Warsaw - Poland - 2005

After the Wales game the next venture we set off on was to watch our wee country against Poland. The trip to Poland for all of us was our first venture into Eastern Europe and one that everyone looked forward to even though we had all heard different reports about the city of Warsaw, most being negative!

The HQ for the few days in Warsaw was to be the Metropol Hotel (I swear there must be a Metropol hotel in every country) a pretty reasonable hotel with a decent bar that never seemed to be closed. The first day in Poland consisted mainly of drinking as much as possible and sorry again to all those fans that had the unwanted pleasure of meeting ‘Hell boy’ in full flow! (The man could never handle Vodka)

After taking in few bars everyone quickly came to the same conclusion that Poland had a lot of fine ladies about its city, even without the beer goggles. Sight seeing didn’t really happen in Poland except for one of the group who got a guided tour of the city from a German Student he met in the bar the night before who ‘wanted to keep his eyes’!!!  The most sight seeing the rest of the group got was a trip to a flee market on the last day with the rest of the time being took up visiting the local public house.  With the main bar for drinking for fans being ‘Champions bar’, a good sized bar with a sports theme and this is where the main march to the stadium started with the local police being very helpful in accommodating it, even though they seemed to bring us the longest route possible to the stadium.

The game itsself saw one of the finest displays of goal keeping by Maik Taylor and one that I think he will always be remember for by those that where there that night. The result of the game was disappointing but following and watching Norn Iron seems to bring that feeling about every so often.

The after match piss up was held up a by the local police who seemed as though they would never let us leave the stadium!

Maybe due to the result nobody seemed too lively the next day but luckily we had the flight out home, which saved the walking about Poland bored.

The Poland trip was a cracking trip and debatably our first away trip (seemly Wales didn’t count) in which we got to meet a lot of new GAWA fans, which we are still in contact with today.