Celtic Diary Friday October 20: Munich: Three Days At The Football

Normal service returns after a three day sojourn to the Bavarian captial of Munich, as Celtic continued their habit of freezing against the big teams and saving themselves for Anderlecht at home.

Its almost as though the players have been told not to worry about Bayern and PSG, and to concentrate on the two games against the Belgians.

Either that or all of them, from the manager down, have a serious lack of belief in themselves at this level.

The 3-0 defeat could have been worse, ask Arsenal, for instance, who conceded five twice at this stage last year to Bayern, but its more the lack of confidence that worries me. Only Brown, Tierney and Gordon came anywhere near the confidence required at this level, and that meant we were always going to be in trouble.

And this was Bayern without Nueuer, Ribbery,Martinez and so on…

I was in Kennedy’s Bar, next to Sendlinger Tor train station ( below Marienplatz on the map ) when the teams were amnnounced. Its on the same line as Frottmanning, where the ground is. ( Dark Blue )

There was a huge groan in the room as it was confirmed that Robben, Lewndowski and Muller were playing.

From me.

The groan got louder when I saw the word Gamboa.

You know, we moaned at Gordon Strachan last week for ignoring James forrest and Calum MacGregor, and yet in Brendan we trust.

Rodgers went with Armstrong and Roberts, one of whom runs with the ball and one who runs without it, equally ineffectively.

At that point, I figured I might as well just enjoy the trip…

Which started at three o’clock on tuesday morning, or at ten past three to be more precise, with a “I hope you’ve got fucking up ” type of phone call.

Our flight was at 7.45, and given the new improved smart motorway between Stoke and Birmingham, it was probably a good idea to give ourselves plenty of time to make an arse of it.

But we didn’t, which made us both a little nervous, so we had breakfast at the airport, feeling absurdly pleased that we’d found the correct car park. Which was bigger than the actual terminal, and would have been difficult to miss.

We nearly did, and had to reverse out of car park 5, ( we wanted 1 )but apart from a scream from what sounded like an old woman with a car on her foot, hardly anyone  noticed.

Birmingham airport is one of the easier ones to navigate, and it didn’t take long to find the bar.

I’m a fairly nervous flier, for all the right reasons, and it still amazes me how they stay in the air. They’re much bigger than say, a bus or a piano, and they don;t stay up for very long unassisted.

It’s all to do with aerodynamics, though the first sight of our plane didn’t fill me with a great deal of confidence, as it has a great big un-aerodynamic tube sticking out of it.

As opposed to the great big un-aerodynamic tube taking the photograph.

And if you look carefully, in between the white lines, there’s the outline of a guy who fell out of a plane earlier.

Though it has to be said, Lufthansa aren’t Ryanair or Easyjet, and it seemed like the crew all knew what they were doing. My companion, lets call him Stuart, because thats his name, even accepted a glass of water from the stewardess when he found out they were gratis.

And I’ve still got the cheese sandwich she gave me.

Never go anywhere without your emergency cheese sandwich.

The flight was only an hour and a half, and with the time difference it meant we nearly ended up in Munich before we left Birmingham, which probably explains the first bit of confusion we encountered.

Inside the terminal we joined a queue -the first one we saw- and chatted merrily away to an elderly Amercan couple who had ancestors from somewhere in Ayshire, though I’ve forgotten the name of the town, and to be honest, I think they’d made it up, or got it from one of those websites where they sell daft people a history so they can pretend they’ve got one..hang on, that’s a different story..

Anyway, they both remarked on how much they had enjoyed Munich, and we still never clicked.

In fact, we only clicked when they wouldn’t let us on the plane back to the States.

It took us another forty minutes or so to get out of the terminal on down to the train. Sort of like that Tom Hanks film where he lives in that airport. Actually, two Tom Hanks films, Forrest Gump in an Airport.

In our defence, Munich Airport is bloody huge, and anyone who adheres to the stereotypical lack of humour of Germans is wrong. I am certain dozens of them were watching us bumble about the airport like two kids looking for their parents at a theme park, and if there’s a You’ve Been Framed type show over there, we’ll be on it.

It was a miracle we found the trains, which whilst the map above is fairly self explanatory, most of the stations seem to have all the trains going in the same direction.

We were heading to Westkruez, yellow line, to the left, where we’d found an apartment to stay in.

The train station was just across the road and down a bit.

Perfect !

Although on Wednesday morning, standing outside the front door enjoying my first cigarette and coughing fit of the day, I noticed an awful lot of people going into what looked like a post office opposite and not coming back out… at six am.

