Okay, it’s not actually just Friday in Cologne, but more often than not, if ‘we’ have something planned longer than a single night, it peaks on the first night.
We are, as ever, me and my hardy friends, Dave and Chris. We do gigs together often, and if there are two nights, two of us have a real habit of going hard on the first and then dropping off badly. We refer to it as ‘doing a Cologne’, because two years ago, Chris and I went to Cologne, got utterly shitfaced on IPA and whiskey on the first night, and stumbled around the second day unable to contemplate a pint.
Since then, we’ve done a Cologne at Gig in a Field (two bottles of mead), Badlands Punk Fest (Popworld on a Friday), and numerous other events. Dave doesn’t do a Cologne because he has a natural alcohol level he merely needs to keep topped up, but for Chris and me, it is all too familiar.
This year, on our first football trip as a trio, we vowed not to do a Cologne. In Cologne. What a futile gesture (for one of us, at least). After all, if you’re going to do a Cologne, you may as well do it in Cologne, right? When in Rome, etc.
I often wonder what I have an eponymous site for. Is it gig reviews? Is it work-related? Is it my ego? Probably a bit of all of that. I’m also thinking it is for me to remember some of our events, some of the good times we’ve had. One day, these events won’t be fresh in the memory, and I like to think my site will help bring back some great memories, with great friends. I’m also the only one who takes pictures on these events, and I’ve discovered my front camera is awful, so a few words to accompany the action won’t go amiss.
Without further ado, probably only of interest to us three, here’s our weekend trip to Germany broken down by days.
Friday: Doing a Cologne
The reason I feel we ‘do a Cologne’ is timing, pure and simple. It’s nothing about being irresponsible at all. Our flights are 7 am, so we have to be at the airport for 5 am, which means a 2 am departure from home. It’s not possible to sleep, and there’s breakfast at the airport as well. When you land in Cologne, there’s a train journey, and before you know it, it’s the middle of the day.
There was also a need for duty-free, because I hadn’t got any smellies. I figured worrying about volume and little plastic bags was beneath me, but to avoid smelling like a hobo all weekend, I indulged in some reduced aftershave. Instead, I spent the weekend smelling like Antonio Banderas, and actor Chris went to great lengths to convince us he was too young to remember.
Instead of sleeping on arrival in Germany, we grabbed the first food outlet we could find (and, as it turned out, the last we thought about) and found a nice German pub. It looked nice, but when they served Dave a half pint glass, his face could have curdled milk. We’d had another bar recommended, an Irish bar called the Corkonian, so we went there and began Friday properly.
We’d found a good AirBnB near the centre of the city, and it’s perfect for anyone thinking of a football trip. It’s four single beds in a room, with a bathroom and small kitchen, but it’s thoroughly recommended. After a brief stop there to decamp, we set off for the rest of Friday.
Chris and I ruined the previous trip in a bar called the Copper Pot, so we returned for posterity, had a couple, and then attended Viktoria Koln and Stuttgart B. It’s a third division game, attended by around 4,000 supporters, and I found it really enjoyable. In fairness, the beers were kicking in, so I didn’t get my Bratwurst, and by the end, I was properly into the game. The Stuttgart number 26 had previously played for FC Koln, and he was roundly booed every time he touched the ball, which I took great pleasure in joining in with.
Koln won 2-0, but the game wasn’t great. It felt like the EFL Trophy, a B team up against proper men. Viktoria weren’t brilliant, but at least they had supporters and those supporters got involved. Chris was in his element, chatting with stats analysts and other fans, but he didn’t get any food either. Dave did, obviously, but for Chris this was a huge mistake It was clear on the tram ride back we’d all gone past merry, but sleep had been staved off. Instead of going home, we went back to the Copper Pot, and that’s where Friday in Cologne repeated itself.
Chris hit the shots, and started buying us them. Random Dutch blokes bought Chris some. I realised I was drunk when I accidentally tipped the singer €50 (having already stuck a generous €10 in his pot) and we realised Chris was drunk when he came past us, said ‘I’m drunk’ and moments later text us from outside the bar for some help.
Unlike the Top Gear team, we never leave a man in trouble, so having heard a single song for my €50, we went back to the apartment, via a pizza place. Chris didn’t eat; he collapsed on the bed, and I spent half an hour picking broccoli (yes, broccoli) off my chicken teriyaki pizza.
Saturday: And Then There Were Two
Saturday seemed like it might go okay. Chris got up first, had a shower, flooded the bathroom, and then went back to bed. This meant Dave and I were out for breakfast, albeit a little late. I had a ham and cheese panini that turned out to be massive, and Dave had schnitzel, which is basically a flattened turkey drummer and chips. We took Chris a McDonald’s and then resumed drinking.
