Germany 2023
Tour members: Zio, the Barrie bros and Caz
This year’s tour was back to November although there were less members than the previous year. Due to various factors, the weekend of 3-6 November was selected with lower league football being realistically the only football available but with memories of previous visits to lower leagues games, this seemed a good option! The games selected were Wuppertal/Fortuna Köln in the Regionalliga West and Hürth/Vichttal in the Mittelrheinliga. The visit to Wuppertal would also allow us to see and travel on the famous “Schwebebahn” or monorail.
Friday night was traditional, tea in AsiaGourmet followed by visits to Schreckenskammer and Peter’s brauhauses followed by a trek to an allegedly cheap and late-night bar which unfortunately had less than tasty beer! A few ‘ones-for-the-road’ ended the night.
Saturday meant an early(ish) start to Wuppertal for a 14:15 kick -off, instead of going into Wuppertal Hbf, we got off at the Vohwinkel station which was at the terminus of the monorail. The nearest bar to it also sold kölsch at Є1.50, a no-brainer for a post-match beer!
The game itself was forgettable, due to the crowd (8,100) we missed the opening 15 minutes getting in, 2 goals and only saw the 3rd goal crawling into the net as we arrived in the stand! There were no other shots at goal!
The return to Vohwinkel was the correct decision seeing the queues for the monorail going into Wuppertal and the free shot we got back at the bar there was enjoyable! Tea was again had at AsiaGourmet, Shorty’s shot bar visited for the traditional 5 shots in 10 minutes, a second bar visited for White Russians and the rest of the evening spent in a music bar, formerly the karaoke bar, entertaining the kids there who were all at least half our ages!
Sunday started off badly with Pete’s old age catching up with him after the previous night’s dancing, so it was a reduced group that started out for the Sunday football game. Initially we had to take Caz into “em Kölsche Boor” as that was another new brauhaus for him. We then went to the metro stop to get the train which should have taken 18 minutes to get to our stop, after about 35 minutes travelling Zio noticed that we had got on a Line 16 instead of Line 18 train! The decision was made to visit Bonn, the final destination of the train instead of trying to get to the football. A desire for a pipi meant that we looked for a bar on reaching Bonn and lo and behold, we came across the Paulaner Brauhaus which was remembered from our 2011 trip! A few libations were had!
We decided to get the train as opposed to the metro back to Köln and this is where the litany of disasters really kicked in! Instead of getting the train recommended, we saw a train with Köln HBf and decided to get that instead. Halfway through our beer an announcement came on the intercom that it wasn’t going to stop at any Köln station and the next stop was Leverkusen Manfort station, unfortunately the next 2 trains back to Köln were cancelled, so a decision was made to get the bus into the main Leverkusen station, unfortunately it appeared that all train from there had been cancelled as well. A 50-euro taxi journey was needed getting us into Köln HBf just before AsiaGourmet shut! Our journey had taken 2 and a half hours instead of 40 minutes so the beer in Früh was indeed enjoyed! As usual a late night one for the road was also imbibed on a bar unknown to Zio!
Monday home via Brussels where our flight was delayed but allowed us time for a swift Stella or two!
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