European Away Day Funnies

[Im_Spartacus]

Just to lighten the mood, lets have some of your favourite European away day stories.

Those who have been fortunate enough to do at least one trip will all have that surreal experience of walking out of the train station to find sometimes frankly bizarre sights involving blues, alcohol, midget prostitutes and other continental delights. Here are a couple of mine:

Lokeren - got off the train about 30 mins before kick off, walked out of the main doors of the train station and saw utter carnage. The place was like the Alderley Edge of Belgium the day before the game, but on the day of the game as we walked out of the train station, there were two little police tanks on the main road with blues swinging from the guns singing blue moon and the town looked like a war zone. There hadn't been any trouble, but imagine 5000 blues descending on a nice little village in the middle of nowhere, and that was Lokeren

the day before the game in Brussels, someone climbed up this and put a city shirt on it

Funniest one from that trip was my mate who flew to Amsterdam, had a proper heavy night then got on the train to Brussels. He rang me when he arrived at about 2pm asking which bar we were in. Gave him directions, only for him to ring me 5 minutes later to tell me he had just realised he slept through to Paris

Groclin - the story of the upturned portaloo in the ground is now the stuff of legends, can't even describe how fucking minging it was though. It also spawned the additional story of armed police entering the plane at Manchester Airport.

I'll post up a few others when I have a bit more time

[Alioune DVToure]

The Racing Santander game came at a time when we were struggling to get going in the league. It was a dead rubber as a European game (we'd already qualified from the group) and most people were in party mood all night - even after we lost 3-1. A minority weren't, however, and there were some protests after the game while we were kettled (such as a chorus of 'We Want Meri-ni-o', which I did NOT join in with'). Anyway, while the teams where still clearing off the pitch, one fella sprang the fence and decided to make a bee line for the pitch. There was just one problem: El Sardinero has one of those big concrete moats between the pitch and the stands which are popular in Spain. The gap obviously looked doable to this pissed idiot, so he just incorporated the jump into his run. His whole body planted face first into the far wall of it and then just disappeared from view. It looked painful but I heard nothing else about it so I assume he was OK.

[Piccsnumberoneblue]

In Gelsenkirchen, there was a skirmish in the square between City and some locals dressed as SS Panzer division Wotan. I was scoffing my face in a restaurant on the 'German side of the lines' when Our Stupot rang me.
I'd been starving plus I'd paid 9E for me tea so I scooped up a huge handful of Tex Mex chips and went out to join the fray. I was dodging coppers and Germans with loads of mad City fans running at me whilst trying not to drop me chips.
Anyway the coppers round up all the Blues and insist that we all get marched to some waiting buses and taken to the ground early. The visiting fans didn't fancy this as it was a huge infringement on drinking time, so as we were escorted through the streets, people gibbed out, and darted in bars to continue the festivities.
With hindsight I'm sure they knew, but it did look funny watching a file of coppers with absolutely nobody left behind them as they arrived at the buses a few hundred yards further up the street.

Also the sight of the Jagermeistered up member of our team, trying to crowd surf on the tram to the ground just as the doors opened at The Veltins Arena, and ending dumped unceremoniously on his arse on the platform, will live long in the memory.