A Journey Through Germany - 2006

by Joel Rookwood

World Cup 2006

2006 was a strange year. My passport will reveal that I am officially a British citizen, although my movements in the past twelve months have offered few clues as to my nationality.

Between the two New Year celebrations I spent more time out of the UK than in it, with international work and travel commitments spanning to more than thirty countries across five continents.

Predictably, much of the various excursions I was involved with during this time had football as the function. As well as numerous charitable projects, I continue to follow Liverpool FC around the globe.

My travels in this respect have taken me to Lisbon, Eindhoven, Bordeaux and Istanbul, in what was a relatively quiet year for the club on the continent.

Domestically Liverpool's performances made for far more satisfying viewing however, and included an impressive FA Cup run, which I saw in its entirety, culminating in a memorable victory in the final.

Somewhat predictably, the inter-season period was dominated by the quadrennial event that is supposed to capture the imagination of fans the world over.

The FIFA World Cup, hosted for the first time by the unified Germans, was a tournament apparently not to be missed. Given the virtually nomadic nature of my existence in 2006, I managed to watch World Cup matches in all of ten different countries during the year's central spine.

One of these states was actually Germany, and seeing as I was going to the trouble of getting to the host nation during the event, I thought I might as well put aside my grievances with international football and try to watch a game or two live.

I was joined on my quest to find a meaningful international match by four other lads from Liverpool, who have specifically requested not to be named in this article. Their names are Day Stead, Paul ‘the dad' Gardener, Jay Ward and his kid brother Dom. With the group keen to get the most out of our visit, the five of us had really done our homework in preparation for the week-long stay in the Fatherland. Our first task was to arrange some accommodation. With no expense spent, this ultimately amounted to the purchase of a couple of two-man tents from ‘Sports Soccer'. Including mats for each of us, this set us back a total of, well, let's just say I got change out of a £20 note.

Next we had to think about match tickets. However, with only one ticket secured between the five of us for the whole competition (and that being the tournament-defining encounter between Saudi Arabia and the Ukraine), our chances of actually seeing any live football looked slim. On the plus side, we did have both flights and a hire car booked in advance however – although given the potential camping problems we were sure to face, the latter threatened to serve as our accommodation as well as the source of transport, as had proven the case for me personally in Portugal for Euro 2004.

With the tournament already nearly a week old, we flew from Nottingham to Berlin to catch up with the action, knowing that whatever was to transpire in the seven days that followed, we had precisely one week to return to the same spot in order to make our flight back to the UK.

In planning our route, we had decided to leave Munich off the agenda, for such a stadium and city should clearly be reserved for the sacred context of club football. In addition, we also chipped off the North-Eastern corner of the country, for a similar reason.

As well as the 2001 UEFA Cup Final in Dortmund, we had also been to Leverkusen twice as well as Koln with Liverpool. It was territory we knew well and therefore decided it should be omitted from the trip. And so our excursion was not to involve the all-encompassing approach that I had adopted for the recent European Championships. Geographical selection was therefore an inevitability.

Deciding to leave a tour of the German capital for another day, the first port of call upon our arrival at Schonefeld Airport was the East German city of Dresden.

As those who know their football will tell you, this former East German city has a proud footballing heritage, and yet it was offered no role to play in hosting the tournament, so we decided to pay our respects. Liverpool had beaten Dynamo Dresden on the way to UEFA Cup and European Glory in 1976 and 1978 respectively, so we wanted to find someone old and ask them if they were present during either tie. Unfortunately however, it was 2am by the time we arrived, and the only people we saw walking the city streets were more concerned with action of the intravenous rather than intra-continental kind.

Given the slightly scary late night atmosphere in what appeared, architecturally at least, to be a very attractive city, we cut our stay short, got back in the car and continued to head in a south-easterly direction. Although the plan was to arrive in Nurnberg for 18:00 CET later that day in order to see England play Trinidad and Tobago, the rest of the party were keen to visit the Czech capital en route. Berlin to Nürnberg is not really a journey typically undertaken …via Prague. But why should the trip be typical? Why indeed.

And so, unperturbed by the random nature of the detour, we crossed the border into the Czech Republic, and then began to consider a place to spend what remained of the night. We decided out of principle that official camp sites were not going to feature on the itinerary, and so instead we attempted to locate a river to park next to.

Our thinking was that that this could help solve the potential sanitation dilemma once daylight returned. Incredibly, our pursuit bore fruit with minimal effort, as we passed a river just over the border.

With the headlights of the car as our light, and several bemused passing motorists as our audience, we then proceeded to open the tents for the very first time, and within an hour or two had erected them. We then squeezed in, and enjoyed a few hours sleep.

Some moments later the burning hot sun woke us from a collective state that was painfully close to slumber, and the group crawled out of the tents. We washed in the river, which was in part a reflection of our desire to maximise levels of hygiene, but also largely to add to the sense of adventure.

Again, passing motorists looked on in bemusement that now bordered on concern. We quickly packed away the tents, and headed to Prague for brunch. We ended up detouring once again however, stopping off briefly in the town of Teplice. This was really just so that we could have a walk on the pitch of the club FK Teplice.

The Czech minnows played Celtic in the UEFA Cup in 2004, and so we decided to take a few minutes to wander around the turf once graced by the likes of past and future European Cup winners Lambert and Larson.

