Locker Room: Was here in this very station 26 years ago with best mate. Just for two hours in the middle of the night. It's still the same dark, cavernous dreamworld it was then. More shops and franchises, of course, but an old-fashioned railway station that needs steam and tooting whistles and sharp-eyed urchins to fill out its stage.
Hamburg Station
00:30 hrs: Saturday morning
Tonight the Italians have beaten the Ukrainians. Germany, at the latter stages of this World Cup, is a little like Germany immediately after the war. There are ragged armies wandering around just putting in time before they are airlifted home.
Tonight the Italians burst joyfully into the Stygian gloom of the station, filling its high roofs with song and celebration. They encounter, however, a knot of Australian supporters who (hang the libel!) appear to have been drinking. Italy bundled Australia out in the previous round.
The Aussies stand stout and proud and jab their fingers at the flabbergasted Italians.
There is sudden tension.
"You're shit! And you've got no kangaroos," sing the Aussies. "You're shit! And you've got no kangaroos."
This, barring an upset this week, makes Australia the winners of the witty chants cup, beating their other two entries, both of which were quality: "You're shit but your chicks are hot", sung to the bemused Croatians, and "Three-One. Even Aloisi scored. Three-One. Even Aloisi Scored", sung after the first-round match to the Japanese, who smiled politely and bowed. The judging panel notes, however, that all Australian chants have the same air. Some work needed.
The Italians wouldn't think so. They head for their trains with a new song in their hearts: "We're sheet and got no kangaroos, we're sheet and got no kangaroos." Don't know about you, Brian Kennedy, but I'm already thinking Eurovision.
Bottom of the chants table are the fans involved in a devastatingly witless encounter in Cologne last week. A bunch of young Germans, working, it should be said, in a language not their own and in a métier not their own (namely humour), spotted a group of English fans. With eerie prescience and cavalier grammar, the Germans began singing, "It's going home. It's going home. England's going home."
There was a pause. Whistler waiting for Wilde. Parker clearing her throat at the Algonquin. The English fans put down their Babychams and, improvising now, began choreographing their response with some manic upward jabbing of the middle finger on either hand. "F*** off," they sang. "F*** Off. F*** Off. F*** Off." And they sang and they sang and they sang.
Hanover Station
07:15 hrs: Saturday morning
We're on the train. We're on the train. We're on the, etc, etc, etc.
At this hour of the morning you get only Germans, journalists and English fans who are afraid of other English fans on the trains. From about 10 o'clock on everything to Gelsenkirchen is booked.
On this train it's mainly parents with kids. The chisellers, you can tell, have been up super early so their mam can paint the George's Cross on their cheeks and pack their sandwiches and tell them to be nice to Daddy when he wakes up because this is his big day and it will be a long day and maybe a bad day.
The train chugs out of Hanover and off towards Bochum, where we will all change in two hours (trains, not our clothes), and the English tribe, recognisable to each other by their war paint, begin talking to each other.
There is an amusing dynamic at work here. The English, while expecting every German will understand English and respond in English when addressed, imagines fondly the German politely switches off his or her English-language receptor when being spoken about and therefore is incapable of hearing the loud talk being bandied around about Germans - or as they are this morning because the train was late, thus imperilling our connection at Bochum, bloody Krauts.
"One fing you expect when you come 'ere is that the bloody Krauts will make the trains run on time."
"Bring back ole 'Itler! He got 'em working, aye!"
"We put the car in a car park that shuts at midnight. If it's late back tonight we'll have to get a cab. That's not good enough."
"Better than leaving it on the street, love. They'd tear it apart they would. Tear it apart if they knew it was English."
"That's why we didn't bring the good car. Left the good one at home."
So we rattle on through the German morning. There's a couple of Geordies in single seats who join the conversation now. They've been doing the Fan Fest circuit in each town and pronounce it "reet good".
