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Wednesday, 18th October.
By some miracle I made it to the airport on time. The highlight of the flight was having a dump over France. Once I had collected my baggage, I went outside to catch a bus to the city. The 11:55am bus left right on time, and without me. So I waited another twenty minutes for the 12:15pm bus, which also left with German precision. I arrived in Munich at lunchtime, and spent the afternoon confusing people with my inadequate German. Then I discovered that most people speak better English than I do German. Hmm. All stairways in Germany have an even number of steps. After a nap (or was it a siesta? I'm not sure) I ventured in to the city to see what was going on. Judging by the number of blokes wearing soccer tops there was a soccer match happening in Munich. I bought the paper and worked out that there was a Champions League match going on at the Olympic Stadium. So I took the train out to the Olympic Stadium, and discovered to my horror that tickets to the match started from DM55. I asked for the cheapest ticket. There was a ground announcer who was trying to whip the crowd into a tuetonic frenzy. His name was Stefan, or Steffen, or something, it's not important. First he conducted, with the assistance of the cameramen at the ground and the electronic scoreboard, a competition to find the most enthusiastic mullet-sporting Bayern Munich supporter. They panned through the crowd, and eventually settled upon a young bloke wearing a acid-wash denim jacket and lots of scarfs. He came down from the terraces and was interviewed by Stef, and he bellowed something unintelligible into the microphone, but I'm guessing it was "COME ON BAYERN MUNICH LET'S STICK IT RIGHT UP THESE SOFT, SMELLY, BAGUETTE-MUNCHING FRENCHIES!" Next was the competition to find the most beautiful female Bayern Munich supporter. No easy task! In fact they only managed to find three mildly attractive girls in the stadium, and spent a minute or so just panning between these three girls. Somehow they decided that the dark-haired girl was the winner. She seemed genuinely surprised - perhaps she wasn't a Bayern supporter, she just came for the witty conversation on the terraces. Before the teams entered the arena for the game the team selections were announced. And it went something like this: Announcer: In goal for Bayern Munich, number 1, Oliver... And so on and so on. The crowd seemed incapable of doing anything spontaneous, but they sure could join in when told to by the ground announcer. The crowd had swelled considerably by the time kick-off arrived. (water retention I'm guessing) It wasn't long before Bayern opened the scoring. After the goal and the celebrations and all that, the ground announcer (it's still this Stef bloke with his outrageously blond hair) gives the goal scorer's details. A: The goalscorer in the third minute, Hasan... Rough translation: Well that had me in stitches. It was repeated when Bayern scored their second goal. The mulleted Muncheners went home happy.
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