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Kathmandu
Michael Greenwell is a Celtic supporter who travels all over the world for fun and he even manages to catch the Hoops in some of the most unlikely places. Read on to hear about just one of his tales..........
What would you do if you were in a country on the other side of the world where there is a civil war, a general strike and an army curfew? You could do what we did – which was this – bribe a bar, have a lock-in and then crawl back to your hotel under cover of darkness after having watched the Celtic game.
I had been doing volunteer work in Nepal and for a month I didn’t know what was going on with the Celts at all. We were in a village that was three hours through the jungle to the nearest phone never mind satellite TV. Now, whilst it was a brilliant experience in the village, I got back to Kathmandu (the capital of Nepal) and I was suffering from Celtic cold turkey. I checked the Internet to see how we had been getting on and I noticed that the Celtic V Bayern match was going to be on ESPN Asia.
All well and good you might think but the trouble is that they are having a civil war at the moment (I would say they are knocking seven colours of shit out of each other but actually, due to guardia, amoebas, worms and many types of intestinal nastiness there are considerably more than 7 colours of shit in Nepal) and this would make it difficult. The Maoists/Communists (who are fighting the army) had called for a general strike for three days and this was to begin the next morning. Because of this strike the Royal Nepal Army had called a curfew for 9pm on the night of the game, which they promised was going to be “rigorously enforced” (kick-off was half past midnight Nepali time – for some strange reason the time difference is 4hrs 45 mins). This provided us with a problem. EVERYTHING was to be closed and EVERYONE had to be in his or her house or hotel before 9pm. We could either pay a fortune for a hotel room with satellite TV and we couldn’t afford to do this or we could bribe a bar owner to let us stay in the bar and put us all at risk. After about two seconds consideration we decided the second idea was the way forward as the only other option was to miss the match and that, was not an option.
 The bartender made it extremely clear to me that I would have to be incredibly quiet, sit with the lights out and that I would have to be responsible for my mates doing the same thing because he didn’t want either the army or the Maoists turning up and shooting him or closing him down (we didn’t particularly want this to happen to us or him either).
The difficult part of that was that the game didn’t kick off till 00.30am and we had all been in the pub since three in the afternoon – and we would be in there in darkness getting pissed and trying to be quiet – I didn’t rate our chances.
So after dinner the 5 of us had to get round into the bar before 9pm. Walking/running down the street we randomly bump into a guy wearing an Ireland strip (1994 world cup style) and we asked him if he fancied watching it – “Fecking Excellent” he shouts (not really “fecking” but you know what I mean) so he came along with us too.
Somewhere down the line a guy from Manchester who looked suspiciously like Mani from the Stone Roses had joined us as well but none of us can remember how he managed to tag along (he wasn’t Mani –we forced his wallet off him to check then gave it back).
Regrettably, we weren’t all tims. The guy from Manchester was a Man Utd fan, one guy was a Ross County fan and two of the six were actually hearts fans (but supporting the Celts for the European night) but 3 out of 7 people when you are that far away isn’t that bad.
Anyway, by the time kick off came round we were all pretty hammered and had been warned to shut up a few times by the guys at the bar who were playing cards by candlelight and doing their best to ignore us. They had heard of Celtic but didn’t know any players so we gave them their first lesson about Henrik – I can’t say they were totally engrossed but they listened politely and gave him the necessary respect!
After the match started it was 10 times harder to keep quiet. A couple of patrols went by outside too – the bar had a guy watching the street ready to turn the TV down or off if the army or the Maoists suddenly got a bit interested in what was going on.
First half came and went – to be honest it’s a bit of a blur in my memory now after the all day drinking session we had had. Second half starts, Thommo scores and we all go absolutely nuts. Far too nuts in fact. The bar guys were sh*tting themselves that we had raised the whole neighbourhood. After settling down we kept VERY VERY quiet for about 10 minutes then started to breathe a bit easier just as Munich scored.
After they scored their second goal we didn’t really have time to be depressed as the thought of getting back to the hotel safely was enough to occupy our minds for the moment. The bar had originally said we could sleep there till the curfew ended at 5am – it was now about 2.45am – but because we had made so much noise and fuss they decided that they were prepared to “let” us go sooner.
My hotel was the nearest so we all decided to go back there (except the Manchester guy – but I will come to that). This meant getting out the back door and crawling round to the hotel. To be totally honest, I don’t think we were capable of doing much more than crawling at this point anyway.
We had to ring the bell of the hotel for ages before anyone came to let us in but eventually we made it. We hadn’t won but we hadn’t been arrested or killed either and at least we had played well enough.
However, the Man Utd fan had went off on his own and the police had heard the commotion we were causing trying to get into the hotel a few minutes before. They assumed it was him and before long he had a gun in his back and was being pleasantly escorted/carried/forced/kicked back to his hotel at gunpoint – he was lucky it wasn’t worse.
I met him the next day and he told me all this (and thanked me for it). The next day a couple of restaurants were open in defiance of the strike and one of them was showing the full match, which they had recorded the previous night. I didn’t know they were going to do this but I think that even if I had known it wouldn’t have made the slightest bit of difference – we would have watched it live anyway
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