Hamburg Arena Wednesday, December 17th, 2008   UEFA Cup Attendance: 49,062         Hamburg SV 1-3 Aston Villa       Petric 18, Olic 30, Olic 57   Delfouneso 83   Mathijsen 32   Knight 50, Sidwell 65       Sidwell 84
2008 /09

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Dom, Chris and Jim set off early from Brum at 6am for the drive daaahn saaahf to London Heathrow, terminal 5 (hence no luggage with us).  Dom nearly didn''t make it as the West Mids finest had tested him for drink driving - thankfully this proved to be a fruitless exercise and Dom was let on his way.  After dropping home the lads Dom had his 4 hours sleep and was ready for the continent. We arrived at Heathrow at half 8ish and parked up.  Me and Jim helped ourselves to our complimentary newspapers -  these were shoddily missing the expectant mass of news about the evenings big game.   After a welcomed full English for all (and depressing realisations of how much our Pound Sterling has fallen when we exchanged this for our E*ros) we boarded the flight.  Plenty of Villa on board was satisfying to see, a quick lousy West Ham ''quip'' from the otherwise excellent Captain and we were off into the North sea.   Credit crunch clearly affecting British Airways as the in flight meal was a pack of bird seed - Dom & Chris turned up our noses at this and passed our packets on to the grateful Jim.      We landed & headed to the Underground station.  Chris'' GCSE in German had obviously been for diddly squat as he/we struggled to understand the information. Thankfully we worked this out and boarded the train.  Some German, who looked suspiciously like Santa Claus, spent 5 minutes telling us what we already knew. Ze Santa then blurted out we were heading to the infamous ''Reeperbahn'' - much to the amusement/disgust/''lets move away quickly'' look of three ladies around him.  Jim then proved himself the Gent by letting and old lady sit in his seat. Once arrived, we diverted into the nearest bar where we were served by a stereotypical German pornstar looky-likey and his lady.  Ordering a beer/ lager in a glass shouldn''t have been as difficult as it was - despite the language barrier.    Despite being half 1 in the afternoon there were already some Villa boys in there who were well on their way to being pissed.  Their hilarious ''nude'' aprons, sporting the words ''have your seen my Frankfurter'' above a 20 odd rubber ''dong'' made us all chuckle, especially the one with a small blow up female (handcuffed) on the end.  Childish I know (but hugely funny).  Luckily Chris has these masterpieces captured on film.    Being hungry we went for a KFC which wasn''t good. Met up with Guppy where most the Villa boys were totting.  I stocked up on a few cans of Warsteiner from a shop then we went to the stadium, 3 hours before KO.  A short underground journey followed on which there appeared to be more nutters on it, which we dealt with in good spirits.   At the ground we were lucky to meet Sir Graham Taylor, with whom we shook hands and had a chat.  What a gentleman.  After drinks at a beer tent we went into the ground and met another famous Villain, Nigel Kennedy!   The game that followed wasn''t the best as we had our reserve team out.  A couple of the young boys did well, and a not too embarrassing defeat of 3-1 followed.  Thankfully we are already through and the European adventure continues!