I'm less than a week away from attending my first REAL soccer game. Going to the GERMAN SUPER CUP in Dortmund. Ma'wife was able to procure tickets through the Munich fan club, so I guess I owe them my allegiance? I'm really excited for the game and we'll be spending most of the afternoon in/around the stadium and beer gardens, so I should be able to have a coupla drinks and maybe even see a coupla things. Getting back to Koln after the game ends will be the fun part, could be our most exciting hobo date ever... 100km in a foreign country in the middle of the night!
It was such an awesome game, Finished with a Bayern Munich comeback goal late in the game to send it to penalties, which Bayern won. We were sitting in the Bayern visitor stands, so the experience of seeming them win was pretty great. Saw Pulisic score too, which was cool.... pretty much made the whole thing happen hisself with a nice steal off a sloppy pass and then was calm about finishing. My boy Obamayang had a cool goal as well. I will say the Germans near me were definitely confused when I switched team scarves whenever a new team took the lead, which happened often in this game, especially during the penalty shoot out.
As a preseason game, and a game that ended later than planned, the Dortmund train folks really dicked the dog and it actually did end up becoming a hobo date. Apparently they normally run an almost constant string of trains from the Stadium train station back to the normal Dortmund station. Well, this night no trains showed up! We waited 45 minutes for the first one and it was only 2 cars for about 30k people. There was a big rush for the doors and we didn't even try for that one because we were about 100 yards from where it stopped (we were at the platform station where it was supposed to stop, but it pulled up short). About another 15 minutes later a 4 car train showed up and with amazing luck it stopped with the doors of a car only about 10 feet from us. I used myself as a battering ram and told Thea to hold my backpack and I showed the Germans a thing or two about "active queuing" which is there uncivilized fucking system for "lines." I almost witnessed my first crushing victim as some trog tried to take his 4 year old into the fray. Anyway, we made it onto the train and booked it down toward the middle of the car where there was still room. I knew the tidal wave of humanity was coming, so I pushed Thea past me and up onto an empty seat (no sitting on this train). Then the crush hit me and I braced against the side of the seat and was glad to have tucked the program into the back of my pants, as it ended up protecting my kidneys from many elbows! Eventually the train cars jammed WAY too full and Germans started screaming at the idiots who were still trying to push in. There was about 10 minutes of fighting at the door, which obviously couldn't close because people were still trying to enter. Finally some rail cops showed up and started wrecking the guys at the door. It was pandemonium!
So we got to the main train station about 15 minutes late to catch the last regional (cheap) train of the night, so we had to go buy an expensive ticket on an ICE international train for 2AM. Fortunately they sell beer at the train station, so I went and bought a bag of 8 beers (why they don't sell 6 packs anywhere but groceries I'll never understand). We got back to the hotel in Koln about 3:30 am!
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