Below is my World Cup diary
In September 2004 10 minutes from the end of a decent draw in Basle in our first meaningful qualifier for Germany 2006 the Irish fans started “Que sera sera whatever will be will be we’re going to Germany” much to the amusement of the Swiss hosts who bothered to fill over half the stadium. It wasn’t to be thanks to a manager who still made Sven look confident and in control but some of us decided to go anyway. In truth I was always going to go particularly with the World Cup so close by and in a country so accessible.
Tickets were always going to be a huge problem and attempts to get Irish tickets in the first phase failed miserably due to huge demand but thankfully a backup strategy of picking teams that looked likely to qualify with lesser demand proved to be remarkably successful with my 4 chosen teams for family and friends all making it thus securing tickets for Saudi Arabia, Iran, Costa Rica and Ivory Coast. The latter two needing a bit of luck along the way. The plan was to have tickets for exchange if we made it and hopefully snaffle an Irish game as well. The irony of course was that we didn’t get a single game from France and Switzerland’s group but then nobody was too keen to watch them again anyway. My brother came up with 3 venue tickets in the lottery, which helped as well particularly as his last football match was back in 1981 and he isn’t planning on changing that anytime soon.
Cheap flights and easy access thus made this a hugely attractive World Cup and I was able to plan and book 4 trips within an hour of the draw in December. This allowed for 9 games in 8 different stadiums and the possibility of a couple more if other tickets could be secured although this has subsequently proved to be incredibly difficult. I needn’t have rushed the flight bookings, as the cheap fares remained available in May and June. Despite bringing over 100,000 fans to Germany it appears that English fans did not realize or bother to take advantage of the cheap fares on offer from Dublin. Most I met paid a few hundred pounds for their flights and multiple trips was not an option. Although there have been expats from other countries living here on all flights the demand was not as high as I’d guessed. Hotels beside railways stations in the main cities were easy to secure from the standard online hotel booking sites although nothing was available on the FIFA site. So far all the hotels have had vacancies and none have been too expensive.
In the end my brother, sister, father and a friend of my brother’s decided to travel with a few dropouts because Ireland didn’t make it or other reasons. My brother Karl will manage 12 games in total with his mate John and I both seeing 9. Tara will see 7 with my father coming out for 2. With single tickets in many cases it became a crisscross trip with all 5 of us attending Portugal v Iran in Frankfurt on June 17th. Frankfurt Airport has excellent direct rail links to much of central Europe and the German rail system is probably the best in Europe. An attractive World Cup pass offering unlimited rail travel for the month for €349 eliminated any thoughts of driving. As happens with so many major events many hotels end up half empty while people don’t travel because of lack of accommodation. I had little difficulty booking hotels in the main cities and indeed all had vacancies on the days of games. Frankfurt doubled their normal prices to standard Messe (Trade Fair) rates but Munich and Hamburg appeared to leave theirs unchanged.
The first positive sign of the German efficiency was the distribution of tickets. At previous World Cups the tickets were always promised 6-8 weeks before the opening game. In practice the Japanese were the best arriving the week of the opening game and in all case some fans had already departed. Eight weeks before the tournament lo and behold tickets started to appear. This augured well for a successful tournament.
My first trip began on the morning of June 8th heading to Munich for Germany v Costa Rica. An uneventful flight to Frankfurt and a direct train connection to Munich went like a dream and I shared a train with a large number of German fans travelling south and a few Costa Ricans. There was a clear buzz around Munich as it played host to a number of nationalities with large numbers of Mexicans and Australians already in town. The Hoffbrauhouse in central Munich is a bit of a kitsch attempt at a German beerhall but a must visit for tourists and a place to have a few beers on the eve of the opening match. It was rocking with Germans, Australians, Americans, Mexicans, Iranians and many other nationalities in evidence. And yes some of the Iranians were knocking back their beer with the best of us. More beer, a planned rendezvous with a couple of Irish journalists I know was curtailed much later than planned. The Opening Match was the first real test of all the planning and it appeared to go very smoothly. No problems getting to the stadium by rail and then on foot. There appeared to be very few touts and plenty of people looking for tickets. Security wasn’t as obvious as expected. The first check involved a bag and body search but was pretty quick and then a subsequent ticket check had everybody in the stadium quite quickly. I had some concerns re the name check but it never materialized. Although FIFA/UEFA say they will check names for every tournament the Germans did appear to mean it this time but sanity prevailed although I’ve subsequently heard of spot-checks. However even if checked you can just go to another gate or worse case go back to the stadium ticket office and pay €10 to change the name.
I was expecting the Costa Rica end to be made up of others who booked tickets for a country with poor support but I got this one badly wrong. We were clearly lucky to get Costa Rica tickets as they had 5,000 fans in the stadium. They were much more passionate than the hosts too although it was a bigger match for the visitors. I don’t do opening ceremonies as such but I enjoyed this one in the flesh as opposed to the ones on tv. The quality of the game was surprisingly good. Both Costa Rican goals were celebrated with sheer unadulterated joy. Food and beers went everywhere and people ended up 4 rows back or forward of their seats. It reminded me of Houghton in Stuttgart or O’Leary in Genoa but this time I was an interloper and just watching the celebrations. Enjoyable as world cups are it is not the same without your country being there. No doubt the better side won but it was a brave display from the visitors.
On Saturday morning I’d a 6-hour train journey to Hamburg to watch Argentina v Ivory Coast. On arrival just after the kickoff of England v Paraguay the plan was to check in quickly and head for a bar to watch the game. Hotel Mercedes near the main train station should more aptly be named Hotel Trabant if it is going to be called after a German car. However it is clean and cheap. The receptionist was simply the most incompetent idiot that has ever worked in a hotel though and took 20 minutes to check us in. He also informed us that England were 3 up on Paraguay. He had the game on a small portable tv. Eventually in frustration at his dithering over a confirmed reservation I walked around the desk and started watching the game on his tv to discover England were only 1 up. The stadium in Hamburg is quite a distance from the nearest station but shuttle buses were provided. On the bus I met a couple of Israeli fans and one tried very hard to persuade me to sell my ticket and was offering €500 by the time we reached the stadium. I politely refused, as there is no way I’d ever sell over face value and was not missing any of my planned games. Access to the stadium was again straightforward and no name checks. This was one of the games of the tournament and I hope the Israeli guy managed to make it in. Afterwards we did fall victim to the organization bureaucracy. The colour coding of each side of the ground is obviously to split the fans arriving and leaving the stadium and not for the convenience of the fans. On leaving the stadium we were forced out a route with temporary fencing on each side away from the shuttle buses and despite asking for the buses were told to continue straight on clearly away from them. It had clearly been decided that our section was to walk back to the station and not even to the nearest one but another one. Some of the stewards tried to direct us to the original station but a policeman then said no we had to go a different route.
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