In fairness, it was mid-afternoon when we started, and we just relaxed with some nice German beer. We both smelled a lot like Antonio Banderas at this point, and while Dave happily sunk Guinness, I dropped onto the Sion Kolsch, a lovely beer which went down far better than the previous ‘day after the night before’. By late afternoon, Chris joined us, and we decided to take a wander around by the Rhine. That lasted about 20 minutes, then it was beer and a steak dinner, before Chris wrote Saturday off.
Dave was close to done as well. I’m not sure if I should be proud of this, but I had matched him pint for pint, and he began to flag. He shifted onto shorts, warning me it was just until the band came on in the Copper Pot. Luckily for me, the band were late, and by the time they started, Dave had got his second wind. I still beat him on pints, but by the time the 110-piece band from Wexford, crammed into the window space, had started, I was also on shorts.
I love the Copper Pot. It’s a really friendly bar, and while it may be ‘Irish’ in theme, it’s also wonderfully German in terms of friendliness. It was a real melting pot of different nationalities, all seemingly as passionate about Irish music as each other. The band, SinSaol, played for hours, with a different lead singer for nearly every song, blasting through classics like Paddy Works on the Railway, Dirty Old Town and Whiskey in the Jar.
I can’t remember walking home.
Sunday: Panic Attack
The next day was Mönchengladbach, so after Chris made Dave a cup of coffee laced with salt (by accident), we grabbed a traditional German breakfast (McDonalds) and decided to get to the town early and have a look around. We need not have bothered – it is not a pretty town. It was all a bit run down; nothing opened on a Sunday, and we were all more worried about where we might be able to use the toilet than anything else. We did find a nice pub showing the 2. Bundesliga fixture Magdeburg and Kaiserslautern, and we settled there surrounded by Werder Bremen fans. We then moved to the main square to have a traditional German cuisine of burgers and chips before a taxi ride to Borussia Park, home of Borussia Mönchengladbach.
What a stadium it is. I know I have a fear of open heights, and worried I might struggle, but Chris assured me he’d booked tickets away from the top. However, once we got into the ground and found our seats, I quickly realised I was, for want of a better word, fucked. I sat down, looked up, and it hit me.
I can’t describe what my fear is like. I climbed Scafell Pyke with no issues at all, but had to come down from Cat Bells quickly. I can fly over Cardiff in a glass-bottomed helicopter and feel fine, but I can’t sit in a football stand and look down on the pitch. As soon as I looked at the ground, my heart rate shot up to 125 bpm. I started sweating and shaking, and I made my way back out. Quickly.
The concourse we’d been on moments before was now too high, and I had to just get down to ground level. There was no way I could watch the game from height, nor any possibility of me sitting in my seat. Chris and Dave went back to their places, and I found a steward. In broken English I explained the situation and he graciously found me a seat, next to a perspex wall on the other side of which were the Bremen Ultras.
The game was great; the home side won 4-1 and introduced me to a Scooter song that I haven’t been able to get out of my head since. The journey back was tough – we rode with a kamikaze Sri Lankan taxi driver to the train station, then crammed on a train for an hour to get back to Cologne. Dave wanted a night cap so he set off for the Corkonian alone, while Chris and I got a traditional German pizza and went back to the AirBnB. After all, we had a big day getting home ahead of us.
Monday: Magic of the Cup
After a traditional German breakfast of McDonalds (they have a burger called ‘Big Morning Farmer‘ which sounds like an Alan Partridge segment), we decided to do a bit of sightseeing. That meant walking over a bridge to a viewing point, paying a very reasonable €5 to go up to the top of a building in a lift and looking out across Cologne. Somehow, something went wrong; we may have gotten in the wrong lift, and we ended up in an office block. Rather embarrassed, we then had to try and find our way out of said office block, where everyone was working, back to the viewing point entrance and explain to a rather burly (and highly amused man) what had happened. Eventually, we ended up where we intended, saying goodbye to Cologne.
After that, we went back to the airport, and were soon back in Blighty. Our weekend concluded with the FA Cup game between the Imps and Chesham, a 4-0 win for City, and the final game of five in nine days. We’d seen three Lincoln wins, four home wins, two red cards and 17 goals in total. Chesham was quite a nice way to ease back into the UK, and little night cap at the end of the weekend.
Kudos to Chris for driving from Stansted to Chesham, then from Chesham home. Neither I nor Dave slept in the car, but I’m sure both were fast asleep by the time I finished the final leg of the journey to Louth, where an excited dog managed to wake up the neighbours at half past midnight.
That was Cologne 2. It’s likely the third instalment will be in another city, likely still in Germany, but Dave never likes to go to the same place twice (in case they recognise him I guess). One thing is for certain: whereever we go, we’re sure to go hard on night one. There’s nothing quite like doing a Cologne.