Friday 19 April 2013

VfL Bochum v St Pauli. 19/04/13

"Bochum, concrete jungle where dreams are made of, there's nothing you can't do, now you're in Bochum"


VfL Bochum 1848 3-0 St Pauli. rewirpowerSTADION
Friday 19/04/13
The wonders of German public transport mean that you can stay in one place - in this case Dusseldorf - and from there get to three different places in three days for three games of football. That was the plan for this particular April weekend as Rumble and I were to head to VfL Bochum v St Pauli on Friday, Borussia Dortmund v FSV Mainz 05 on Saturday and then over the border into the Netherlands for VVV Venlo v FC Twente on Sunday.

Schumacher Alt - a delightful beer in Dusseldorf
Dusseldorf itself was an excellent city which got even better when we realised that our double bed that had been accidentally booked was in fact two singles that could be pushed apart. No offence to Mr Rumble, but combining our night time bodily functions in one confined bed would have been like letting off a nuclear bomb. There were a huge number off beer halls in the city which we felt it only right to visit before the train to Bochum for game one, a 30 minute or so journey. The best of these was probably the Schumacher-Brau although it was unfortunately not named after either Michael or Ralf - a marketing trick missed if ever there was one.

rewirpowerSTADION
Once in Bochum, we headed straight to the rewirpowerSTADION - a fine combination of random small and upper case letters - where we found an excellent pub directly opposite the stadiums tram stop called Ritterburg with memorabilia, beer and that standard item in all good German bars, the electronic dartboard. The joy was short lived however as the dart board didn't actually work.

The fan bar - with non-working electronic dartboard
AZZURO BOCHUM!
There was a massive attendance for a 2.Bundesliga game, with nearly a capacity crowd of 30,000 packed into the stadium. It's single tiered all the way around with a home terrace behind one goal and the visiting St Pauli fans on a small piece of terracing in a corner. Despite the enclosed nature, the ground retains it's floodlight pylons and the atmosphere inside from such a compact yet large arena was excellent.

rewirpowerSTADION - excellent floodlight pylons
The visiting St Pauli support
The best thing of all however was the food selection. Germany is already renowned for it's food and beer inside it's football grounds but the selection of sausages at rewierpowerSTADION would be enough to get even Louie Spence excited. He'd also no doubt have been excited about Bochum's manager, a certain Peter Neurure who was not only sporting jeans in the technical area but a quite stunning squirrel's tail that he'd stuck on his top lip.

Little boy enjoying a pint of beer
You just couldn't turn down a nibble of sausage at those prices
It's obviously not just dressing like a 1970s porn star that Mr Neurure excels at as his side breezed past St Pauli with ease scoring three unanswered goals. Zlatko Dedic netted a first half brace including one from the penalty spot and Yusuke Tasaka was the other man on target in an extremely impressive Bochum performance.

Peter Neurure - by day Bochum manager, by night 1970s porn star
It was back into the town centre afterwards where we found a pub packed with Bochum supporters and partied the night away, including teaching them a new song in "Bochum, concrete jungle where dreams are made of" which we were promised would be used on the terraces at the next game. If it was, then we are truly sorry as in the cold light of a sober day it becomes clear that is the worst football song in history and that includes anything John Barnes-related. The combination of German beer and a wonderful clock that ran backwards led to all kinds of confusion and we only just made the last train back to Dusseldorf. Thinking that was that, we settled down for the journey only to both fall asleep and find ourselves arriving in Monchengladbach at midnight.

Backwards clock + beer + last train to catch = recipe for disaster
Bochum till we die
In England, this would have been a disaster but fear not, Borussia Monchengladbach had been at home that evening as well and that meant Football Special Trains running late into the night. What could have been a total cock up turned into no issue at all as we simply joined the Monchengladbach fans to return to Dusseldorf. God bless Deutschebahn.

rewirpowerSTADION in all her Friday night glory
You'll Never Walk Alone - Bochum style
Bochum FC provide vital life skills to kids, such as climbing
VfL Bochum: Andreas Luthe, Paul Freier, Marcel Malritz, Jonas Acquistapace, Michael Lumb, Yusuke Tasaka 1, Leon Goretzka (Christoph Dabrowski), Christoph Kramer, Marc Rzatkowski (Faton Toski), Zlatko Dedic 2, Mirkan Aydin (Michael Delura).

St Pauli: Philipp Tschauner, Jan-Philipp Kalla, Markus Thorandt, Christopher Avevor, Sebastian Schachten, Patrick Funk, Florian Kringe (Fabian Binge), Lennart Thy (Marius Ebbers), Dennis Daube, Fin Bartels, Daniel Ginczek (Akaki Gogia). 

Attendance: 26,072

No comments:

Post a Comment