We enter Bulgarian airspace just as they’re enjoying an electrical storm, the first one I’ve flown through. It wasn’t as unsettling as you’d imagine, there’s a sense of detachment as with most things you view through a screen. Some flashes outside the window, some quite close but no rain or thunder, as we’re on the other side of the clouds, cocooned in a pressurised cabin which shuts out any external noise.
As we enter the airport terminal building, the first impressions aren’t good; it appears to predate the end of the Communist era. Outside, the first car I spot is a vintage Lada Police car, about 20 years old. A few question marks appear about the journey that still lies ahead and is as yet, still somewhere between the conceptual stage and the planning stage.
A couple of dozen or so like-minded individuals have arrived here with the same purpose. A few ninetysix bands, a few Don’t Buy The Sun stickers, some sporting full colours, are mixed in amongst the holidaymakers. We’ve gone on the cheap, allocation on arrival and are informed we’ll be staying at the Golden Sands resort and make our way to the modern air-conditioned coach (things are looking up slightly). It’s almost midnight, I think, and we’re given a brief guide to the city centre, as we make our way to the resort. We’re now on the other side of the clouds and unable to make out any of the sites through the rain, the rep’s preamble refers to, in broken but ever so polite English.
We check into the hotel, room is a bit minty, there’s no coffee facilities, no t.v. and frankly it’s a bit on the nose as well. At this point extending our one night stay in Istanbul looks a good option. First night in a new country, hotel bar is still open, it’s now about 2:30, we go down for a couple and venture out for a mooch about, there’s a badly lit road to the right, through what looks like a forest at the rear of a row of hotels. We get to the bottom, a few cabs go by but there’s not much sign of any nightlife, to be honest it’s a little bit scary and the excuse that an early night is needed, is an easy out. We need to make the welcome meeting in the hope that our rep will have some advice about getting to Istanbul.
So to the welcome meeting, hosted by a very attractive young lady wearing tights, in this heat?(it’s in the 80’s). What is with Bulgarians and tights? About a third of the female population seems to wearing them in the searing heat. Anyway she can only suggest we head into the city centre and make our own way there but John, a Kiwi rep seems to have a few contacts and we arrange to see him later, after he’s had chance to make a few calls. We get a few numbers but no reply, so make our way back to our hotel to see if anyone there has sorted anything.
On the way we spot a few reds sitting on a wall chatting to a cabby. I go over and ask them if they’ve got their plans sorted. Turns out the cabby (Dido, young lad wearing a Spurs shirt) they’re speaking to is arranging a mini-bus and there will be a few spaces, if we want them. They seem alright, a bit of a mixed bunch, couple of youngsters, one about my age and a few older heads. Decision time and we’re in, 1000 Leva there and back and they’ll drop us at Taksim and then to the ground. Deposit paid and business card secured, along with a few assurances, we arrange to meet up at 4am. A bit keen, for what we’ve been told is a 5/6 hour journey but we can always try and catch up on a bit of kip on the way, Hmmm!
3:00 am in the shower, after about 4 hours sleep and we head down that dark road to where the others are staying. It’s little less scary when you’ve seen it in daylight and managed to get your bearings. Most of them are still pissed from an all day session and a couple of them haven’t slept at all. We’ve been a bit more sensible and managed a few hours sleep after a meal and a couple of hours in The Muppet karaoke bar. One of the younger lads has befriended an Irish lad who gets him in a triple J.D. ‘for the road’, as the van arrives, along with a different driver. We get about 20 yards along the road before we stop to empty the first of about 3 bags of sick and then a further quarter mile before we meet up with what turns out to be the rest of our convoy of two mini-buses, two taxis and a battered old Peugeot 205.
The stop start nature of the first half-mile turns out to be a good portent for way the rest of the trip was to go. Our driver had a tendency to bomb off at about 120km and then pull over and wait for everyone to catch us up. He did this into about 20m of visibility, through the thickest mist I’ve ever seen, often overtaking on what would be blind bends, if it were possible to see them. If a slow moving lorry held up our progress, he almost shunted into it before darting out from inches behind it. More by luck than any discernable judgement, he manages to avoid any oncoming traffic and does so without interrupting any of the conversations, he’s constantly engaged in via a mobile phone. I didn’t feel that much like sleeping at any point, as we hurtled through the first couple of hours of darkness to the accompaniment of Bulgarian folk pop dance soundtrack. Imagine incessant Bhangra beats and Euro pop melodies sung in what sounds like Russian or don’t, I’ve mostly blanked it out.
