Match Day. Balls, buses and booze.
After almost two weeks in Kazakhstan, match day has finally arrived. Despite having decided we would never again drink in a Hilton Hotel, within a few hours, we were drinking in a Hilton Hotel. The very one that caused us consternation the night before, getting poorly served by the same staff.
Today the staff have an excuse for being incredibly slow: the place is packed with hundreds of Wales fans. We order cocktails (Cocktail Thursday 2-4-1, hence our decision to drink there again) but by the time the first one arrived, I’d gone to the cafe area next to reception and got us two rounds of bottled beers. In fairness, taking the top off a bottle is a lot easier than making a cocktail, but Gordon Bennett, they are slow.
When the drinks arrive my Long Island Ice Tea seems to be missing an ingredient. I don’t mind, because they have gone light on the Coca-Cola and heavy on the spirits. And dispite Posh making it very clear she didn’t want ice, hers contains ice. She scoops it out.
Posh is being fussy about ice because she doesn’t know how it was made. ‘You just freeze water’, I hear you cry. Yes, obviously. But where did the water come from? In a country where you can’t drink the tap water, you can’t be sure that you’re not accidentally drinking tap water.
Fun Fact: Back in the days before taps, water pipes and ice machines etc, drinking water was a risky business. To kill off the germs in river water, people used to ferment the water, so the alcohol would kill off all the germs. It turns out that fermented water can be fun. And that’s how beer was invented.
At first it was chaotic, everyone was brewing their own beer at the same time. Then they came up with a system whereby when your beer was ready you would put a flag outside your house and people could come and buy your beer. Some people were better than others at making beer, so some gave up trying and some made a living out of it, and permanently had a flag outside their house. And that’s how public houses (pubs) were invented .
Some people would be so drunk coming out of the pub they couldn’t find their way home, so people would rent them space on a peice of rope they could hang themselves over for the night. And that’s how hangovers were invented.
Actually, that’s three fun facts for the price of one. The Hilton had promised two cocktails for the price of one. It came as no surprise to find we were lucky to get one for the price of one.
Apparently Tank was outraged by yesterday’s blog and was shamed into going out and buying his own cigarettes. He was shocked to have to pay £1.30 a pack, he didn’t realise they had gone up that much since he last bought some. He will have a bigger shock when he gets home.
As the clock did what clocks have a tendency to do, we were soon getting close to the time the free buses would be leaving the city centre for the stadium. We decide that we need some tactical solids, so booked a SpandexGo to get us to the pick up point, then nipped over to our favourite cheap restaurant, which I think might be called Kitchen.
We munch our way through an incredibly tasty curry and are set to go. One of the gang wants to get a taxi. We explain to her we have already done that bit and the buses are just over the road. I won’t say who it was, to avoid embarrassing Posh.
There’s a fleet of service busss lined up waiting, already overflowing with Wales fans. I think the legal limit is being waived for the day. We are soon on our way to the stadium with a policesky escortsky.
Full of cheer, hope and beer, the Red Wall stream off the buses and walk towards the stadium. A local tv crew are looking for fans to interview. Chris Raabianski volunteers gladly, but falls at the second hurdle when asked to predict who is going to score for Wales. He’s not sure who is in the starting line-up. Wales Away is a bit like Glastonbury. You know you want to go and buy your ticket long before they announce who is playing. It’s almost irrelevant, you just go. It’s only when the starting whistle is blown you get excited about who is playing and question who has been left out.
The Astana Arena, like most of Astana, is fairly new. It opened in 2009 at a cost of £140 million. It is the home of the national football team and club teams FC Astana and FC Bayetrek. It has a capacity of 30,000 and has an eye-catching design, although bizarrely it has outside toilets. Festival style portable toilets no less. Why toilets were not thought of when designing a state-of-the-art stadium is a mystery.
