sussexpob wrote:Going Leverkusen tomorrow night for the USG match. Going to be a (very drunken) great night, although Leverkusen have sparked into unstoppable form.... so maybe a 3 hour drive back at 23h00 after a 4-0 hammering is not going to be so fun
On the pitch, it was an amazing night. 1-1, and while Leverkusen were the better side and we got lucky, a draw away to a team who has gone to two Champions League finals..... if you told me that would happen when I found this small club a few years back, I'd have told you to see a shrink.
But the night was soured by the unacceptable treatment of the Union fans by the German Police. All fans were directed by the police to rendez-vous at a given place in Leverkusen centre for a mandatory escort to the ground. We were directed to use a specific car park which was 45 minutes away, told there would be a free bus to the rendez-vous point, but the bus ended up taking everyone to the ground where we were refused entry, we had to walk 3 kms back into central Leverkusen only to be escorted back the same way we came in order to be let in.... by heavy handed police dressed up like they were expecting a few battalions of Russian marines in full riot gear, and with the mood to boot. There was no trouble. Not a hint of it, so to be treated like criminals or animals just wasnt necessary.
Arriving 1 hour before the game at Bay Arena, I missed the first 30 minutes trying to get in the ground, as they had 2 people checking tickets for 4,000 people, and then 2 people conducting searches holding the queue up despite there being about 400 police standing in a column next to the entrance doing nothing. I'd have said at kick of there was still at least half the fans outside.... and when I got in, still several hundred left who must have missed the first half altogether. Just a shambles. Totally unacceptable.
Then to cap it all off, the promised bus back to the car park never materialised. Once again we were marched to a train station in a random industrial park 45 minutes away, and then dumped there by the police at 23h45. It was a further 40 minutes walk back to our car park, no public transport, no promised buses. I seen one family with a small child who was in tears - shoddy, shoddy treatment and organisation.
The police on the way back had he audacity to blame us for not arriving at the ground early enough for the fiasco at the gate - well dipsh*ts, I arrived at the ground 3 hours before and was forced to a random shopping centre in the middle of nowhere on your orders, and was only able to arrive at the ground when you ALLOWED ME. If it takes 90 minutes to get a small number of fans through the gate, then maybe you can time your needless escort to arrive more than 60 minutes before.
A miserable experience.