Alte Herren on Tour
25. & 26. Oktober 2008
Framlingham, England
Travelogue about 15 guys from Morbach who tried to conquer the island !
Early in the morning we started up
to Frankfurt/Hahn where a Ryanair-Plane should take us to London/Stansted.
Just under an hour we landed in England. The weather was really good.
Howard, Lindsay, Mark and Gavin from the AH Framlingham picked us up at the
airport and drove us with their cars to Framlingham.
The ride gave us the opportuniy to see the english country and some picturesque
villages. We were surprised about the quiet way of driving of the englishmen
although some of us found that driving on the left side of the road needs getting
acustomed to.
After about 90 minutes we arrived in Framglingham where most of us checked in
at the « Crown Hotel ».We were warmly welcomed and could recover
from our flight and with toast and bacon.
Then we went to see the sports
grounds where we were supposed to play football in the afternoon. It was a really
big place with 6 footballpitches, all lawns.
The five of us who couldn’t stay at the Hotel were taken to their Bed
& Breakfast called
„Boarded Barn“. It was leaded by a true english lady!
Everyone now had a free time until the beginning of the game. Some visited the
church and the amazing castle, others tasted the english beer at the Hotel-Bar.
At 14.30 we went to the sports grounds. The starting whistle was supposed to
be at 15.30.
Two main surprises happened:
- the first one was the fact that they played the german and the english anthems.
We were good singers J, we knew the lyrics well although one of us, we won’t
name him, only could remember the old lyrics.
- the second surprise was the way our english friends played football. They
were much better than we thaught and so we quickly realized that we had no real
chance to win this match.
They were fast and braught us into delicate situations. Although our team had
the first chance to score, the Framlingham guys were two goals ahead after 20
minutes.
Then we played cleverer and so Holger Lengert could score after a quick throw-in
from Stefan Marx.
But we were soon dashed in our hopes when Framlingham scored again. Bernd Uhl
then had the chance to score but the english goalkeeper had no problem keeping
the ball. So the half-time score remained 3:1.
After the break we retried to put Framlingham under pressure but we stayed unsuccessful.
We couldn’t hide our tiredness after 70 minutes….maybe the reason
of that was the beer in the hotelbar.
The home team seemed fitter, they played more aggressive and could even increase
their lead to 4:1. Only a few minutes before the final whistle, Hugo Bader,
after a good preparatory work from Stefan Wagner, shortened to 4:2.
After the shower we went to the local sports club where we were told to eat
and drink as much as we wanted. With Chili, baked potatoes, different salads
and bread we tried to fortify ourselves because we really wanted to win the
upcoming third half-time!
Different games and good music made the time passing by very quickly. The pub
« White Horse » in town was our next destination and so far we must
admit that the third half-time was well-balanced.
Thanks to our english buddies we didn’t have to spend much money, they
standed most of the rounds.
About midnight the group broke up. Some went to bed, others prefered to have
another drink at Gavin’s.
The next morning an awful rainy weather wakened us up. But fortunately the great
english breakfast made up for the rain : baked potatoes, tomatoes and mushrooms
, bacon, toast and eggs , orange and lemonjam, coffee, milk, tea and orangjuice….the
right food to cure a headache.
The cricketgame had to be cancelled because of the bad weather.
We drove to the sea and walked along the coast straight to the next pub „Red
Dragon“. They also served excellent beer and so we had a great time there
till our departure.
Howard, Richard and Tim drove us to the airport.
The customs officers were not too kind with us…they rummaged through our
luggage and seemed to have a lot of fun. After this we needed a beer!
We flew back home 20 minutes behind schedule. At Frankfurt/Hahn a bus from the
Family Nisius picked us up and drove us back to Morbach.
„Pottes“ was the place where we decided to go to comment about our
weekend in England.
Unfortunately noone knows the results of these discussions, because the writer
of this report was too tired and prefered going home.
Last but not least, we must say that our Ah-Team left a good impression in Framlingham
.
Here the names of the 15 brave men:
Jörg BERG, Andy KLASSEN, Eugen SCHUH, Tommy KLASSEN, Harald ROSNER, Harald
ANDRES, Patrick JUNG, Bernd MERTINI, Giga TETZLAFF, Hugo BADER, Bernd UHL, Schlax
MÜLLER, Holger LENGERT, Stefan WAGNER, Stefan MARX.
Our friends from the island were just perfect hosts and we ALL had a really
great time there. We will certainly visit them again!
(Report Bernd Uhl, Pictures Harald Rosner, Gavin Harold and Jörg
Berg)