The concourse under the stand is sleek and modern, a world away from the traditional minimalist, industrial barn feel of many stadiums. There is no bar, but we had been warned of this. There are pleasant locals handing out free iced tea though.
The stadium has a roof, but tonight the roof is open. Presumably because God wants to watch Wales tonight.
We head up to the seating area and find that our allocated seats have a cracking view and because we are near the front we can watch the game sat down if we want, without worrying about people in front of us standing up. Then just before kick off, a copper stands infront of me. I have to stand to watch the game.
I say it’s a copper. I’m not sure what he is. Loads of people wear important looking uniforms. The staff on the Metro in Almaty looked like they were part of the revolutionary guard. In the stadium there are two uniforms on display. Bored looking young lads in ill-fitting, possibly second hand, blue uniforms. They spend the entire game watching the crowd. I’m guessing they are stewards. There’s also loads of fit looking guys in camouflage gear. They spend the entire time watching the football and ignoring the crowd. I’m assuming they are coppers, but they look more like army. I would have thought an important part of a police uniform is that people know you are there. Which is why, in crowd control situations, UK plod wear hi-vis. Why camouflage is considered appropriate is beyond me.
Kazakhstan spans two different continents. When it became independent in 1991, the football team joined the Asian Football Federation. In 2002 they swapped and joined UEFA. They are currently ranked 115 in the world and have yet to qualify for a World Cup. The majority of the squad play for teams based in Kazakhstan.
There’s no meaningful segregation between home and away fans and many fans have selfies taken together and exchange badges, scarves etc. Although when the game kicks off the home fans boo when Wales have possession. They continue to be noisy and passionate throughout the game whilst the Red Wall are uncharacteristically quiet. Perhaps it’s jet lag, or maybe the lack of beer.
It’s a scrappy game. Neither side really make a mark. Looking at the stats Wales dominated the game in terms of possession and shots, but it didn’t feel like that watching.
Kieffer Moore broke the deadlock with a goal for Wales in the 25th minute, but it was a tense hour or so following that. The game could have gone either way right up until the final whistle. All around the away end I could see people saying ‘three points are three points’, whilst breathing a sigh of relief.
We are held back for a while for the home fans to clear, but there’s no tension in the air. The Kazakhs are all friendly and the Red Wall is displaying the spirit that has literally won them awards for good sportsmanship and friendliness.
Once again we are stuffed sardine-like into rammed, but efficient busses back to the city centre.
Shortly after being deposited by the big tower thing, we finally find a bar that resembles a pub. It’s a craft beer pub and I think it’s probably Russian rather than Kazakh. And low and behold, they have cans of mead, just like our Russian bar in Almaty.
Over the next few hours loads of old faces come and go, and the locals all want selfies. A musical duo gets up on stage and starts playing Oasis, Coldplay, The Stones and other classics. I ask a local lad if there are any venues in town where bands play original music. He tells me “Here! Great isn’t it?”. I’m reminded of the film Yesterday, where a guy becomes famous for playing Beatles covers because a freak incident meant he was the only person in the world that had heard the Beatles before.
After one drink Megan announces she wants to go home. After two drinks she agrees to stay for one more. After five drinks I have to drag her, still dancing & singing, out of the pub and push her into our Spandex Taxi, whilst I still have enough battery left on my phone to order a taxi.
Back at our hotel we decide to have one last night cap – which turns into three. The bar is littered with lads from Bala. They are, I think, the drunkest people I have seen standing for a long time. They are, to a man, bladdered. But they still manage to get to the bar and come back with most of their drink still in their glass. I’m amazed the bar staff still serve them, but they do. Their strong North Wales accent, combined with their drunkeness, means conversation is laborious, but entertaining. Slowly their number grows, as they wander back from the city like homing drunks.
They don’t have a sober ‘drunk whisperer’ with them, so we have to help them pay for taxis, press buttons to call a lift, and find their phones.
Eventually we head back to our room, exhausted, but happy. And we still have another four days to go.