season start..sort of

this poor excuse for a winter is drawing to a close and the beginning of spring heralds the start of the football season. rapid's firts game was against poli timişoara (deni's hometown team). this was suposed to be a home game but becasue of soe incidents involving the fans the mach was suposed to take place at least 150 km from bucharest. it really sucked because i wanted to go to that game. the officials of the team wanted to play in braşov but the league dudes anused their power and forced the team to play atcraiova, a town which doesnât take kindly tp rapid fans. not that we take kindly to craiova fans. it was a little bit weird because on a stadium of about 35000 seats there were no more than 5000 fans divided in 3 sectors. one for rapid, one for poli, and one for the local fans who grabbed every oportunity they could to boo both teams. rapid and poli fans are brothers and me and deni are friends so a little wager was in place. if rapid won she would give me a poli scarf and i would give her a rapid scarf if poli won. rapid won 2-0 :D. now i'm waiting for that scarf to arrive so i can take it with me on the stadium. next came a cup game agains fc argeş. we advanced after extra time, again 2-0.
now we come to my start of the season. the next championship game was away at craiova. but they also had trouble with their fans and had to play the mach 150 km away. so the first home game was played nine hours by train away from me, nut the firts away was played only 10 minutes by tram from me :)))). you can imagine that i had to go. it's weird because altough it was played in our city it was considered away and we ad acces to a limited number of tickets. again the romanian ingenuity with two person tickets. luckily i hooked up with gullit who managed to score tickets saving me a trip all the way to our stadium. this game would be a good oportunity for me to "tes" my flag :D.
almost two hours before the start of the game i was siting in my room playing neverwinter (as i usualy do lately) when suddenly the phone rang. it was gullit. he was in front of the stadium and was waiting for me. he claimed that he'd told me that he would arrive early..well, i don't recall that.
now let's get technicall. every stadium is alligned on a north to south axis. rapid fans would sit in the northern part and craiova fans in the stands on the side across the official seats. the south part of the stadium is easier for me to reach, or so i think. so i went through the south. got off the tram and saw a crowd. you can imagine i was a little nervous when i saw they were not rapid fans and i had my scarf and flag that screamed "hey, a rapid fan" :p. well, didn't get too nervous because there was lots of police around. gullit called and i told him i'll get around the stadium to where he was. got to an entrance and a policeman stopped and asked for my ticket. it wasnât the entrance to the stands, it was just the alley surounding the stadium. told him my ticket is "expecting" me. he believed me after i got out my phone to call gullit. easy eoungh, i thought to myself and headed north along the stadium. well, not so easy. got stopped again by the police..what now? i was not allowed to go through there because it was near the players entrance...damn it. now i had to go around the whole stadium passsing by the entire craiova fans group while doing so. didn't see the look they gave me as i was trying to look focused on my way. got north. again police..dudeee..i was 10 meters away from the entrance and these guys wanted my ticket. called gullit for the hundreth time. only after 3 or 4 calls he finaly realised where i was and came to pick me up. again the weird feeling. this is the biggest stadium in romania with 60000+ seats and again there were not even 10000 fans present. the game was disapointing and it ended 0-0. all this fuss for a draw..damn.. they clearly showed that they couldn't score without extra time. well, this wasnât a cup game so a drwa was posible. i'm not going to buy season tickets because i'm not sure i'll be going to much more games on our stadium this season.. we're fighting for second place and the cup, seeing how dinamo virtualy won the championship in the first half.
ehh.. i miss those exciting uefa games..none of that this spring. none of the buterflies in the stomach either.. 2006 will go down in history as one darned year. let's hope that the ones to come will live up to its fame.