As the sun came up the mist briefly eased and I was still alive. The twisty forest roads we’d driven through gave way to twisty open roads. A few scattered villages also cropped up occasionally, as we sped towards the border. The daily ritual of the locals heading into work, tending their flock (in the road) and even waiting at bus stops in one of the rare towns we glimpsed was the backdrop to our journey. Rural tranquillity and urban decay, side by side, as we saw some of the grimmest estates found outside Kirkby and Kirkdale, driving alongside some of the oldest vehicles still on Europe’s roads. All viewed through the screen of our Mercedes van, again that sense of detachment made it seem like we were witnessing it somehow 2nd hand.
As we got nearer the border the mist kicked back in or perhaps we were up in the clouds. We didn’t seem to have climbed anything steep but then I never realised I was in Europe’s highest capital (Madrid) when I’d arrived there on a train from Barcelona. It was cool on our frequent stops and toilet breaks, reminiscent of being near the summit of Snowden. The mist crept into the bus when the door was open and gave an eerie look to the trees in the forest we’d ventured back into. As we neared the border, the traffic had petered out apart from the odd coach or minibus decorated with Liverpool banners. In the depths of nowhere, we’re there, or at least at a standstill. Can’t see the border but we edge slowly up behind a queue of coaches, taxis and mini-buses snaking it’s way up towards a sign saying “Turkey 0.5”.
A few lads ahead get out of their van with a banner ‘Liverpool F.C. Marsh Lane’ for a photo opportunity next to the sign. Behind us a taxi pulls up and then turns around as we see 5 or 6 reds now on foot pass us on the way to the first border sentry. Bizarre! We later find out their pre-planned (from England) minibus hadn’t arrived and they could only get a taxi as far as the border. At this point we’ve travelled for around 5 hours just to get to the border and they’d been staying further away than us. Luckily for them one of the coaches ahead isn’t full and they’re journey continues through the Bulgarian border and then through the 2nd Bulgarian sentry, still 50m ahead of the first Passport check.
35 maybe 40 minutes have elapsed since we first set eyes on that sign saying Turkey 0.5. The 5 or 6 hours we were anticipating travelling was looking extremely optimistic now. Little did we know what lay ahead.
Depart bus; obtain visa, travel on towards Istanbul. Looks easy enough on er, paper. A lad in one of the taxis in our convoy has been to Turkey a few times before. His son’s on our bus and he points us in the direction of the window for visas. The lads with us all hand over a tenner and come away with a sticker in their passports. Looks easy enough, I hand over my passport along with a ten-pound note. Passport clerk puts sticker in my passport and then puts his hand out for money. Wily looking fella, must be in his late 50s. I’m perplexed, he must have pulled this stunt a few times before, judging by the nonchalance he’s displaying but not with me hasn’t, I’m thinking.
“I’ve already paid”, are the first words exchanged between us. He looks at me dismissively and moves my passport under the counter. I’m sensing he’s not going to budge and neither am I. My tone and volume get a bit louder and this attracts the attention of a border guard, complete with automatic rifle.
I’m now thinking it might have been a good idea to pay an extra ten quid. I try to tell him I’ve given my money in, he doesn’t seem that interested in my protestations and he asks me if I have a match ticket. 5 or 6 hours is turning into never and he gets my passport off the clerk and starts ripping my sticker out. Again I protest about having already paid for it and he ignores me ripping it right out and giving it back to the clerk. Oh shit, I’m not getting into Turkey for the biggest game of my life…..or am I. The guard gets my passport and tenner back off the clerk and starts pointing me in the direction of a booth on the other side of the hall.
From what I can gather I just need to get a photocopy of my ticket and passport and I don’t need a visa. I make my way to the booth with the ten pound in my passport and one the Bulgarian cabbies sees the money and waves and says “no money”. It becomes apparent why, as one of the lads off our bus is trying to get more than 50 Tostinkis* back in change from the attendenent for the 10 Leva* note he’d given in for a packet of crisps. One by one a couple of coins are greeted by laughter and incredulity. Not surprisingly everyone else decides against trying to get their money back, and trying the same exercise, content to just have a visa.
That drama over, we wait for about another 40 minutes whilst the Bulgarians sort out their entry into Turkey and the paperwork for the vans is scrutinised. It’s now around 11:00am and we’re all standing around shivering, as our van is locked and somehow it’s alarm has gone off, to add to the fun. We’re the last vehicles to leave out of about 30. We then make our way to more passport checks, it’s like kind of slow torture and there’s more to come……We hand in our passports at the gate and find we need to get our passports stamped back at the passport hall. So back 100m we go and queue up again behind a fresh set of arrivals. Thankfully we only had one more set of checks to go through, after that one.
Most of the first couple of hours in Turkey, I must have slept through, all I can recall are similar scenes to that which we saw in Bulgaria, as we first passed the border. Ramshackle houses with large stockpiles of wood in misty villages, with sheep and goats being herded through, locals ridng on horses and carts go about their daily business. I wake up on a highway, a long straight almost deserted road, with plenty of lanes for overtaking, a relief and the prospect of a more relaxing conclusion to our outbound journey beckons.
