Oliver Kahn, Weißbier und Krazy Recycling Frau

Ja! I’m back from Munich! It was supercool and I was having many beers.

These things were wunderbar:

• The city itself is fantastic. Very easy to get around, friendly locals, plentiful beer. 5000 Dandies can’t be wrong.
• The atmosphere before, during and after the game was brilliant. Everyone was singing, jumping around and generally just having a great time in Marienplatz. The police were friendly and everyone got along famously. Huzzah!
• The Allianz Arena is cool as fuck. Let me repeat that for you in case you were speed reading: cool as fuck. Everything you’d want in a modern stadium.

These things were scheisse:

• The scoreline. Not that I or anyone else there really cared that it was 5-1 by the end, but it just showed the difference in class between Aberdeen and Bayern. Which just further emphasizes how well the Dons played in the first leg.
• Heathrow. Just as well we got the red eye down because it meant we avoided a lot of the chaos that affected others. That said, we were still delayed in getting to Munich by about 5 hours.

A very special mention must go to Krazy Recycling Frau (may or may not be her real name):

KRF was a lovely woman who spent about 45 minutes chatting away to us in Marienplatz before the game despite speaking absolutely no English whatsoever. Every time someone would walk up to the bin to put a bottle in it, KRF was straight in there grabbing the bottle out of their hand and stuffing it into a plastic bag. She was also loving all the cuddles she was getting from the traveling support (“I’m 65! He could be my grandson! But he is very nice!”). KRF, I salute you. I just don’t have the slightest clue how you managed to carry all 8 bags of empty bottles home with you.

Master Chief and the BMX Arbiter

It had started off like most Sunday evenings: dozing on the sofa, completely jet-lagged, watching the most comically inept display of defending in a football match I’ve seen for a long time. No, not Aberdeen; Cameroon in the African Cup of Nations final. Fortunately my Setanta was playing up so I couldn’t actually see the Dons getting bent over a table and violated by Celtic.

Earlier on, I’d hooked up Scott’s Xbox 360 and had a play around on Halo 3 in 720p/5.1 surround loveliness. Very sexy. Scott turned up back at the flat with a new Xbox controller for me to use and we sat down for an evening of Halo and banana beer. It was at this point it dawned on me: I need a new TV. Badly. Don’t get me wrong, I really like my TV. It’s a slick wee 23″ LCD that can happily handle HD up to 1080i. It looks a good size in my relatively small living room. But when you’re trying to exterminate a Flood infestation with a flame thrower on split screen, it’s disturbingly small.

Also, I can’t help but feel that co-op mode’s 2 main protagonists are somewhat reminiscent of a Mitchell and Webb sketch (the title for the post was what I had in mind). It’s all “oh thank God you’re here, Master Chief!” and “go get ‘em Chief” and nobody even acknowledges the Arbiter, even when it was him who took out the big fuck off enemy ship that was raining explosive death down on the marines. Maybe if they spent a bit more time trying to take out the enemy instead of sucking off Master Chief they wouldn’t be in the predicament they found themselves in. Fucking twats. And yes, I was playing as the Arbiter