Wir gehen alle eine europäische Tour weiter!

Indeed we are....indeed we are...

Well its time for another post from yours truly, slightly later than usual, mainly due to the fact that, being at home all day every day, there ain't too much to shout about!

Well this last week has been spent getting used to having a lovely catheter in, which is as fun as it sounds, and apart from feeling uncomfortable and the odd shooting pain, it wasn't too bad, although by the beginning of last week I had pretty much had enough of it, so it was a pretty good job that I was having it removed on friday. This concerned me slightly, as, having had a couple of catheters removed after about a day after my mini-ops, I know for a fact that it pretty blummin hurts when they take it out. So I wasn't really looking forward to it, especially after my, now infamous, 'blood line' incident.

So on friday morning, we trundled along to Russells Hall again, and as I was going to be in there for about an hour or so, my aunt and mom decided that they hadn't been to Merry Hell for a while, so just had to pop along there for a few bargains (which they found, of course!)

After about an hour of waiting in the waiting room (Where else?), trying not to get into 'Cash in the Attic' and 'Bargain Hunt', I was eventually sent into the small operating theatre, where within about 30 seconds I was set free from my tubular hell. Apart from the small ping-pong ball at the end which gave me a fright as I thought I was missing 'something', it didn't hurt at all, and within another half hour I was out of there, with good wishes from my consultant, who came in to check his handywork, and kept telling me what a pleasure I was to work on (I may be on a 'this is your life' DVD for his retirement)

Since then, weirdly, its like the catheter had been acting as a weird kind of scaffolding, holding everything together on an old building until it comes down and it has to settle into its new life with new bits attached, as it were. I now have the limp perfected to make it look like I really mean to walk gingerly everywhere!

This last week also saw the unveiling of the mighty Villa's opponents in the UEFA Cup. Gladly, we have avoided most of the big teams, and should get through the group stages of the competition. Ajax at home should be an interesting start, especially as they have had a bad start to their season, then its a tricky tie away to Slavia Prague before we destroy MSK Zilina (Slovakian team) at home, then go to Hamburg for the final game, by which point we should (and I say 'should' with some emphasis!) be safely through the group.

Now, we decided at the end of last season, that we would at least try and go to an away european game, so when Hamburg came out of the hat, we jumped at the chance, and spent the next few days on t'internet, hunting down hotels and flights, which was all going very well. We had found a nice hotel not too far from the ground, and a flight from Heathrow (Brum is closed overnight in December for maintenance, which is annoying) that got us into Hamburg for 1.15pm, then back for 8.30 the next day, which didn't give us much time in the beautiful city, but we could see some of it at least.

This was until Thursday, when the airline put the price up on their flight £3.95 every 5 minutes (seriously!), so we could either spend another £70 on the same flight, hunt for another flight at a similar time, or forget it....

...well this beagle ain't gonna give up that easily, no way! Not only did I find a flight that got us in much earlier, so giving us a whole afternoon in the city, but for only about £30 more. So, booked it up, and told the rest of the guys, who did similar, even though by the end of the 30 second phone call, the price for the same flight had gone up by £15!

All done and dusted......well no actually......

...y'see, the ground we had seen on Google Earth, which we recognised from t'internet.....may not have been Hamburgs ground........

......in fact....

...it wasn't!

In actual fact it was their tennis arena that they have the Masters Series events at. We genuinely thought that there was a tennis club next door as there were so many tennis courts next to the ground! In fact the actual stadium was about 40 miles away from where we thought it was, and away from the city centre, which was good as the only hotels we found for a decent price, were right smack bang in the middle of the red light district, or insisted that me and Dan shared a bed (not bloody likely!)

So, having panic-phoned everyone to make sure they hadn't booked the hotel, I found a fantastic hotel less than a mile from the actual ground, which has some lovely Bavarian-style villages surrounding it. I'll get some piccies off t'internet for the next blog.

Right, thats about it from me, I'll probably blog again this week, just to keep you sufficiently annoyed. Hopefully I'll be out to the pub this thursday to accept my accolades from my confederates, but that all depends on whether I can sit on a car by then!