The taxi, the train, the bus and the beumb

Locker Room: World Cup: A Tragedy in Three Parts 1. By Munich Hauptbahnhof I sat down and wept. Well, not quite. Knowing that you are fed up already of football, we will talk instead about something more interesting. The plight of the journalist. We will use as our example, oh, let's say . . . this journalist. He is sitting in Nuremberg right now but his trials began elsewhere. We will take them in reverse sequence, starting with this morning.

It is early. We have just checked out of the hotel and canted all our luggage into a taxi which brought us to the station. Now, when this column was young and virile he went to these tournaments toting a massive shoulderbag. Into this he would pour all his worldly possessions and then some stuff he didn't need. He would sit on the bag and zip it up. Then he would hoist it upon his shoulder and lug it about for a month.

That was then. Now he is an old person and he pulls along a dainty suitcase which is mounted on wheels. The suitcase weighs a mere three tons and on top of it sits a bag for a laptop and other sundries. This weighs just a ton and a quarter.

These are loaded into the taxi, and early in the morning at the station they are unloaded by the hefty and helpful driver. We proceed to Platform Nine to catch the high-speed Ice Train to Nuremberg for the heap-big Mexico-versus-Iran clash (in which we have a personal interest, our godson Tomás being half from Chiapas and half from Kilkenny).

Anyway, at the gate to the platform we reach for our ticket in the laptop bag - and suddenly the heavens are rent by an anguished howl. The taxi driver has placed his own black bag on top of the wheelie bag. Instead of carrying a bag with a computer, a tape recorder, an iPod, a small camera, two mobiles, a passport, batteries, binoculars, some cash, rail tickets, hotel vouchers and a book of football statistics, we are carrying a taxi driver's ham sandwich and apple.

This will be tough to explain to the office.

You are reading this only because the rank at Munich railway station was slow yesterday. We sprinted with our wheelie case and taxi driver's lunch and ran along the rank manfully weeping until we found our man. This is a side of the World Cup nobody sees.

Take what happened the night before . . .

2: A Beumb near Uhm.

We were on the train back from Frankfurt to Munich. Our travelling-time to football-watching time for Saturday was coming in at about 5 to 1, not including the two hours devoted to the German national sport of queuing. Then the Ice Train stopped in the middle of nowhere. ICE stands for InterCity Express. Stopping in the middle of nowhere isn't part of the job description.

After a while there came an announcement which unlike all previous announcements was made only in German. We all looked at each other blankly. Finally, an English fan, who despite having imbibed with thirsty curiosity of the local brews still retained a keen and inquiring mind, spoke.

"What the fack was that?" he asked loudly.

A German voice spoke up. "They have found a beumb. Near Uhm. It is a beumb of the second Vorld Var. Ve must go back."

Two thoughts occur. First: it is wrong to mock people's accents in print, but the German insistence on mixing up V and W is irresistible. Especially when they ask if you have a reserwation.

Second: did he say a beumb? Near Uhm? How ceuhm? All this time and a second World War bomb has sat there until now when we need to get back to Munich sometime before midnight. We need to be asleep in our reum.

It is long after midnight when we return. So long after midnight that it would be easier to stay in the station and get the Nuremberg train in a few hours and avoid the taxi driver and the lunch mix-up entirely. This would mean abandoning the suitcase on wheels entirely, but that's what it's coming to. It's been this way since Day One and the incident of . . .

3: The Shuttle that Fought Back.

This is the most poorly organised World Cup ever. The German reputation for efficiency is based really on a passion for inflexibility. Take the incident of the Opening Match Shuttle.

We will set the scene. The media centre in Munich is many miles from the stadium. There is a Media Shuttle, however, which will zoom hacks hither and tither in the blinking of an eye. It is three-and-a-half hours before kick-off when we head out to the media shuttle. The sun is beating down mercilessly and we have just filed a lot of gunk/copy to the mercilessly beaming sports editor.

The shuttle is an hour late. We are all sweaty and in no mood for intimacy as we are shoehorned on board. There is no air-conditioning. The South Korean journalist behind me seems to be performing an act on me which is illegal in many US states but, hey, this is the World Cup.

Surprisingly, unlike at every other sports event ever, the Germans have decided against dedicated bus lanes for official buses. We head out into the Friday evening Munich traffic. We move slowly. The sun beats down. We overheat. The South Korean proposes to make an honest man of me, but now an Australian seems to have taken up where he left off.

Finally we are crawling around the stadium. The driver, who probably volunteered in a moment of civic-mindedness, has had enough of this mullarkey. On the edge of the autobahn he opens the doors and urges us to get out and join the fans. We ask where the media entrance is. He points to a distant spot. Yonder. Far away.

We pile out. We realise quickly we have just joined 10,000 fans at a locked gate. The bus has inched forward, but we turn as one and charge it, opening the emergency doors and piling on. The driver refuses to move. We refuse to move. There is much shouting. There is still no air-conditioning. There's a Croat behind me who whispers about making me his bitch.

After a few minutes, like a head teacher bursting into the fun a free class are having, a female police officer comes on board. She has a gun. We are afraid. Very afraid. Having said that, she keeps the gun in its holster. We are just a scaredy-cat sort of profession.

She tells us all to get off the bus. There is a great chorus, all parts of which blame the bus driver. We all jabber at once and point yonder, where lies the media entrance. We need to be on the other side of that media entrance 90 minutes before the game begins because that is when they give out the tickets we applied for six months ago.

Exasperated, the police officer instructs the driver to drive. He does so reluctantly, dumping us out several hundred yards short of the stop. You have never seen ugliness till you have seen a busload of irate hacks with their gear racing each other to get to the media ticket desk in time.

We arrive 10 minutes late. The young man at the desk is not entertaining us. All our names will go into the waiting list draw with the several hundred wasters who turned up on the day hoping to mooch a media ticket.

"Hey," he says to the shouting, seething mass of hacks, "it's chaos out there but that's World Cup. The rule is 90 minutes. I am sorry, but we have the rule and if we don't have the rule it will be chaos in here too."

Suddenly we see how a people's love of order can drive them to inhuman lengths. We are a proud profession, though, and we begin to blubber en masse. It works.

Hey. Footballers play their way into this thing. Hacks just burn out in a blaze of ignominy. That's World Cup!