Everyone is either chatting or listening in and the humour is light. The natural focus in the carriage is on a couple with three small kids, all of whom look adorable and cute in their little England kits.
"Had to bring them early," says their dad, nodding at his little brood, "too much crushing if you go late."
"Eee, there'll be crushing at Fan Fest man," says one of the Geordies, concerned, because the Fan Fests are really just massive outdoor pubs.
"We're all right there," says the dad, "we have seats at the ground."
"Oh aye," says the Geordie, and there is a long pause and everyone, I presume, is thinking the same thought and wondering if the Geordie will be able to resist expressing it. He can't.
"Do yee mind telling me," says the Geordie, voice almost trembling with anger, "'Ow the fook yoo can get tickets for selves and little uns, five fooking tickets, and me ganna footba all me leaf an' ah cannae get a single ticket? Would yee mind like? Young uns at footba?"
Every ear is craned. Well? "Through John's work," says Mum helpfully. "John gets lots of tickets in his work."
We roll on in silence, the comradeship of the carriage shattered.
Gelsenkirchen Station
21:09 hrs: Saturday night
The English are so afraid that the English are going to raze Gelsenkirchen that the English are fleeing Gelsenkirchen as quickly as they can. On Platform 10, the crowd is so thick (in the sense of populousness) that if the train bringing us to Dortmund (where we will connect for all other parts of Germany) doesn't come soon we'll all be pushed out on to the tracks and perhaps into the path of the oncoming train which is express, says the loudspeaker, to Munster.
Even as it is, it's tempting just to get on board and go to Munster.
Finally, two trains for Dortmund pull in one after the other. The young, the brave and those genetically configured not to require oxygen squeeze on to the first train. Nobody wants to be in Gelsenkirchen when it is razed. As the first train pulls out, those of us remaining on the platform notice that, bizarrely, the sole first-class carriage, the very rear wagon of the train, is completely empty while all the preceding carriages form one long tableau of grotesquely compressed faces and twisted limbs.
"Our successful penalty-kick-takers travel in style," says a Scouser looking at the empty carriage in bemusement.
Dortmund Station
21:29 hrs: Saturday night
We have maybe three seconds to spare as we squeeze on the ICE 1141 to Hanover and Berlin, and make our way to Wagen 27, Sitzplatz 22, there to rest our weary bottom.
Cutting through Wagen 26, we are suddenly immersed in the surreal. Sitting there all tanned and serene-looking are Ian Wright, Alan Shearer, Alan Hansen, Gary Lineker, Ray Stubbs and our friend the excellent Mr Mark Lawro. There may be other luminaries in Wagen 26, but we are too star-struck to notice. We stop for a brief word with Lawro and shuffle on to Wagen 27, Sitzplatz 22.
We notice that there are bottles of Mateus Rosé, Portuguese wine, being brandished. We are at once jealous and impressed. Nice touch, drinking Portuguese red on such a day.
The world of Wagen 27, when we reach it, is agog.
"Ohmigod," people are saying, "did you see them? Did you see who was in there?"
"Yeah."
"Call your bruvver. Go on. I'll get the shirt signed while you call him."
So one Wagen 27 occupant vanishes back into the celeb zone of Wagen 26 and the other begins dialling.
"Guess what? Guess who's onthe train? Only facking Ian Wright. In the facking next carriage. Facking Wrightie."
Missing occupant returns with Wrightie's signature all over the front of his England shirt. Pointing triumphantly at Wrightie's John Hancock.
"And guess what. Bill's only got 'im to sign your England shirt. Yeah. Yeah. He's facking wearing it. And it's got Wrightie's name on it. Big! Gooners! Gooners! Hello? Hello? He facking hung up didn't he. He hates him. He facking hates Wrightie. Will I call him again?"
"Nah, leave it," says Bill. "He's a Tottenham twat, your bruvver. We'll get this in a frame when we go home. He's got the rest of his life!"
And we're all chuckling away, Germans, English and Portuguese, chugging on through the World Cup.
