Euro 2024 Diary: Fruitful visit to my first Fanzone
My first ever visit to a tournament fanzone to watch Germany beat Hungary was fruitful
Blimey. Well that was a night and a half.
I’ve literally just woken up this morning after my first ever trip to a fanzone.
On Wednesday evening we watched Germany beat Hungary in a Dortmund fanzone, after paying a visit to their very excellent football museum earlier.
The reason I’ve never been to a fanzone before is because I’m normally at a game as a fan or a journo, and never had call to visit.
And because, well, they’re jut a bit naff aren’t they?
‘Organised fun’ has never been my thing.
Caption: Me with a banana, and a strawberry, at the Dortmund Euro 2024 fanzone. CREDIT: Paul Kelleher
Dortmund’s fanzone on Wednesday evening. CREDIT:
However, purely for educational purposes we decided to break our duck and head to the public site in the centre of Dortmund dedicated to enjoying the football at the Euros. And drink strong continental lager. Heavily.
Dortmund’s fanzone on Wednesday evening. CREDIT: Layth (@laythy29)
When my pals and I went to the 2006 World Cup here in Germany, we drove from England to a town called Mainz in a day. Or one of us did. The rest of us merrily imbibed in the back of the car all through that long drive.
So, by the time we got to that charming little town near Frankfurt (some of us went to England vs Paraguay the next day at Eintracht Frankfurt’s revamped ground Waldstadion), we were pretty inebriated.
So much so, that watching Germany beat Costa Rica 4-2 to kick start the 2006 World Cup, in a bar near the beguiling domed cathedral, I vomited on my new trainers.
So, naturally, that became the unit of measurement to gauge just how big a night out you had.
Meaning. ‘how was your night?’ "‘Yeah, it was pretty big, it was a ‘vomiting on your new trainers’ type of night.” And that was all you had to say to indicate the levels of drunkeness you ‘achieved’ with nothing more required to be said.
Well, last night wasn’t a ‘vomiting on your new trainers’ kind of night.
But it was a ‘speaking to fruit’ kind of evening.
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DAILY LIST:
Drive from Dortmund to Frankfurt via our hotel in Mainz, and get to England vs Denmark before kick off. Hopefully.
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PS
Deutsche Fußballmuseum
Earlier, before we started drinking heavily on Tuesday afternoon, I paid a visit to the German Football Museum.
I would write about it here, but we’re now currently driving along the Autobahn from Dortmund to Frankfurt at 130mph in Paul’s BMW and I feel quite rough.
So, I’ll share my tweets with you instead, until the pain goes.
Suffice to say the Deutsche Fußballmuseum was absolutely brilliant.
