Bluedell 5,329 Posted February 10, 2015 Author Share Posted February 10, 2015 Around 2000/2001, there were a number of members who were dropping away from our club due to being mucked around with many away midweek games and many Sunday 6pm kick-offs, and some other reasons that I'll not bore you with. I had left the club a few months before. Anyway, we had an approach from someone new who wanted to join, and he met up with the secretary of the club and was told he could come along at the weekend for the trip up to Aberdeen. Our bus always left from Ibrox. This guy turned up and got on the bus at the back of the Govan Stand and found out he was the only person to turn up. I have always found the thought of this poor guy travelling up to Aberdeen on a Parks 53 seater bus on his own to be cruelly amusing. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
26th of foot 5,827 Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 Around 2000/2001, there were a number of members who were dropping away from our club due to being mucked around with many away midweek games and many Sunday 6pm kick-offs, and some other reasons that I'll not bore you with. I had left the club a few months before. Anyway, we had an approach from someone new who wanted to join, and he met up with the secretary of the club and was told he could come along at the weekend for the trip up to Aberdeen. Our bus always left from Ibrox. This guy turned up and got on the bus at the back of the Govan Stand and found out he was the only person to turn up. I have always found the thought of this poor guy travelling up to Aberdeen on a Parks 53 seater bus on his own to be cruelly amusing. Sandy Easdale joined your RSC? 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
the gunslinger 3,366 Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 (edited) We left for an early kick off in Aberdeen at about 5 in the morning. About an he into the trip one of the lads turns to the two young lassies on the bus and totally dead pan says. You two have got a hr to get your make up on before the sun comes up or your off the bus. Edited February 10, 2015 by the gunslinger 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnMc 2,463 Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 I used to work with a member of a fairly well known Glasgow based supporter's club, who from what I could see seemed to be a front for organised shop-lifting. Every second monday we were offered all sorts of unlikely apparel and fancy goods as the department stores of provincial Scotland were visited. Trips to Europe were a big deal as serious money could be made. Rangers drew Dynamo Kiev, then in the Soviet Union and pre Glasnost. Somehow about 12 of them got visas and went to the future Ukrainian capital on a shoplifting spree with a football match thrown in. I had visions of them pushing babushkas to one side in the queue for cabbage in the local GUM store but no, in a state with no official crime they were in their element. They encountered some issues at Glasgow Airport though as each of them was wearing a genuine ladies Russian sable fur coat with matching hat, all claiming it was their own and they'd worn them on the way out. The sight of a tall, overweight, middle-aged Glaswegian man wearing a size 10, £4,000 ladies fur coat over his Rangers top was no doubt one of the more peculiar sites that day at the airport. A few years later Rangers drew Stuea Bucharest and they moved heaven and earth to arrange another potentially lucrative trip beyond the Iron Curtain. However this time on their arrival they were prevented from leaving their hotel by armed police and each person on the trip found they were followed by two Romanian secret policemen at all times. My favourite story though concerns a Celtic supporter's club a different work colleague was on. Celtic were drawn against a side from the then Yugoslavia, still a communist country although more open to visitors than the Warsaw Pact ones. The match was to take place in what is now Bosnia for some reason so this club decided to stay in Italy and simply cross the border on the day of the match. This was long before the Euro so they all had Italian lira, a much derided currency at the time. This was then changed into whatever the Yugoslav currency was, but they were warned that they would not be allowed to take any Yugoslav currency out of the country when they left and that even if they did it was practically worthless in Western Europe. As such after the match the entire bus decided to pool all the Yugoslav money they all had left and spend it on fags and booze. Well it tuned out these were both quite cheap in Yugoslavia and this bus was literally buying every single packet and bottle in every small town on the road to the Italian border. Word was getting out and as they would enter the next town the locals would have already packed up thousands of cigarettes and cases and cases of vodka and beer and lined them up on the pavement. Having literally emptied every town of cigarettes and alcohol they arrived in the last village at the border. There was nothing left to buy yet they still had money. As my pal said it probably wasn't very much but it looked like loads, hundreds and hundreds of notes were left and as they discussed what to do with it someone shouted 'there's a lassie with a pram, go give it to her and the wean'. So two drunk and pretty stupid Tims jumped off the bus carrying a very large wad of notes, approached the unsuspecting lady, pointed at her pram and offered her the money. The woman screamed, loudly. The guys were bewildered, speaking not a word of Serbo-Croat they once again attempted to give the woman this money 'for yer wean, hen, it's for yer wean' and the woman once again screamed, pulling the small child close to her. Her screams alerted other locals and a loud conversation between the now hysterical woman and some of her fellow villagers resulted in a several local men appearing. They weren't happy. Although not able to speak the local language the bus load of Tims were able to recognise that universal sign of an angry man pointing a shotgun at you as evidence that there might have been a misunderstanding. The two pissed idiots who'd led the woman to believe they wanted to buy her baby backed slowly towards the bus. As a footnote they discovered that at least one of the villages had sold them bottles of vodka filled with water and the Yugoslavian cigarettes aren't that good. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrahimHemdani 1 Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 Not a bus story but when we were in Bucharest for the Unirea game about a dozen bears were staying in a decent little place called the Tempo Hotel, not quite up to the standards of Ceaușescu's Palace but it did for a couple of nights and at least we didn't suffer the same fate as him. Anyway on the night before the game we explained that the half a dozen or so bottles of beer in the chiller wouldn't be sufficient, so amid a great rattling of keys another case was produced from the cellar and then another........ and we went to bed with a reminder to the management that regardless of the result a far greater supply would be needed to quench our thirsts after the match. Enquiries about schnaps were met with, it's called Palinka but we don't have any on the shelves because it's illegal; but the manager's sister makes it, so leave it with us . The next morning, sure enough three bottles were delivered to my room and they refused to take any payment, it was a gift for their honoured guests. They made a big effort to get in enough beer for the post mortem and I tried hard to dispense the Palinka but it's disgusting stuff, not at all like the the Slovenian Borovicka? and few could take more than a couple of sips but one chap with an impervious liver seemed to like it so he got a bottle and a half. If anyone would like the third bottle of Palinka 2008 in a Ballantine's 12-year Old bottle, please apply by PM. 0 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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