3rd 4th & 5th February 2012

The idea of this trip was down to Lee West and Andy Croft. Being both groundhoppers and St Pauli fans they saw this as a trip to watch their team play at Allemannia Aachen’s new ground, and build a footballing weekend around it. The plan was to do 4 games in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and France over 3 days. With Chris Berezai aboard, it all looked rather good on paper…. Trouble is the weather intervened!!!

The first game was to be Go Ahead Eagles, in Deventer, Netherlands. The Slaapfabrik hotel (literally Sleepfactory) in nearby Teuge, was booked, and we took the Eurotunnel shuttle on Friday morning. By them, we’d lost Go Ahead Eagles to a frozen pitch, but had replaced it with equally nearby Apeldoorn. Travelling up though France and Belgium we watched firstly the temperature drop, then it started to snow.. By Antwerp, the motorway was down to a slow trickle, and the windows in Lee’s car were freezing, on the inside. Apeldoorn soon was postponed, despite their artificial pitch, leaving the only realistic option being Herenveen, in the north of the country. After 2 and a half hours, of crawling traffic, and having seen far too much of the Eindhoven ring road, the decision was made to head for the hotel and find a meal.

4 exhausted hoppers, staggered into the hotel, and from that moment everything began to look up. The proprietor showed us to our rooms, each named after somewhere she’d visited ( I got Bora Bora), and we were impressed at both the size and specification. Just as importantly she phoned up a nearby restaurant, The Take Off, so we could have a meal. They’d closed the kitchen for the night, but agreed to reopen for us. With the village thermometer showing -12C we shuffled over to the restaurant, a converted airport terminal, to be met by our waiter.

“So lads, 4 pints and 4 steaks then?” Absolutely delicious and most welcome. Lee went for the Sea Bass, which he demolished nearly as quickly as I did my steak! We were walking back to the hotel when we spotted a little bar. Not much seemed to be going on but, purely for research purposes we decided to have a swift half. The welcome we got when they worked out that our itinerary wasn’t a joke, was as warm as it was cold outside.  What should have been a quick half turned into a hugely enjoyable evening and if it wasn’t for the early start on Saturday we’d have stayed until the small hours. The meat nibbles served up between drinks were also very popular!

The Slaapfabrik had one more treat for us. The continental breakfast served with the winter panorama was a beautiful and delicious end to our stay in Teuge.

The best bit of course is that since we’d seen no football, we get to go back!!!! Here’s a link for the hotel, they deserve it. http://www.deslaapfabriek.nl/