The Adventure continues....

Although the adventure continues, we have now seen our last live matches of the World Cup 2006. We tried to make a full day-trip of our journey to Leipzig to see the final round group match with Angola, but with the 4 o’clock kick-off we were not really there early enough to have anything more than a brief look around the city. In theory, at least, Angola had a chance of making it through to the final 16 if they beat Iran and Portugal beat Mexico. The Leipzig stadium is a real masterpiece of construction, built as it is in a vast artificial hollow, which means you sort of having to climb up a huge set of steps and then down into the stadium..!! After a great headed goal and for 15 minutes Angola dared to dream of the next round…, a dream that was ended when the Iranians scored. In some ways, it was disappointing that these industrious players from the formally war-torn African state did not make it through as their efforts deserved more. Far from being the lowly-ranked and vastly outclassed minnows of the competition, they had two creditable draws with Mexico & Iran and had only lost by a single goal to a lacklustre Portugal, and ending up going home with 2 points from the group stage, twice as many as the very highly ranked US team…!

With our Angolan ‘Team-Specific Ticket’ and their failure to make the next round meant that we would follow the winner of Group D into their next round match, which turned out to be the potentially thrilling encounter between Portugal and Holland….
“But a funny thing happened on our way to the forum…??” In order to get the tickets for the next match, Yates and I had to make a trip to the Stadium Ticketing Centre and turn in a voucher. We had been out to the STC earlier in the trip to do some ticket transfers, which involved standing in a queue for 2 hours in the blazing sun, with several hundred other ticket holders, and we were hoping that things would be different this time around. Wrong…, in fact, the queue was even longer, and with the remains of yet another hangover and the onset of a head cold, I was not in the best mindset for a long wait. As it turned out the queue move more quickly than previously and Yates and I were happy to watch the ticket touts score the line for spare tickets as we waited in the secure knowledge that we had some good tickets waiting for us. Then our plans were turned upside down when a presumably Swedish gentleman, noticing my England shirt, offered us a pair of tickets for the up-coming England game against Equador, for 300 Euros each. We did not hesitate in buying these tickets only to later wok out that there was no way we could see both the England Game in Stuttgart and the Portugal match in Nuremberg as they were too far apart to get to on the same day. This leads to some brilliant thinking on Yates’s part to try and swap our Portugal tickets for another game on another day, and after making him a sign that he wore around his neck for the next hour, we had suddenly turned from smug ticket holders to the insidious ticket touts that we had been cursing not more than an hour earlier. Thank God that we had Yates’s happy-go-lucky and approachable personality on our side, as it was not too long before he entered into negotiations with some vaguely Scandinavian types and we scored some tickets for Argentina vs Mexico match as a swap for our tickets.

To get to the Argentina game meant a return journey to Leipzig and as we had not really had time to see the city on our previous visit, we left early for this late evening game. The downside to this was that the return trip to Frankfurt was going to be particularly late and arduous, possibly not getting us back before 6:00am with no guarantee of a seat on the train. Leipzig has the dubious honour of being the only World Cup stadium being used during the tournament located in the former East German sector of the now unified country. There was a noticeable difference in the architecture and general appearance of the city and its environs that gave away it’s past, but one that personally quite liked. Leipzig had the appearance of a slightly faded opulence that had been left to disintegrate during the communist years and was now being slowly and constructively restored. Of all the cities we had visited so far, this was the one I liked the most probably because it was less like the homogenized cities of the west.

We arrived early and set out to have some lunch before finding and looking around the ‘Stasi’ museum, showing the history and processes for the former East German Secret Police. The exhibition was not only free but also very insightful, and I can only imagine what it must have been like to live in such a police state, and left me happy in the knowledge that I would be returning to the safety and sanity of New Zealand when this trip ended. At some point in the afternoon, we had discussed the possibility of selling Fiona’s ticket at a vastly inflated price and sending her home with some shopping money. As we walked towards the Stadium Yates went into ticket tout mode and was trying to tempt one of the many hundreds of ticketless Mexicans to part with their cash for a chance to see their beloved team. Even though the price we wanted came down, Fiona still ended up with 350 Euros, (US$400/NZ$700), in her pockets and heading back to the train station in the belief that she would get back home early. Yates and I proceeded to make our way into the Stadium and take our excellently positioned seats to watch what turned out to be a thrilling match. We were obviously cheering on Mexico and were elated when they scored early in the game, only to have the wind taken out of our sails by the Argentineans score a swift equalizer. The game went into extra time and Maxi Rodrigues scored an awesome goal to which the Mexicans had no reply.

Yates and I both knew that the trip back to Frankfurt was going to an epic, due to the strange fact that their was only going to be a single train leaving Leipzig after the game, and that there were going to be 1000’s of people wanting to catch it. I do not think either of us anticipated exactly how ‘epic’ the journey was going to be as we jockeyed for position on the platform. When the train arrived and the doors opened it was like a re-enactment of the ‘running-of-the-Bulls’ in Pamplona with just a mass of bodies surging forward and cramming every part of the train carriage. All the way through this adventure we have been very lucky with getting seats on overcrowded trains but I guess our luck had to run out sometime, and tonight was the night…. When the final wave of humanity finally washed through the body of the train, Yates and I ended up in the connecting corridor between carriages with just barely room to stand. All around us was a heaving mass of Mexicans with the occasional Argentinean fan thrown in for good measure, all of us trying to make the best of the situation and trying to work out whether we were going to be able to last for the 4 hours of the journey. Yates and I played cards (Gin Rummy), for the first couple of hours, which is quite a dexterous feat whilst standing in the middle of a moving train knee deep in Mexicans, much to the amusement of our accompanying passengers. After that our good humour began to fade and the remaining couple of hours became a torturous ordeal where we gritted our teeth, staved off exhaustion, and tried to find a standing position that did not lead to cramp or falling over… Eventually, at around 6:00am we arrived in Frankfurt, much the worse for wear, grabbed the first taxi we could find and headed for home. This was a journey we were not likely to forget or want to re-live in a long while…!!

And guess what, we could only really catch maybe 4-5 hours sleep before we needed to start our next trip to thankfully closer Stuttgart, to see England play Equador..., More on that later….