Borussia Dortmund v VfL Wolfsburg. 05/04/14

"Ich leibe Phil Collins, Easy Lover ja ja ja"

Borussia Dortmund 2-1 VfL Wolfsburg. Signal Iduna Park.
Saturday 05/04/14

Having spent the previous evening sleeping in a doorway after losing a hotel key, it takes something special to convince you to do anything but lie in bed for the entire day. And it has to be something really special to convince you to drag yourself onto public transport, be sick on a tram full of people (Andy) and make an hour journey across Germany while attempting to get back in the beer game. That something really special? Westfalenstadion, Dortmund.

The first rule of three day football trips is don't go all out on the first night. Something that was hopelessly ignored at Rot-Weiss Essen v SC Verl and the resulting night of partying with the Essen support. It left two slightly (or in Andy's case, very) broken Englishmen to head to Dortmund to see Borussia take on VfL Wolfsburg.

One man's recovery is sleeping on the floor of a train...

And the others is a can of Veltins

On another day, to another ground, for two other teams we might have considered sacking this off. But Signal Iduna Park to give it it's official title is like very few others in Europe and this was our team, Wolfsburg, taking on one of the biggest in Germany.

The best way to battle through feelings of suicide brought about by consuming far too much beer is the simple hair of the dog technique. That meant consuming a can as soon as was humanly possible, in this case at 11am on the train from Essen to Dortmund. For Andy, this took slightly longer until we found a bar called Pfefferkorn with him deciding to use the train journey to take a little nap in the middle of the floor.

Bergmann Bier kiosk

Zwei Bergmann bitte

It was far too hot in Pfefferkorn for two hungover men despite the fact they were serving the excellent Brinkhoffs so we did what all good Dortmunder's do and began outside street drinking thanks to a little kiosk selling home brewed bottles of Bergmann Bier at an absolute steal of 2. This represented the only place in the city you can buy that particular beer and as such proved very popular with the locals.

Of course, this also meant explaining the story about how two Englishmen have ended up becoming VfL Wolfsburg supporters, a very long and sad tale involving the words "Steve", "McClaren", "FC Twente", "Wolfsburg", "umbrella" and of course "I short of knew" said in a ridiculous Dutch accent.

A Bratwurst induced mustard
disaster

Signal Iduna Park is well served by public transport and it was a quick train hop to the stadium where tickets were collected and beers and sausage from the many street vendors around the ground were bought and consumed outside of the stadium while mingling with others heading to the game. And what a big game it was, with Wolfsburg chasing a Champions League spot and Dortmund trying to cling onto second with the title already heading to the Allianz.

Fit women who like Marco Reus? Perfect wife material.

The stadium itself is fantastic. You get some grounds which you enter for the first time and they take your breath away. It's unusual to find anywhere that does it for a second time, the novelty normally having worn off but Signal Iduna Park managed it. We were in the complete opposition corner from our last visit, this time tucked high away opposite the Yellow Wall up with the Gods looking down at this tiny patch of green surrounded by towering blocks of yellow, black and noise. 

You'll Never Walk Alone

The famous Yellow Wall celebrates the stadiums 40th birthday

The scale of the place is massive and what makes it appear even bigger is that every stand is different, meaning none of it appears as though it is meant to fit together. The steepness and vastness just adds to the atmosphere and when You'll Never Walk Alone gets going before kick off it is a spine tingling moment as scarves, flags and banners are hoisted into the air before the teams enter the arena.

To our surprise, there were Wolfsburg fans everywhere none of whom were being very subtle about their allegiances. I had had the good grace to hide my green scarf and that lasted until 34 minutes when a combination of beer and Ivica Olic giving the visitors the lead brought it into play, swiftly followed by a high five from the chap next to me who also turned out to be a Die Wolfe fan.

Dortmund v Wolfsburg

Dortmund aren't one of the finest teams in Europe for no reason though and two second half goals from Robert Lewadowski and Marco Reus ensured it was they who took the three points. We watched the stadium empty afterwards, eventually being the last two in the top tier which led to arguably one of the best games of hide and seek you are ever likely to encounter with my good self hiding high at the top of the stand, only to be caught by one alert female steward, quashing any hopes of managing to remain unfound until the midweek Champions League semi final with Real Madrid. 

Playing hide and seek with the
stewards  inside Signal Iduna Park

Steward wins and get's a Hassocks Fatboys
FC pennant for her victory

After the traditional post game dicking around inside the stadium that seems to take place every time we visit Dortmund, it was time to catch the train and head straight back to Essen. This was sensible given the early start to head to Holland the following day, or at least it would have been had we not been lured into a bar outside the hotel on our return.

This bar wench was happy with out custom until Easy Lover
was played for the 12th time

What made two strong minded individuals deviate from their planned course of a relatively early night? Beer and Jagermesiter obviously, but also the prospect of the self-DJing venue whereby patrons were allowed to pick their own music from the laptop.

It was only when we were asked to leave that we realised that German's perhaps don't share our love of Phil Collins and Easy Lover. Certainly not enough to hear it a dozen times, anyway.

Borussia Dortmund: Mitchell Langerak, Mats Hummels, Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Lukasz Piszczek, Sebastian Kehl, Henrikh Mkhitaryan (Oliver Kirch), Marco Reus 1, Nuri Sahin (Erik Durm), Kevin Grosskreutz, Robert Lewandowski 1, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Milos Jojic).

