Interview w/ “Crno-Beli Nostalgija”: Markus on the road – how the Saxon embraced the black & white ideology

English version of the interview which was originally published in four parts during 04/2019 on the popular Serbian football blog https://crno-bela-nostalgija.blogspot.com/

Interview: Александар Павловић

Germans and Partizan FC – decades ago, that could have sounded strange, but if you scratch under the surface, you will reveal that the famous winger Josip Pirmajer, born in Vojvodina, had German origins. Later, Lothar Matthaus was the coach who led Partizan to its first Champions League group stage, while Jürgen Röber and Bernd Storck were on Partizan bench two years later. For most of the Serbs, the name of German town Zwickau doesn`t mean much. Except being the word used in crosswords. But that is just the first impression. Among the others, some prominent people were born in that town in Saxony: Robert Schumann, a famous composer and Christoph Daum, a football coach. In the past, this town was settled by Sorbs, a West Slavic minority. Further, we all who are old but passionate football lovers, still remember the local club that competed in GDR league, named BSG Sachsenring Zwickau. Last, but not least – the iconic car Trabant had been manufactured in Zwickau. Markus Stapke is the guy whom we are interviewing and he also comes from Zwickau. I was told about Markus a couple of years ago, by my friend Igor Todorovic Zgro. Just few words were enough to make me surprised and a bit shocked – is it possible that we have a Partizan supporter in Saxony? What is his connection to Partizan and Serbia, you are going to find out in this interview…

- Markus, first of all, thank you for the time for this interview. Could you give us a short introduction to your town and area? And introduce yourself, of course.

Well, even before getting started let me thank you, the other passionate contributors and also the dedicated readers very much for allowing me to be part of the truly awesome project “Crno- Beli Nostalgija” which I follow for a long time on a regular basis. Since I was doing some fanzine work myself a rather long time ago I know how much time and resources it requires to achieve the desired quality output. You get there every single time so nerds like me get the desperately needed retrospective input from our joint love – the mighty Partizan! I was born in 1980 into a working class family in than GDR town Lichtenstein which is situated about only 10 km outside of Zwickau towards Chemnitz (formerly Karl-Marx-Stadt [Grad]) direction. My father worked in one of those typical big “Kombinat” for electrical drives during socialist rule while mother did her duty as accountant in a trade organization for chemical animal feed additives - yeah, I can still smell the GDR vibe when typing this words, old times. My sister and me attended local schools in town when in 1989 the people of the east began to rise up while the old world order faltered. Even I was a kid I still have very fond memories of this period: Hungarian authorities dropped the fence, some East-Germans crossed the green border to Austria, some weeks later hundreds of our people stormed west German embassy in Prague. Parents came home every day and turned on the radio to listen to station RIAS 2 (radio in American sector, aired from Berlin) while we had cake, milk and coffee in the kitchen of the house they build themselves just some years prior. Every day the same question that 1st raised The Clash roughly a decade earlier: should I stay or should I go? We stood where we belong! It wasn’t a bad choice after all, leading politican Hans-Dietrich Genscher (famous for always wearing yellow pullover, vice chancellor & foreign secretary under Helmut Kohl) one evening appeared on the balcony of the overcrowded Villa that served as Embassy in Prague and his words are eternally marked in my brain and still to this day bring me to tears: “we come to you tonight to tell you that we reached an agreement that you are allowed to go to the west! [people started screaming in the pure essence of the word joy]” For emotional and partly logical reasons I personally connect much of my life today with this specific moment because most of the things I enjoy doing most would simply not be possible on any similar way without this major change of direction for the country I was living in. Not a year later GDR was officially gone, Germany reunited, Saxony as an administrational body within the country re-instated. The first years where pretty tough for most of the people that did not leave the area to seek fortune in the west immediately. While I went through high-school the family in the meantime was seeking for new ways of income when the economic state of the industry can only be considered shit. My father tried to sell insurances for a while besides taking his first steps as skilled worker in the private sector while mother got back to her roots when joining a bank. Lots of people had no clue about capitalism, they never had lived in such a system, some western-german smartasses came over and cheated our naïve and trusty people big time, a lot of lessons from bad experiences were taught in those days. After finishing school I had the idiotic plan to join the army to study there because in theory it meant good money from day one and proper university education on top paid by the state. Good for me it never turned into reality, due to some surgeries in my childhood I was declared human waste during the selection process, haha. I instead just out of necessity to do something with my time went to join the university of applied sciences in Zwickau. Although I never really digged much of what I did there I received my engineer’s degree in electrotechnics some years later. Travelling was already a big thing during this period so I prolonged my studies to the max because it was obvious I would most likely never have again that much time to explore the world. Still working life caught me in the end so until this day I was serving in several roles within chemical, pharmaceutical, petrochemical and solar energy industry. Eh, it’s some regular income which feeds the self-inducted illusion of economic independence but I never felt deep satisfaction with the stuff that I’m doing, it’s just another job. About Zwickau you already mentioned some key facts with Schumann and Trabant. Those two export goods are known way beyond Saxonian borders. The city in the socialist system had about 110.000 inhabitants but that number declined a lot after reunification economic turmoil, due to the ever-aging German society in general and even while several small villages and towns surrounding the city where declared parts of it in the last 30 years. So today the headcount is about 90.000 people which makes us 4th biggest within Saxony after capital Dresden, Hipster-Boomtown Leipzig and the former “Manchester of the East” Chemnitz. Major industries included mining and special machinery production in the past, but this is not valid anymore. Biggest employer to this day is Volkswagen which heavily invested on the outskirts of the city right after reunification because there was a lot of skilled workforce, a good infrastructure and for sure some financial reward plus bonuses by the regional authorities. In comparison to other areas within the former east we are goin’ relatively strong in economic terms nowadays, a lot of suppliers for the automotive sector settled around the giant Volkswagen to be near to their beloved customer. So people involved into any of those companies have frankly spoken no problems buyin’ the bread to feed their spoiled children and enjoy a relatively high job-security which is not a standard in today’s working world of limited contracts and so on. If we take a look on the society of the city than it is clearly not that much of an over-intellectualized center despite having its own university. The majority of inhabitants are working class heroes, friendly people in general, but not surfing on the edge of the wave when it comes to accept and embrace all the ongoing heated up discussions about on how it is good or bad to change and progress as a good citizen of your country. There is a decent bunch of lefties, progressive minds and also an unneglectable right wing, separation of people along lines of political belief and income is gaining pace like in many other places all over Europe. The local politics are not very creative ones, changes are seen as danger, younger blokes tryin’ to leave their marks in the political discourse to again raise the attractivity of the city and stop the loss of human capital especially to cultural centers like Leipzig or Berlin are having a hard time. The main agenda seems to do everything to feed the needs of the typical shift worker of Volkswagen, pure mainstream, not looking what is happening to both sides of the highway. Besides this the city can rely on its intact center with a lot of historic buildings and even some remains of the medieval city wall. In contrast to our neighbor Chemnitz the core of the city which was originally founded back in 1118 was not destroyed during second world war so you can see pretty much of its historical beauty even today. Okay, I guess that for a good bunch of promotion to come to visit us for a day or two in the future.

