So yeah how many of you have been to European aways with your club and explain your experience?
Last season (07-08) I went to Milan which was my first European away, in one word "Amazing". One of my best experiences ever. I have also done Chelsea, Arsenal away in the UCL but it was no where near the same. Chelsea could of been different had we of gone to the final but yeah we didn't :P
Anyway back to Milan, game was on the Tuesday and we went on the Monday, there were about 10 of us who regularly went to all the games so it was sound, all got on the coach at 06:30 to go to the airport and cracked open some bottles of bud (i'm not an alcoholic, but this was an exception). Anyway finally got to the airport and gets into the pub after sorting everything out and waiting for our plane, but we had major plane delays due to high winds and bad weather, so we were in the pub longer and more beer :) Finally after hours of waiting we boarded the plane and nearly got kicked off as soon as we got on for singing "**** of chelsea fc" to a chelsea fan >_> but thats a different story. What i found weird was they kept giving us more beer (was free, little cans of heineken), our flight wasnt direct so we had to change at Zurich, and guess what more delays there so more time to get more beer down us (the beer glasses there was massive must of held over 3+ pints).
Again finally we got on the other plane and nearly got to Milan airport, airport was full of reds so the singing carried on from the plane into the airport. Time to get the taxi after getting our bags, was absolutely pissing it down. Got the taxi to the hotel, dropped of our stuff and then when to Duomo area for few more beers and a bounce ;) was there till about 3am singing and bouncing as you do, ******* knackered when got back to the hotel.
Woke up at 7am day of the game all buzzing and excited goto get some food, i don't know any of you but i'm not a continental breakfast type of person :P neither was my mate so we said **** it we'll try the BK over the road. Waited in the queue for ages in BK at like 8am and in walks in a group of Inter ultras, two of us lots of them, we left with a empty stomach :p ended up finding a cafe and a nice italian women translated a full english breakfast into italian for us, haha what we got was far from it, was like uncooked egg with thin uncooked bacon. By this time we eat what we could and gave up and met back up with the other lads and went on the underground to Duomo, let's just say it wasn't a nice experience, everyone giving us evil looks, we managed to finally get to Duomo untouched :P
Sat outside the bar at like 10am not many other reds out at that time, and about an hour of so, just heard this loud intimidating chanting and a crowd of inter fans came past with massive flags and such, was an amazing yet quite intimidating feeling. It then started filling up with more and more reds and more inter fans, there was lines of police everywhere but they were never needed, from here on it was amzing singing and drinking with the inter fans.
Your probably bored of this now so ill cut to the chase, we finally get to the san siro which is much bigger than it looks on any photo. I have to say the organisation was brilliant, there were 4 lines of checks for tickets and sharp items etc. In the stadiu, few hours early singing and the usual. Just before kickoff a huge raw from the inter fans as they were calling the names out, loudest thing i've ever heard. Game starts and later on Torres scored, thats when the bouncing carried on but this time even more so, my throat was killing and had a major headache but it was all worth it.
Only thing that was annoying was a price of a pint, nearly 10euros and to top that of most the pints had a head that was half the glass. But the italians and inter fans were absolutely amazing, no problems at all.
So yeah, was amazing, and worth everypenny.
