A Hertha weekend in Munich

Hertha have some difficult matches in the run up to the end of the season not least of which was the away match against Bayern Munich.  By pure chance I happened to be in Munich on that weekend with my other half (if you believe that was by chance you are very “special” indeed!).  We planned to take a very long weekend having a look around the city and have a couple of days out visiting Salzburg and Schloss Neuschwanstein by train using “Bayern tickets”. 
The key event of the visit however was our visit to the Allianz Arena to support Hertha against the team soon to be crowned Bundesliga champions (again).  It was a superb evening and I was thrilled to be there with the away fans that may have been in the minority in terms on numbers but not in terms of spirit!

It had been a pretty hot day in the city and the evening was pretty warm when arriving at the match.  The U-Bahn on the way up was packed with fans and was stiflingly hot and sticky to the point of being grateful of the doors opening at each and every stop!

Naturally blue and white shirts were fairly few and far between on route to the stadium but the closer you got, the more could be seen.  Having said this the first was in our hotel at breakfast! 

You can look up the match stats on any number of websites but I want to concentrate on the feel of the game and the atmosphere – die stimmung.  The section that I was in was meant to be for Hertha fans only – and the tickets said no Bayern shirts scarves etc. would be allowed.  This was a bit of a joke really as there were quite a few Bayern fans near us and sitting next to us were a group of Japanese tourists that only appeared to have a mild interest in the game at all.  How they got those tickets is a total mystery to me.  But enough about that there was a pretty solid core of blue and white about us and that’s what counts!

The Hertha faithful created loads of support with chants, songs and clapping despite the best efforts of the PA system at times. I sometimes wonder if it's just me hating PA systems at football matches. I find it really annoying when supporters are knocking out a great song/chant and it gets drowned out by an announcement or some "Musak". Fans can create quite enough of an atmosphere by themselves thank you very much!  

Having said this the speakers kept quiet most of the time - it's just one of my pet hates.   I took a short video clip to give those who were not able to be there a taste of the atmosphere on the day. . . . 

We left the stadium with heads held high.  There had been no whitewash, Hertha had had their chances and only world class goalkeeper prevented us taking the lead. 

Naturally I entered the stadium with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation.  I really didn’t want us to be put to the sword but I was also aware of Hertha having a decent record against Bayern where others had been taken apart.   The tension built up during the match and I spend nearly all of it on the edge of my seat or leaping up into the air!  This was never more so when Nico Schulz had that run on Neuer – oh so close.  Coming up to the last 15 minutes it really felt like we had a chance of nicking a point, if not more but clearly it wasn’t to be.
Here are a few photos of the evening . . .

We left the stadium with heads held high.  There had been no whitewash, Hertha had had their chances and only world class goalkeeper prevented us taking the lead. 

So we left with a warm feeling inside which was just as well because it started raining as we waited for the U-Bahn into the city.

So mine was a wet Hertha shirt that travelled across the city back to our hotel but, I didn’t care.  We had “done alright”.