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Ian had had the best part of the week off work. He spent several days in Amsterdam with the Triple A, enjoying Queen’s Day, visiting an Admirals practice and generally chilling out. |
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Lou decided that the best way to handle her flight to Düsseldorf was to have a few drinks at the airport (she doesn’t like flying), so she wasn’t really in a fit state to go into the Altstadt on Friday night. Even Niki’s SMS wasn’t enough to wake her up! |
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After the obligatory beers at the hotel bar on Saturday morning (we were on our own in there for the first time, barely a Galaxy fan anywhere), we headed for the Knoten. We arrived to find Niki and Roy already there. Roy showed us his latest hat, a mobile disco inspired number with flashing lights, sirens and glow sticks. This would come into its own later in the day. |
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We learnt from Niki about a new way to score points - the Half Safety. This happens when the ball carrier is taken down with one foot in the endzone and is worth 1 point. We wish we could keep up with all these NFL Europe League rule changes!! |
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The Half Safety - the new way to score points, apparently. We think we'll be asking to see the Hell Of Shame's copy of the NFL Europe rule book... |
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The trip to Schalke was pretty uneventful. The power party was rammed, due to the large number of people at this annual ‘Deutschland Derby’. We weren’t having much luck getting beer. Why did 42,322 other people want serving at the same time as us? We gave in after a couple and headed into the stadium earlier than usual.
The pre-game entertainment was pretty nifty. There was a ‘60s sounding group, along with the Pyromanics dressed in Austin Powers-inspired gear. There were two parachute jumpers who leapt down from the rafters (which probably explains why the roof was closed before the game). Then Bonnie Tyler came on to the field to perform Holding Out For A Hero. The song was accompanied by footage of a few NFLE heros, including our man Brad Johnson, along with the likes of Marcus Robinson and Kurt Warner. |
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For the official game report visit NFLEurope.com.
It was easy to find our way back to the bus after the game – we just followed the beacon that was Roy’s hat! There were some really classic tunes being played in the Knoten and we found a nice space, so we decided to leave the Louisiana for this week. |
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At 5am the bar closed, so we got a couple of Elixeers to go (see Week 3 for more on those), and took a slow walk to Düsseldorf HBF to begin the trip to Game 2… |
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FINAL SCORE: Frankfurt Galaxy 7- 14 Rhein Fire |
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We started gameday 2 at a café at the train station. There was a small group of fools doing this trip with us; Velcro, Michel, Jasper and Peter. We were all very tired and had to kill a couple of hours, because the train Lou booked wasn’t until 8am! Needless to say when we piled on the train, everyone caught some much-needed shut-eye. |
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When we arrived in Berlin, we went straight to the hotel to shower and change and then we headed off to the game. |
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This was Lou’s first time in Berlin, and everyone’s first trip to the Olympiastadion. Although Lou did get a sense of déja vous, as the half-built stadium was reminiscent of Stamford Bridge in 1997. We wiped away a tear as we assessed the power party. To be frank, there wasn’t a lot of power in this party. There was the usual array to NFL Europe Experience stuff, a Skoda stand (and we’re sure we must now be the only fans left who do not have Skoda bears at home), a stage – which had pretty much finished when we got there, and a stand giving out condoms. Jasper seemed drawn to that! |
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Before the game we had an Elvis impersonator. Apparently this is what passes for pre-game ‘entertainment’ in Berlin. Quite a let down after Bonnie Tyler, even if she was miming! |
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The half time entertainment wasn’t much better. It was a German boyband, and from what we could gather, they were singing about condoms. The kids in the row in front of us had obviously got some of the free condoms from the power party and were using them as balloons. They’ll learn! |
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After the game we went to the Hard Rock Café. We had some food and some lovely cocktails and watched the Thunder players ‘cut the rug’. The players’ song of choice across the League is 50 Cent’s In Da Club. Everyone gets on up every time that plays. Ross bailed pretty early and Jasper had better things to do (ask him!). We stuck around for a while, but we had an early train home so we left Michel and Peter to keep up the Triple A reputation and headed back to the hotel for some sleep. |
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FINAL SCORE: Amsterdam Admirals 30 – 34 Berlin Thunder
Next week…Ian will be at Rhein @ Amsterdam |
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Photos to follow...
This week we're raising a beer to the Berlin stadium steward who was invited to join us for dinner by one of the Triple A boys. She led us to the Hard Rock Café. We're not sure we'd have found it without her. |
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