VfL Wolfsburg: Max Grun, Naldo, Robin Knoche, Ricardo Rodriguez, Ivan Perisic, Kevin De Bruyne, Christian Trasch (Patrick Ochs), Bernard Malanda Adje (Daniel Caligiuri), Luiz Gustavo, Maximilian Arnold, Ivica Olic 1.

Attendance: 80,000.

Borussia Dortmund v FSV Mainz 05. 20/04/13

"Buying a denim jacket and covering it with badges would probably be the final straw when it comes to my wife thinking I'm having a midlife crisis"

Borussia Dortmund 2-0 FSV Mainz 05. Signal Iduna Park.
Saturday 20/04/13 

If football is truly like religion, then Dortmund has to be one of the great pilgrimages to make. To most of the world it is a pretty unglamorous industrial city in the Ruhr Area. To football fans it is the home of the biggest average home support in Europe, the remarkable Yellow Wall and Jurgen Klopp's exciting young team that has torn through Germany and the continent in the last few years.

The masses gather at Signal Iduna Park

Game two of the Dusseldorf 2013 Weekend was Borussia Dortmund v FSV Mainz 05. The wonderful transport system of the Fatherland did it's typically excellent job in depositing us in Dortmund after a 30 minute journey during which the previous days tiredness and hangovers were combated with that very German medicine of Jagermeister poured into cans of beer.

Dortmund branded beer being drunk in the ticket office

Signal Iduna Park has it's own U-Bahn station which they've used that well know German imagination to call Stadion. The ground itself is in the middle of a park with not many bars around but this, being Germany, is not a problem as fans (and children) just mingle on the streets around the ground drinking bottles and pints of beer which can be bought from street vendors and are Dortmund branded. You were even fully encouraged to sink a couple of these while queuing for tickets and let's be honest, it would have been rude not to adopt some of the local customs.

Child drinking a beer - as you do

The alcohol branding machine got even better inside the stadium with each beer being served in a plastic cup with a Dortmund player on. You pay a €5 deposit for one and then use it for the rest of the afternoon before returning it at the end to get your money back. Or in our case, collect the glasses so you end up taking home a set of ready-to-use pint cups featuring Mats Hummels, Marco Reuss and ultimately Herr Klopp which go down as well as a hog roast at a barmitzvah in the typically anti-German English pub.

New pint glasses for the cabinet at home

There are a few stadiums in the world that take your breath away when you first see them after climbing the stairs and catching your first glimpse through the entranceway at Dortmund is without a doubt one of them. Our seats were in the top tier, tucked away high in a corner looking down on the Yellow Wall on our right. The place was simply huge and when it filled up before kick off the atmosphere was electric, particularly when the 25,000 on the Wall whipped out their scarves and flags for You'll Never Walk Alone.

The Yellow Wall in full flow

Marco Reuss put's Dortmund 1-0 up after 60 seconds and
that's game over

For a big match you could imagine the noise inside the place being so loud that even Beethoven would have been able to hear it, but this wasn't one of those great occasions. With Bayern Munich having the Bundesliga in the bag, there was little to play for save a tune up for the small matter of a midweek Champions League semi final clash with Real Madrid and to make it even more of a non-event, it was effectively game over after just 60 seconds when Reuss put Dortmund 1-0 ahead. They added a second through Robert Lewandowski with five to play but in truth it was a meaningless game and it showed although that didn't stop the stadium rocking.

The Yellow Wall after the game

Signal Iduna Park

Afterwards we hung around and ventured onto the terrace and it's really only then you appreciate the vastness of not just that particular part of the ground but of the whole place. It was empty at this point and looking up the Wall was enough to give you vertigo. If you can imagine one of those epic movie scenes where an athlete runs up the steps of a stadium, then the scale of it is probably best summed up that if one of those scenes were shot at Signal Iduna Park, it would be over after a quarter of the terrace had been climbed when Sylvester Stalone keeled over from the effort.

On the route back to Stadion Station we stumbled across Sportwelt Dortmund, a large swimming pool facility which on matchdays bizarrely has a large bar opened right next to the pool. We took several pints in their, meeting some of our favourite types of German fans in the shape of the denim jackets covered in badges brigade. Despite the dangerous mixture of beer and a body of water, nobody took a dive in with the most risky moment being Rumble seriously considering buying a jacket which could well have led to a divorce on our return home.

Rumble's denim jacket heroes

The day was finished back in Dortmund city centre and Katharinentor, a delightful little pub a stones throw from the station. It showed the live evening game featuring the mighty Wolfsburg with the added bonus of Jens Lehmann on commentary. Katharinentor had a large array of beers and it only seemed right we tried to sample one of each, which meant we never actually left it to explore anymore of Dortmund before the last train back to Dusseldorf. And we even managed to avoid ending up in Mochengladbach this time.

Borussia Dortmund: Roman Weidenfeller, Lukasz Piszczek, Neven Subotic, Mats Hummels, Marcel Schmelzer, Ilkay Gundogan, Nuri Sahin, Jakub Blaszcykowski (Kevin Grosskreutz), Mario Gotze (Julian Schieber), Marco Reuss 1 (Moritz Leitner), Robert Lewandowski 1.

FSV Mainz 05: Christian Wetklo, Stefan Bell, Bo Svensson, Nikolce Noveski, Zdenek Pospech, Julian Baumgartlinger, Yunus Malli, Marcel Risse (Adam Szalai), Nikita Rukavytsya (Marco Caligiuri), Shawn Parker (Nicolai Muller).

Attendance: 80,645