A week on and I can’t shake the journey home. The oddness of Munich Hauptbahnhof at 3am. It was not a very deserted place. I was expecting complete shutdown and acres of platform space to myself. The game finished late, and lots of people just kind of bimbled around, seemingly happy to wait for a train. They may have booked a late service thinking of extra time. Services to Ulm and Stuttgart are timetabled, and busy at 2.30 and 3.16am. Trains may not always be prompt in Germany but they do run all night. The 3.16, ICE616, is displayed as running to Munster (West) but in fact snakes its way across the whole country to Hamburg Altona. It’s a regular train, not a night service, so the only accommodation was a seat to curl up in.
How I felt watching the game reminded me of the trepidation of the last European away fixture I’d attended. That beautiful late summer’s evening in St Gallen, Switzerland in the Europa League. While shouting myself hoarse, I also felt far less invested in the result than I do a game at home. I was more focussed on the logistics of getting back to London than feeling deep commitment to the outcome. What was impossible to ignore was the near-total blokeishness of the Arsenal fans around me. The absence of kids (my own kids in particular), older people and women gave the air of a thousand stag parties colliding at once. Not often given free rein, a no-stops male environment felt sharp and extreme – more drugs, more coiled violence, and darker humour. I saw a pre-match punch up a few rows away. Not quite like the days when you flinched inside when one of ours spoke to a foreigner. One older fan though did make himself sound stupid after the game and was easily verbally bested by a Munich fan. – It was a reminder of how I always felt very outside left of this kind of man, and even more different from this generation, though we’re all bound together in wanting the same thing. Perhaps that explains why I turned a bit away from it and thought about the cold platform to come.
It was cold, 1c and no warm spaces. I alternately walked up and down the platform and sat huddled on a bench. Dad dozed off and his legs went to sleep. We walked up and down some more. When the guard arrived and the doors on the train were finally opened at just after 3 it was like being allowed into some kind of sacred space. We departed on time and on hearing the guard’s whistle and feeling the motion on the train I fell asleep. A lovely sleep, whatever the accommodation. Woken at Augsburg. It was dark and nothing was happening. Ulm, Stuttgart, stop, nothing outside, repeat. A vast engine yard loomed out of the darkness, then the shady outlines of the sulking Black Forest. And then high speed to Mannheim. A woman next to me bound for Geneva, I was sure, was on the wrong train. I considered saying something but left it to the guard. He seemed to not correct anything. The connection was tight and I watched the city arrive on Google Maps. We’re not there, we are there.
Connection slightly late and achieved. The Saar, the Vosges, the border, in and out of sleep, then unconscious until just before Paris. On-time arrivals meant there was time to walk to Canal Saint Martin in Paris. Sometimes Paris is like walking into a beautiful vision in its perfection, and on an early Thursday morning there wasn’t a tourist in sight bar us, and a few moments of peace and recovery from the journey. Walk to the Canal Saint Martin. The perfect place appeared from nowhere, the cafe you were looking for. German into French. The Gare du Nord. Then home again on Eurostar. Previous visits to Paris with Dad have gone like this: arrested (1994), agonising defeat (1995), agonising defeat and car broken into (2006) so a nice pastry, coffee and slightly slow passport queue was an exceptional display of benevolence from Marianne and her fair capital.
Tom Hall: travel, London, other things 