Nothing is quite that straightforward though. Traffic police want a word and to inspect our passports, no matter we’ve still got maybe 150km to go and we can keep our speed up on these roads. No sign of the rest of our convoy though and we seem to be having trouble staying in just the one lane. A few of us glance at each other, as our man’s head seems to be drooping. He gets a call and then turns the radio up, so all seems well, another call and we make another stop, a toilet break, splash of the face and within 25 minutes the group is back together. The weather still chilly and there’s a few spots of rain in the air as we sit waiting for those who’d risked a breakfast. It’s then that Praise You first flits across my mind. Well the line ‘We’ve come along long way together, through the hard times and rain’ does.
All plain sailing form here on in, Taksim by mid-afternoon, here we come. No we don’t we’ve reached the outskirts of Istanbul, it’s getting on for 2:00pm and then the driver darts off the road and we’re in the queue for a toll road before we can complain. We pull up and ask what’s going on, we’re all under the impression we’re heading into the city centre to join the pre-match booze up.
They seem to have other ideas. Dido, the lad we arranged it with is backtracking furiously. All we can get out them is how big Istanbul is and that they’re not confident of being able to meet up with us again, if we split up in the city centre. I suggest we can always get the free buses to the ground if they drop us at Taksim. They’ll need a good few hours kip for the journey back and we’ll know where we left them. After much toing and froing we set off and it becomes apparent that none of our arguments have sunk in. We stop again and plan B to get dropped off at the ground and to jump a couple of taxis into the city emerges. We then drive around in a big circle; past some families living in tents on scraggy bits of land, under the road that leads into the city centre, we were originally on. We’re lost. Our driver is trying to get directions on the phone, from a friend of his who lives here. He can’t get a signal so we stop again for directions. We make another circle back and a Honda dealership that we stopped in earlier appears, this time on our left, we go under the bridge again, past those families eking out an existence, tending a few goats near a stream. A cabbie who has spotted our colours in the window takes us back past the point where we first left the main road and we follow behind as he directs us towards the stadium. There it is in the distance and it’s now signposted. Well until the Police stop us going down the road the sign is pointing towards. A glimmer of hope that we might yet get to Taksim emerges and is quickly extinguished as we spot more signs; this time they are directing us specifically towards the home or Liverpool end.
The enthusiasm to venture into the city centre has dissipated as the reality that we’d get there and have to turn around sinks in. It’s now around 3:45, we’re all more than a little disgruntled and far too sober. Spirits are lifted slightly as we disembark and feel some of the buzz of being near the stadium. A chance to get some photos with the stadium behind is not to be missed and it seems like we’re far from the first to arrive. A few songs go off as we descend the hill down to the Stadium and I text home to confirm ‘We’ve made it.’ Ok so there’s a queue for programmes about 150 yards long and we’re told that they’re only selling non-alcoholic beer but look on the bright side. Its 12 hours since we set off, there’s still nearly 6 hours to kill before kick-off, we’re stuck in the middle of nowhere but ooh look! There’s that Colin Murray talking loudly on his mobile. Shit laugh!
Right drastic measures are needed; we’re going to have embark on a booze cruise. A few cans have been spotted around, so others must have had the same idea and got it sorted. Three of us set off and leave the rest to queue for programmes. There are dozens of cabs dropping off so we nab one, a 20-lira fare is agreed, I jump in the front and off we go. Oh look there’s Sampara getting out of a cab, resplendent in full badge regalia (It just wouldn’t be one of my stories if he didn’t feature somewhere). Sorry Snaff, didn’t get any photos. Ok so back to the cab, I’m feeling a little warm, must’ve been a hot journey for whoever was in before us. Perhaps it was just a sweaty get sat here before me but the sensation isn’t going away, I don’t want to think the worst perhaps something has been spilt. Oh and this is now turning into another trek. We’ve been directed away from the route we took into the ground and there’s nothing but decrepit estates around. We’re two or three miles from the stadium and I’m decidedly moist, nay damp, I console myself that there’s no discernable odour emanating from the source of said moistness but I’m definitely squashing up in the back on the return journey. All bail in the shop and yes, conformation of my arse indeed being wet.
“48 cans of cold Efes please.”
“That’ll be 40-Lira”
“Ok, can we change some money round here?”
It seems not we’ll have to venture further into the back streets. This is where the journey gets a bit more hairy and the roads a lot busier. We’d already witnessed the laissez faire attitude the Bulgarians take towards red traffic lights and the like but the Turks take road anarchy to a new level. No we’re not going to try and dive in front of that bus, yes, ok we are, we’re in front of it. Oh! we’re stopping here? Ok, I’m sure none of those cars we’re blocking in will mind or the traffic behind for that matter, after all we’ve left about a 7ft gap.