We then headed for Prague for a pint or two and a quick walk across the Charles Bridge.

With the sun heading west seemingly at a rate of knots, we had to cut short our stay in the Czech Republic, as we crossed the border again into Germany.

We were greeted by numerous ‘Welcome to Germany' signs, which littered many of the roads connecting Germany with all bordering countries. We knew however, that we were in a race against time to make it to Nürnberg in time for kick off (never mind actually trying to get a ticket) for England's match with the Central Americans.

Unscheduled stops for photographs or football grounds were therefore avoided for the remainder of the journey. We arrived at the Franken Stadion just before the match was due to get underway, and immediately banished any ideas we had of seeing the game in person. Instead we headed for the nearby ‘Fan Park'. Organisers of the event were very proud of this idea of having communal areas where non-match going supporters could watch the matches, with officials stating that:

“All of the conditions have been put in place to create unique and amicable public viewing events for all fans. For the first time in FIFA World Cup history, FIFA, the Organising Committee and the Host Cities have developed a joint concept to allow fans to experience the month-long excitement of the FIFA World Cup even without a ticket. No other tournament in history has featured a central square in every FIFA World Cup Host City where you can follow every game live and enjoy a comprehensive support programme every day. The aim is to make the Fan Fest site a second FIFA World Cup stadium.”

Whilst the potential for violence in these venues by drunk ticketless fans, particularly between those of ‘rival' nations was a cause for concern, the Fan Parks largely achieved what the advert suggested they would.

Certainly the organisers of the events at the Nürnberg Park could be proud of their own festival, as plentiful food and beer supply, subtle policing and numerous large screens helped keep the thousands of viewers happy. A typically uninspired England won the game, thanks to two late goals from Liverpool's Crouch and Gerrard.

With anti-Scouse sentiment evident wherever we looked in spite of the result, we vowed that this would be the last England game we came within a couple of hundred miles of. It was a promise we were destined to respect.

Our next stop was Stuttgart, and the battle of the Dutch against the Ivory Coast. Although we had the opportunity to view this encounter in the stadium, we decided to save our money and head instead to the Fan Fest once again. Without an Ivorian in sight, we watched the mass of orange celebrate their 2-1 win in style, and we even wore ridiculous orange attire to display our allegiance.

The following day we headed to Frankfurt and met up with some Scouse Iranians. Once we had arrived, we decided that we had been patience enough in waiting to see our first taste of World Cup action, and so picked up tickets for Iran's match with Portugal to be played that afternoon.

The game was contested with the roof on, in the same ground where a Paul Robinson clearance had cannoned off the large central screen hanging from the roof above the centre circle during England's opener against Paraguay. There are so many things wrong with that sentence, that I don't know where to start, so I won't even bother.

We sat in the Portugal end and heckled Christian Ronaldo, much to the bemusement and even displeasure of the travelling Portuguese supporters. The Manchester United winger was clearly unaffected, as he doubled the advantage for Scolari's men, after Barca's Deco had given Portugal a second half lead.

The brave Iranians had managed to keep the score goalless for an hour, but were ultimately defeated. Our interest in the game therefore, was inevitably waning. Now as a group we had decided to travel to one game every day and try and gain entry to the stadium in question. However, whilst flicking through the tournament programme in the latter part of the Portugal match, we saw that the Italians were playing USA four hours later, with the game taking place only 70 miles away in Kaiserslautern.

We looked at one another, simply nodded in silent agreement, said farewell to our Iranian hosts, and made for the exit. Two hours later we were outside the Fritz Walter Stadium, and searching for tickets. It was unfortunately however, to prove a fruitless search. The closest we got to experiencing any of the action with the naked eye was from the roof of a nearby block of high-rise flats. The less said about that little venture the better. Sadly, we had to admit defeat, and our refusal to pay extortionate prices for a match ticket, meant we were stuck watching the match in a bar with a load of Americans who barely knew the rules of game.

Disappointed by my record at having been to only one game to date I decided that the following three days would bring more success. Indeed on the evening that followed, we took one more opportunity to see Zidane play, as we witnessed France's 1-1 draw with South Korea in Leipzig.

This was followed the next afternoon by the much-anticipated Saudi Arabia vs Ukraine match, which was actually the pick of the bunch. The Eastern Europeans were victorious with style, cruising to a 4-0 win, courtesy of goals from Shevchenko and co. Despite our car/hotel being towed after the game, we managed to get to Hannover the following day to see a pitiful Costa Rica succumb to a 2-1 defeat by the Poles, who were not quite the disorderly threat they promised they would be. Wearing a Germany top and sitting in the Poland end did test the friendliness of one or two from Warsaw, but I suppose this was only to be expected.

After the game we joined the mass exodus into Poland, where we camped in a wood before making our way back to Berlin. Upon our return to the capital, we headed for the Brandenburg Gate, to see how the famous landmark had been transformed into a venue for a continuous World Cup party.

We took in a few cultural stops en route and you couldn't help but stop and commend the hosts for the way in which they were running the event. And so, thanks to some creative networking, an innovative approach to camping and some serious sleep deprivation we had seen four matches in different cities across Germany, covering more than 2000km of road in the process.

And yet none of the drama was enough to convince me to remain in the country. The following day I was sat on a plane to Caracas glad of the experience, but happy to leave the hype behind.

Joel Rookwood

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