Tuesday 26 October 2010

No Sleep Till Trencin.

AS Trencin v FC Petrzalka
Saturday 23 October 2010
Slovak First League
Štadión na Sihoti, Trencin
Attendance 832

and

FC Spartak Trnava v FC ViOn Zlaté Moravce
Saturday 23 October 2010
Corgon Liga
Štadión Antona Malatinského
Attendance 4637

EFW Oktoberfest Day One - I really really really wanna Zalaegerszeg

Day Two of the EFW Oktoberfest and an epic trip into deepest Slovakia for the 2nd (second) division match between AS Trencin v FC Petrzalka (formerly Artmedia Bratislava) and more fun with the good folk of Miti Busz Travel. This time we were treated to not one (one), but two (two) drivers, lets call one of them Tibor (as that was his name) and the other one Tibor II (which probably wasn't his name) and the hostess with the most-est, the lovely Maria.

Maria started the trip with a guide to Budapest, it's history and the demographics of the wider Budapest area before giving up and realising the hungover football fan audience wasn't really interested in her best Micheal Palin impression and would rather that she read out the phone number of her daughter, who we had the pleasure of meeting the day before. Maria redeemed herself later however with a shot of Palinka for all and by organising a spot of bingo on the coach. Who doesnt like a bit of bingo? *raises hand* - Fair point. However with prizes such as a pen, a minature bottle of brandy a doily, a mobile phone holder, a tea towel and a pill box on offer competition was understandably fierce.

Crazy, crazy times

The journey to Trencin was seemingly never ending, with a slight delay caused by dogs loose on the road, however on arrival in Trencin the sight of some classic Eastern European floodlights in the distance caused most of us to do a little sex wee and made the journey worthwhile. After the usual parking issues we piled into the ground for the bargainous price of €10 - including a beer and scarf. €10 (ten!). Trencin won the match 2-1 and the match will live long in the memory for the chorizo style sausage I devoured in record time and not a lot else. Oh, there was a nice medieval castle overlooking the ground, I was more interested in the floodlights to be honest - mmm, floodlights.

An architectural wonder and some medievel castle nonsense.

Token match shot

Back on the bus and off to Trnava and what's the Maria you've prepared us all some food? OK, thanks but you don't seem to have any cooking facilities on board? Anyway, what have you rustled up then? A hearty traditional Hungarian goulash perhaps? Oh. 87 Frankfurter sausages in a giant bowl. Oh. Thanks, you shouldn't have. Don't suppose you've got any brown sauce? Daddies? HP? Forget it love and tell Tibor II to get his foot down.

Red sauce? Yellow sauce? White sauce? Or no sauce at all.

Should have gone to Miti Busz Travel. Ramshackle.

Tibor II did get his foot on the volocitator and we were parked up in good time for the match, sadly we hadn't factored in that most of the crowd had turned up just before kick off and were all trying to enter through the one working turnstile. As a result we missed the start of the match, sadly missing scenes like these. The Trnava fans were fantastic and it was agreed that this was the best atmosphere of the weekend, with some amazing choreography from the Kapo, his 2 drummers, his mate and his mates infant child all leading the singing, dancing, flag waving and throwing of rolls of paper that we all wanted to see and all secretly wished we'd see at English matches.

Big flag and flares.

The match itself was carnage. No fluid passing, long balls from the goalkeeper, no positional sense, scoreless, and players chasing the ball round in packs like school kids and some absolutely brutal two footed tackles that went unchallenged from the re....ok, this wasn't the actual match and there was no ref and they were school kids. For fifteen minutes we had some respite from the professional match and were entertained to some football hilarity from Trnava's new breed of hatchetmen, who seemed intent on kicking each other back to the communist era. This match was the talk of the journey home, probably a more civilised conversation than necrophilia I guess, as the actual match had been a dire 0-0, enlivened only in the last minute by the Moravce sub talking himself into a sending off before actually entering the pitch.

Token match shot. Small. Far away.

After the obligatory post match pitch invasion and storming of the post match interviews it was back on the bus and another football ground stop off at ETO Park, home of Hungarian Premier league side Győri ETO FC.

The Hungarian coach drivers fear of the car parking space kicked in again just outside ETO Park. Despite the ground being joined to seemingly Hungary's biggest shopping mall, and now empty car park, one of the Tibor's decided that there wasn't space to park the coach, despite circling the car park twice just to make sure. So we had to make do with a view of a floodlight from the coach window, whilst circling the deserted car park for a third time.

Maria concluded the trip home with a speech thanking us for using Miti Busz Travel and that she hoped she'd exceeded our expectations (Palinka, disgusting sausages and bingo...expectations exceeded) and a cheeky plug for their Facebook fan site, which we all made a mental note off in the hope it would be the start of a warm trail that would lead back to the Facebook page of her daughter.

4 comments:

  1. What was wrong with the on-board sausages? They were so good I had seven (7)! Might have to do with the fact that I grew up in Central Europe and not on an island... ;-)

    NB: Tibor II is also known by the name of Zsolt.

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  2. Yet another great Report.
    Would have prefered it if you could have left the medievel castle out of the photo of the floodlight...but what the heck....cant have it all.
    PS Sausages looked good...so good infact I tried to order the book "50 things to do with a Frankfurter" from Amazon...rats...sold out !!!

    cant wait for next report.

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  3. Another fantastic read Kenny Legg. Worringly, it's better than mine. As such, consider yourself uninvited to the 2011 shindig. Just kidding old bean, obviously.

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