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My favourite European away games: #1

Metalist Kharkiv vs Everton. Thursday 4 October 2007 — a 3-night stay.

You may wonder why a trip to Northeastern Ukraine would feature as my favourite number one European away game. Quite simply, it was a trip that me and Dave, who I went with, will probably never experience again. We had to overcome one of two obstacles along the way but I sometimes feel this is what makes a European away game. It was, to put it mildly, a trip into the unknown. As this trip was over 13 years ago, some of the memories are a bit blurred!!

Kharkiv is the second-largest city in Ukraine, though when the draw was made, it was a place I, and probably most others had never heard of. There were no direct flights to Kharkiv, unless you went on the club's official day trip. As I say, I went with Dave, who managed to book flights and accommodation. Dave had "air miles" which he used for the pair of us; this helped bring the flight costs down.

Dave picked me up on the Wednesday morning and we drove to Manchester Airport. We were booked on a flight to Heathrow, then a flight to Kiev, where we were to spend Wednesday night, before catching a flight to Kharkiv on Thursday morning. We arrived at Manchester Airport and, for some unknown reason, we checked our hand luggage in. As we only had a sports bag each, it did seem pointless.

For anyone that doesn't know, when you have a connecting flight to catch, your luggage is automatically loaded onto your connecting flight... so, in effect, you only see your luggage again when you have to clear customs in whatever country you are travelling to. As our flight to Kharkiv was an internal flight, we needed to collect our bags in Kiev!

Our flight to Heathrow boarded on time but, whilst waiting to taxi away, we were informed by the captain of a slight delay. Had we left on time, if I remember, we had about 2 hours to wait at Heathrow before our flight to Kiev. The delay was about 40-45 minutes, plus with the flight to Heathrow, around 40 minutes, it looked like we would miss our connecting flight.

The captain even came on and announced over the radio that we had indeed been checked off our flight to Kiev. We eventually left Manchester and the flight to Heathrow was just over 30 minutes. After taxiing to the terminal, we reckon we had at least 20 minutes or so to get to the gate and hopefully check ourselves back in.

We got to the gate and amazingly we were able to check back onto the flight to Kiev, with barely minutes to spare. This flight, late morning, left on time to kiev. Happy days!! The flight to Kiev is around 3 hours so, with the time difference, I think we were due in Kiev about 4pm local time.

We landed, cleared passport control and made our way to collect our bags. We waited, and waited, and waited, until we came to the conclusion our bags were missing. It never crossed our minds for one minute that when we were "checked off" the flight to Kiev, so were our bags. Our bags were still at Heathrow!!!

As it turned out, there were about 10-12 other blues who had also been on our flghts, and all were in the same predicament. We all had to go to lost baggage to give all the necessary details, including where we were staying in Kharkiv. Then we were informed it could be two days before our bags arrived. You getting the picture yet?

After all this, we shared taxis to Kiev centre. Me and Dave found our hotel, checked in and went out. There was a bar right outside the hotel, where a few blues, including Jon, had already set up. However, no-one, except me and Dave, were flying up to Kharkiv. they were all, including Jon and some of his other mates, getting a train at midnight which took about 12 hours. After they had finally all left, me and Dave grabbed something to eat and had a couple more in the hotel bar before hitting the sack, as we had to be up early the following morning.

Thursday morning and, after some of the worst food at breakfast you are likely to encounter, we jumped a taxi to the airport — still in the same underwear that was now over 24 hours old!! It was a good job it was only a change of clothes and toiletries in our bags; everything else — money, match tickets, hotel confirmation vouchers etc — we had on us.

We checked in at Kiev airport and made our way to the departure gate. For any aviation experts out there, our plane was an Antonov An-24. An aircraft built in Ukraine and with a history of crashing!! This thing was a wreck. The armrests were broken, condensation was pouring through the windows, and the engines, twin-turbo propellers, were so loud you couldn't hear yourself think — and they looked like they were going to fall off!

The flight to Kharkiv was about an hour, the approach to landing was horrendous, and I've never been so relieved to get off a plane, and we had to get this thing back to Kiev! Luggage was taken off the plane and dumped next to it. Everyone on the plane then headed to a gate, bit like your back garden gate, and out of the airport! Unbelievable.

We jumped a taxi, showing the driver our hotel voucher with the name and address, and headed off. We arrived at the hotel and checked in. After checking in, we were then informed that there was no running water in the hotel for two days, due to some problems. We were provided with bottled water to brush our teeth, but we had no toothbrush or toothpaste which was still back in Heathrow!! You getting the picture about the underwear now?

