The
Day We Went to VaasaThe
Day We Went to VaasaThursday 6.00am - Alarm goes off. My head hurts. Alarm thrown against wall to shut it up.
7.00am - Alarm goes off. Apparently - I can't hear it due to the
thumping in my head.
8.00am - Waken up. Die. Stand up. Die again. Find Alka Seltzer.
Still feeling rough. So we head to the 11th floor and the pool passing a
rather sheepish looking tour rep on the way who says we can extend the
room till 6pm. This seems like a good idea. Have a game of dodge the
empties as the consumption of minibar contents on the 5th floor becomes
apparent.
8.05am - Jump into pool. Realise the Finns dont like to heat their
heated pool in summer. Think of standing naked at Cappielow in a blizzard
and you get an idea of the temperature of the water. Still it cures the
nausea. Decide to head for breakfast. So there I am in dark glasses and
sipping healthy fruit juice when who should appear but our pal the BBC
Cameraman. Anyone who's seen Friday Sportscenes coverage knows how I
looked when "interviewed". Suffice to say that Martin and Mark
obviously looked too healthy to be filmed and a certain beloved other half
of mine couldn't face being filmed. 
11.00am
- Decide to skip the city tour and head off for some souvenir shopping
working on the theory that fresh air will cure the head. Doesn't work but
we have the experience of walking into an InterSport store which
doesn't have a TFOD, TFOE, Man Utd top in the window. Actually it doesn't
have any tops. Buy a couple of non-football Vaasa souvenirs and head back
to the hotel.
12
noon- The sound of the pipes greets us when we leave the hotel and a
walk to the town square (the deserted sensible one of yesterday), sees the
small cafe having been taken over by Saints. Obviously this is only whilst
O'Malleys is tidying up last nights mess (it doesn't open till 2). Still
the boys are in good form and it's not long before the alien and a Saints
flag is raised up one of the many flagpoles.
Next up was the appearance of one of Vaasa's tramps to the chant of "Are
You Dundee in Disguise" - still we gave him some beer before one
of the Vaasa officials put him on his way. By this time a fair sized crowd
of locals had begun to gather and watch with bemused stares. Finnish TV
had a camera crew their filming the guys kilts and Gordon Bannerman was
taking photos some of which will no doubt feature in the PA this week.
As
in O'Malleys the previous night, the pipers were soon belting out all the
tunes (when they weren't getting their photos taken with Finnish kids) but
by far and away the best song was the en masse chant of "I'm
Horny, horny, horny, horny" at the charmingly dressed and rather
attractive local girls (and, whisper it, but there were a lot of them
about) who ventured into the cafe. The only problem was that she wouldn't
pose in a Saints top despite the Saintees saying that she didn't have to
remove anything first. Another highlight was the appearance of Judas
himself (right) complete with beard and aural appendages.
It also gave us a chance to raid the VPS ticket kiosk in the town square
which led to the gradual transformation of the Saints army into Vaasa fans
with scarves, badges, T-Shirts and tops starting to appear. Hell, I even
managed to get one of those ties that Geoff loved so much the night before
- wonder if it'll work on the wife in the same way. Hmmm...
2.00pm - 2 o'clock meant the reopening of O'Malleys and in what was to be a dress rehearsal for later on that day the pipers from Wednesday night led us down to O'Malleys to allow everyone to start to prepare for the game. Well there was only 4 hours left for us to get the singing voices properly in tune.
The
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