Sunday 13^th April

The football results from back home don’t come in until 3am and are not good.  Sunderland lost to a late goal at home to Man City while some of the other teams around us gained points.  Texts and phone calls continue through the wee small hours into the quite big hours, but somehow I don’t mind being called by some of the lads from back home at 5:30 am my time, and eventually get some sleep.

I decide that sleep is definitely a better choice than breakfast so have a good rest before heading by foot into town.  I like to wander on my own (in fact I think I said so in an earlier entry), to get a feel for a place.  The hotel is a decent walk away from the city centre, past some typically unattractive tower blocks and the dockyards where thousands upon thousands of Japanese cars are unloaded and stored. 

I get to the main bus and train station.  The train station is the end of the line for the infamous Trans-Siberian railroad along whose length I have travelled a fair old distance, though I gave up on the idea of the full 7 day trip a while back, mainly due to lack of time, it must be said.  It seems a poignant moment somehow, after being stood in the station at St Petersburg a full 5 weeks earlier, that I am now at the other end of the line.  It was intended that this was also the end of the project, but due to ever changing plans, I still have to head back to the Moscow area after I’m done in Vladivostok to complete 2 branches where the network wasn’t ready while we were over that neck of the woods.  It still feels to me, however, to be the end of the road and in some ways I actually feel a tinge of sadness, but I digress.

I randomly pick a street to walk along and somehow or other end up on the sea front where I’d walked with Tanya the day before.  I take a few pictures but have to carefully ration them as, stupidly, I’d run the batteries on the camera right down so you’ll just have to imagine the sight of me, socks and shoes off, jeans pulled up around my knees, plodging in the Pacific.  Well it would have been rude not to.  There is an "attraction" which is a floatng rusty iron + wooden affair with some dolphins in.  I don't usually like this kind of thing but I pay my £1.50 and spend ages just watching these great creatures swim around in a cramped compartment.

As I head off to try and track down the office, I come across the football stadium and notice that there is a game on tonight at 6pm.  Hmmm, could be interesting so I text Tania, who I know is out of town visiting her grandmother, then head in what I believe to be the general direction of the offices.  It is quite a walk to the office, well it is the way I went anyway, which I now know is the long way, but is the only route I know as that’s the way we went in the taxi the day before, with a taxi driver who also didn’t know where the offices were.

As I near the offices my phone rings.  It’s branch manager Katia who says that the jungle drums have been beating and that she and her husband are going to stop whatever they were doing on this fine Sunday afternoon, make the trek from well out of town to the football ground and buy tickets.  I’m gobsmacked and chuffed at the same time and head into work to run a few more updates on the systems.

With 30 minutes to kick off, and a 45 minute walk away from the stadium (my way, don’t forget), Katia rings to say that they have the tickets and asks where I am.  A bit of a surreal conversation follow when I say I am at the business centre, which business centre? Your business centre, and a very confused Katia explains that the traffic is very heavy so a taxi is not a good option and that I should walk to the football ground.  We hatch a plan where I stop a person in the street and she asks them to point me in the right direction, which is a good plan.  Except the only person I can see is a bloke with gold teeth and a black leather jacket who looks like he’ll run off with my phone, but nothing ventured, nothing gained so I walk up to him.  Now you have to imagine the scenario reversed where a strange bloke walks up to you, pointing at his mobile phone, yabbering away in a foreign lingo and handing it to you.  This bloke obviously thinks I’m the nutter, and says Nyet a few times before I somehow manage to convince him to speak with Katia.

It turns out that he is in a hurry as HE is heading to the football, and he agrees to take me with him, so we head off at a bit of a lick, through a load of back streets, past queues of cars snarled up in the jams.  We stride on in silence and before long I recognise where we are, quite near to the stadium.  He asks for my phone, calls Katia and we meet up.  Katia remarks how lucky I was to have met the man, and I agree.  I don’t know how or why, but things like that always seem to happen to me.  I think I was born lucky.  In true fashion, I get into the ground just as the teams kick off.

The match is a turgid affair, played on a pitch which looks like it doubles up as a potato field, but the experience is great, and I’ve seen worse matches in my time. The crowd try their best to lift the home team and make a fair bit of noise at times in such a small stadium.  The opposition are from the Moscow region.  I look for away fans, I’m sure there were some, but I couldn’t see them from where we were sat.  Now that’s what I call true support, for anyone making that trip to watch their team.

As the sun sets, the wind blows in from the sea with a chilling cut to it.  Katia and Viktor have suffered enough, it’s obviously not going to turn into match of the century, so with a few minutes left, we opt to head off for some food and beers before they drop me off at the hotel, thanking them again for dropping everything just to take this strange English football fan to a game between 2 clubs he had no interest in.