We found a chemist and bought a toothbrush and paste. After a scrub of the mouth, it was time for food. We found somewhere which looked okay... but the difficulty was in understanding the menu, because we couldn't!

The next bit was like a scene from a comic strip, two Scousers, moving our hands, waving it in a fish motion, or holding our thumbs up against the side of our head, making a noise like a cow. We wanted either fish or steak! Unbelievably our actions worked and we had a nice piece of steak.

The square in Kharkiv was huge, and I mean huge. There was a concert by Queen (Minus Freddie obviously) there a year later and over 35,000 were in attendance (I Googled that bit). To one side was a park which had beer tents set up. This is where we had our pre-match pint. Bottled lager, must have been over a pint at least, cost 30p. Everything was dirt cheap, you couldn't spend your money!

I can't remember what time the game kicked off... might have been 8pm local time, but we gave ourselves plenty of time to get to the underground to take us to the stadium. A young Ukrainian couple very kindly tried to explain that we needed a token for the underground and showed us where to obtain one. I think they cost about 5p!! It was only two of three stops to the stadium, but we still had around 90 minutes before kick-off.

I'm sure somebody had said in the lead-up to this game, this was either their first home game in Europe, or no away fans had ever been seen at Metalist Kharkiv. I had an Everton top on (my clean one was still in Heathrow), so some local fans were very intrigued in us, to say the least, and wanted loads of photo's taken with them.

After the game, a brilliant 3-2 win, and 4-3 on aggregate, we decided to play safe and jump the underground straight back to our hotel. Didn't really fancy wandering off and getting lost! We arrived back at the hotel around 11:30 pm and grabbed a pint. At midnight, they stopped serving lager, and served vodka only. Okay — a few vodkas and coke it was!!

To this day, I don't know why we stayed on the Friday. By now, our undies and socks were walking on their own. We had a good look around Kharkiv (one of Dave's walking tours), before heading for something to eat. Later in the afternoon, we headed back to the park, and the beer tents. The lads who made the journey out with us were also there, and were also staying in the same hotel. We sat with them for a few drinks.

Around 6 or 7 pm, one of them headed back to the hotel to see if our bags had arrived? They had!! We went back to change and threw the minging underwear in the bin. Still couldn't get a wash or shower though.

After a couple more pints, we called it a day. Me and Dave were up at about 5 am Saturday morning to get a taxi to the airport. Unbelievably, around 3 am, this noise started coming from the radiators, knocking and thudding. The water had been turned back on!! I waited a while before getting a shower, however, the water was freezing cold and wasn't very powerful, but what the fuck, a wash was a wash. I met Dave downstairs and we got our taxi to the airport.

We got to the airport... and it was shut. Seriously, the doors were like the doors to the entrance at Liverpool Cathedral. Some security officer, wearing one of those mad ski jump caps, you know the ones, where the brim is about 12 inches long and points to the sky, opened the doors and showed us to the check-in desk.

After checking in, there he was again, at the security X-Ray machines to scan our bags. After clearing that, he showed us where to wait. By now, three other Blues had joined us. After a while, our man said to me, "Come this way, please". We went into this room and he asked to see my departure card and passport.

"You in big trouble," he said.

"Why?" I replied.

"You not put name of hotel where you stay, give me present and we'll forget about it."

"Fuck Off!" I shouted at him, grabbing my bag and stormed out. A few minutes later, I heard "Fuck Off!", and out came Dave. Three more "Fuck Off!"s were heard from the other Blues.

I don't think Kharkiv airport was particularly bothered about security. Whilst sitting in the departure lounge, we could see our plane, when the next minute some woman strolled past it walking a dog. A few minutes later, some bloke cycled past it. Unreal.

We boarded that wreck of a plane back to Kiev, relieved to land again. The only problem now was, we had about 8 hours before our flight back to Heathrow. We jumped a taxi to Kiev centre for a look around, not realising I'd be doing a proper walking tour of Kiev a few years later!!

We finally headed back to the airport, and boarded our flight to Heathrow. Our flight back to Manchester was around 8 pm Saturday evening, and we were accompanied by Phil Thompson who was flying home after doing the Sky Soccer Saturday programme.

We landed at Manchester and made our way to Dave's car. Job done, mission accomplished, we had conquered the far North-Eastern country of Ukraine! Dave dropped me home about 10:30 pm. Totally knackered, I went to bed for a few hours kip, because the next day, we were playing Newcastle away, and I was driving up!!

The joys of being an Evertonian eh, but fuck me, we love the club and couldn't do without them!!

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