Right, everyone out bar me, I’ll watch the cab shall I? I’ve already got some Turkish money anyway.
It’s after 5.00 now and we’re headed back to the ground. Previously the traffic we’d made our way through earlier was fairly light, it has built up as rush hour approaches and there’s a lot more of our fans making their way there now. The buzz is building back up now we’re safe in the knowledge that there’s a boot full of booze behind us.
As we make our way along the dual carriageway to where we’d turned of a couple of hours ago the traffic is now 80 or 90% Liverpool fans and twice as heavy as earlier. We make it to the left turn where the police had earlier stopped the on-coming traffic to let us through. I get a text from those back at the stadium asking ‘where we you?’ Thinking we’re a couple of minutes away, I reply saying ‘we had no joy with a supermarket, so have found a pub.’ Joke backfires somewhat; they’re turning us away, its gridlocked pandemonium. We spend an extra 15 minutes trying to loop round back onto the other side of the dual carriage way further up and crawl down the hill at a snail’s pace back into the stadium. All this adds another 10 Lira onto our fare but what the hell we’re here now and with cold beers in tow.
You may already have some idea what happened next. It was mostly covered on New at Ten…past Midnight, including footage of me drinking from one the cans of Efes. They missed some loon who scaled a 100ft flagpole and risked life and limb to exchange a Union Jack for a Liverpool flag and also a banner procession that turned into a stage invasion. The now legendary campest man in Turkey going apoplectic screaming – “This is serious! The stage is about to collapse! Please leave the stage! The stage is about to collapse! This is serious!” All this passed of as mass of red descending the hill down to the stadium reached an exodus of almost biblical proportions.
What’s left to say about the game? Dead and buried by half time. Lad behind me showed me a message he’d received form home, just prior to lashing his phone at the deck. It just read- ‘ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha’
Again I’m reminded of that line – ‘We’ve come a long, long way…..’
I’ve written and re-written the next paragraph about 8 times and it stills sounds a bit corny but I am describing possibly the greatest come back in the history of football, certainly on its greatest stage.
Ac’s fans have begun to pipe up and drown us out. Only around 17,000 of them have bothered to turn up and people all around me are beginning to sit down and hang their heads. With three quarters of the stadium decked in red, had we come all this way to just sit and take defeat? Pockets all around the ground are trying to break out into song, I’m screaming, “We’re not going to be out-sung by that fucken pathetic shower, are we?” “Fucken get up and sing you cunts!”. The singing in the ground is building up, some are dejected but a mood of defiance emerges, whilst back in the dressing room Rafa delivers ‘that’ speech. As they come back onto the pitch the singing is building up into a crescendo. Defiant chants of ‘4-3, we’re gonna win 4-3’ and great rendition of YNWA are belted out. Again, I think the world’s media covered much of the rest of the night’s events. I can’t offer any great insight into what happened. In truth I was only able to appreciate the drama, until I got the chance to view it again on the small screen. Nerves, adrenaline and a poxy view saw to that. Suffice to say quite a few leave the ground in tears but all of them with big smiles on their faces, all in daze.
All that was left was deciding whether or not to venture out into Istanbul for the celebrations or lose the deposit on the hotel we’d booked and jump straight back on the mini bus. In truth it had already been taken before we’d arrived in Istanbul. We’d had a great day with a good bunch of lads and making or own way back on public transport was a less than appealing option, after the ordeal we’d endured to get here. The 11-hour schlep back to bask on the banks of the Black Sea was slightly less arduous than the outbound journey sans the passport hall dramas. So 33 hours after we’d set out, we arrived back. A bight to eat and then 14 hours sleep is on the agenda. Make a few calls home to relive Wednesday’s events before Thursday’s papers arrive mid-afternoon on Friday. Buzzing off both of them mentioning what one of them calls 'A candidate for banner of the season that’s been made with SUPERCROATIGORBISCANUSEDTOBEATROCIOUS on it. It had started life as something I'd written on Shankly Gates website several months back and is now available as a t-shirt. Then we bump into the rest of the mob and find a bar with the game on. They’ve grown in number now to about 9 including one lad who is constantly bombarded with chants of “You’re supposed to be at home”. He’d jibbed his flight to stay out here on the piss. Then onto karaoke at Muppets. Saturday and Sunday repeat, 100 reds in Muppets, 14-year-old scouser belting out Ring of Fire at 2:30 in the morning with a bottle in his hand and stealing a few kisses off the hostesses on the way out.
*10-Leva is around £4.00, 50-Tostinkis is about 22p. A packet of crisps is considerably less than £3.78 in Turkey
Brilliant Ian, even if I was cheering on AC
Couldn't help but feel a wee bit envious when you'se lifted the Big Cup. (AGAIN)
We still sing YNWA better though.;)