting in, pressing a button and away we go, never to reach a destination late! German engineering eh! We used the train about 4 times during our day in the city, costing us about £6 altogether, even reaching our hotel direct from the station in about 20 mins!



When we got to the city centre, we had a bit of a wander round, as it was about midday so we had time to kill before we went to our hotel to check in and on to the ground for the game. There is a main shopping centre just in the centre, a bit like the bullring, plenty of brand names etc, and then as you walk around, the shops tend to get more........unusual!



After about 10 minutes, we got fed up of counting sex shops as most of us had lost count! Seriously, there were sex shops next to restaraunts, nurseries, fruit and veg shops, hairdressers, and this wasn't even the red light district!


We managed to find ourselves a decent looking bar, which turned out to be the size of a postage stamp, and crammed full of villa fans, so we stopped there for about an hour and had a couple of drinks there, which was a very nice introduction to proper german beer. You know the sort of beer that puts hairs on your chest!

The rest of the day was spent wandering round the city centre, then getting the train to the Reeperbahn, the red light and entertainment district of the city, which was great! Again, an odd choice of destination to put the red light district, as it is right next to the main club/bar part of the city, and those pesky germans have a very odd sense of what is 'sexy', god bless 'em!



After some grub in a burger king (still have that acidic fizz in my stomach!), we headed for our hotel and after a 10 minute turnround, headed for the ground, which was a good 20 minute walk, but well worth it when you got there. I'll post some photos in a seperate blog, and when my phone decides to let me have them! The ground itself is an amazing spectacle of how to build a stadium. It was built for the last world cup, and holds about 60,000, and the atmosphere inside the stadium was electric.



There were 2,500 villa fans in the stadium, but I'm pretty sure there were far more in Hamburg before and after the game, which led me to a fiendish plan to take over the world. Think about it...if you were a fresh-faced dictator, keen on taking over the world for your own amusement, all you need to do is invest heavily in a football team, and make sure they qualify for European competition every year. Then, every away game, take thousands of fans over there, invade a city and within a few years you'll have taken over most of europe, gaining vital cities along the way........

.....ok I was bored on the flight back, but you can see my point!

As I said, the stadium was amazing, and as we took our seats, it took us a good few minutes to realise just how impressive it actually was.Before the game, and as the home fans trickled into the stadium, various dance songs were played to get the crowd jumping around, which was good as most of us would have frozen solid if we'd have hung around for too long! One song they did play was We Will Rock You, however I didn't actually hear that much of it, as just when the song started playing, some lads behind me were messing around, one fell into me and I went flying, head-first into the row below! The first thing I knew about it was when I saw concrete hurtling towards me, so instinctively I put my left hand out to cushion the blow, but unfortunately didn't have enough time to extend my arm sufficiently, so my arm buckled under my weight, jarring my shoulder and grazing my hand, as I landed, shoulder-first, onto the concrete with a sufficient Aarrghh!

The lads that caused the superman impression were very apologetic, as after all, they were only messing around and it was an accident, but after i'd got myself back upright and laughed it off with most of the crowd arround me, realised that I had got myself a lovely 4 inch gash in my leg, not unlike Craig Gardners injury in the game! At least I know that a little piece of me will always be in Hamburg! Alot of the game was spent singing christmas songs and anything else that lifted the gloom, which was odd but worked somehow!

After the debacle of the game, we headed back to our hotel, had a drink in the bar and went to bed, as we had to get up at 4.30 the next day to get our flight home, most of which was spent half asleep, however a nice surprise when we got back to Heathrow was the fact that Pat Nevin, the Channel 5 fella, was on our flight as well, so we had a chat to him about how useless we all know Marlon Harewood and Zat Knight to be. Apparently he is good mates with Martin O'Neill, so we can only hope he has a big influence on his January sales!

The journey back home was a nice quick one as soon as we'd left London, although the distinct lack of sleep will make tomorrow at work all the more fun, not to mention the Christmas party tomorrow night!