I had a wee wander over, and discovered it was the main entrance to the train station, but presumably they were trying to keep it a secret.

They had, from us, at any rate.

But to Tuesday, and the city centre..

Marienplatz , in the centre was the place to be.

Marienplatz (en: Mary’s Square, i.e. St. Mary, Our Lady‘s Square) is a central square in the city centre of Munich, Germany. It has been the city’s main square since 1158. 

We got there shortly after, around 12.30

It was already busy…

Marienplatz was named after the Mariensäule, a Marian column erected in its centre in 1638 to celebrate the end of Swedish occupation. Today the Marienplatz is dominated by the New City Hall (Neues Rathaus) on the north side, and the Old City Hall (Altes Rathaus, a reconstructed [[Gothic architecture|gothic]) council hall with a ballroom and tower) on the east side.

In the Middle Ages, markets and tournaments were held in this city square. The Glockenspiel in the tower of the new city hall was inspired by these tournaments, and draws millions of tourists a year. Furthermore, the pedestrian zone between Karlsplatz and Marienplatz is a crowded area with numerous shops and restaurants.

The Marienplatz S-Bahn and U-Bahn station, an important transportation hub, is located below the square.

Those of you who have been on these trips will know what I mean when I say the place was green and white. Those of you who haven’t, get the passports out. Everyone should do it at least once.

Every pub, every spare wall, was taken up by tims enjoying the autumn warmth, all with a glass of refreshing light ale, which served purely to moisten the vocal chords, which were being thoroughly well excercised.

There’s plenty of videos about, but they don’t capture the noise and the atmosphere.

Nor the freedom of just wandering around , taking it all in under the watchful eye of the Munich police, who, to my knowledge, didn’t have to arrest anyone for what they sang , wore or said.

And guess what ?

There was no trouble.

We met up with a couple from the Welsh branch of our CSc, and then, we bumped into the regulars from the pub we use in Lockerbie on the way back from Celtic Park..

Sure, there were police around, but they tended to stay to the sides, although you had little doubt they wouldn’t hesitate to do what they had to do, and there was always the risk that with so much drink about something might “kick off ” , but there seemed a mutual respect between visitors and hosts so it was all peaceful, if a bit loud.

We enjoyed the fun until about eleven or so, but it had been a long day , and given our lack of ability to negotiate the airport, we figured the train network might turn out to be a little awkward if we continued drinking…

We got back to the bar outside the hotel fairly easily, I think, and without incident, I think.

There were a few restaurants in the square by the hitel, but none of them sold Spare Ribs, instead they all tried to sell me a portion of duck, so I thought sod it, and went to bed.

Wednesday morning, the day of the game..

Our tickets had been assured, and before i go any further, I’d like to thank our man for doing his damn best to get us sorted. It wasn’t his fault it went tits up, and i can only imagine his frustration.

And anyway, looking back, given our own penchant for getting drunk and not making the game in Glasgow from time to time, perhaps it worked out well.

Who’s to say we’d have dragged ourselves out of Kennedy’s to get to the game in time anyway ?

Well, we probably would, but its still a possibility.

We realised there werr problems with the tickets, and appealed to anyone with spares, all of who we’d like to thank for trying to help.

By around 5pm, we’d decided that we would only buy two tickets at the same time if they became available, in a sort of solidarity pact.

Granted, a pact which would have bee deemed illegal in that both of us by now were in no real state to make conscious decisions.

And we’d have got them as well, as there were plenty about, but deep down, I think we’d resigned ourselves to our seats by the telly, largely down to the drink, I suppose.

Next time I travel, I’ll stick to water..

We should have maybe tidied up a bit before we left,

But I wandered round there looking for a bin, and I only found two. I’m sure others would back me up on that.

You can tell actually, notice all the rubbish is sort of in wee bundles.

I suppose I  wanted to go to the game, and wanted to see that stadium, but I got a fridge magnet with a picture of it, so when I’m old I can convince myself I did.

And anyway, I’d have probably fell asleep or something.

As it was, it was a fantastic trip, a great atmosphere and well worth it.

Tickets or not tickets, it was still a great few days.

And we got back early yesterday without making an arse of it.

Two travelled, two back…though I can understand what went wrong here,

it was a huge effort to get up early after two days on the lash, and I guess not everyone remembered to set their alarm.

I got home after what seemed like hours, had a bath and slept until teatime, and then again until just now.

Can’t think why I was so tired…

Tomorrow is the League cup semi final.

Lets hope the players are somewhat fitter than me..