- I know that you were regular on the stands of your local club, FSV Zwickau, as a kid. You also travelled everywhere to support them. What are your first memories about the club from your town? Tell us something more about FSV Zwickau (ex BSG Sachsenring Zwickau)…

Haha, nice one. Actually in my family I’m the only one caring for football at all while my father is that motorsport guy since his childhood and probably due to the fact that world famous racetrack “Sachsenring” (where MotoGP is held) is not even 10 km away from our home. He tried to convince me to follow too when he brought me to some prototype sportscar events in my early days in than Czechoslovakia’ Brno staring the likes of young Michael Schumacher, Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Karl Wendlinger driving infamous Sauber-Mercedes “Silberpfeil” bolides. As you can see it didn’t work in the end. Instead while attending highschool a former classmate and friend invited me to join one of the matches of a club called FSV Zwickau which enjoyed a 4 year lasting spell in 2. Bundesliga at that time in the mid 90ies. His uncle served as our driver, we went to the tribune on the long side of the field opposite to the famous tower which surely is an eye-catcher. For the very first time in my life I saw grown-ups behaving like overdosing monkeys on speed with a lot of swearing including some of the worst words I ever heard. And I liked that. With their kids sitting right next to them they still went nuts, forgot literally all the world around them and cursed the opponent players while the team on the field had a hard time keeping up the pace. You could see their veins coming out on their throats, sometimes spit too when they totally lost it. Magical. I found that very interesting, not the match itself to be honest, but all the organization, the number of people, the suffering in bad weather, the funny voice of the stadium speaker who is still a tragic-funny legend in the club to this day on, that funny hymn they played, the passion, so pretty much everything. Sure this would not end up a one-time experience only, the spark was ignited already. So from that day I started to become a regular at home matches. While time passed and those two small-town pseudo- smartass kids got their driving licenses we expanded into attending away matches as well. The club meanwhile ended its stay in professional football and was relegated to 3rd level Regionalliga in 1998. Trendsetter that our club has always been especially when it comes to create bullshit situations we took the next step and installed the very first female president ever in German football, Ingeborg Neumann, a venture-capital manager sent into the club by advise of the leadership of the new strong sponsor “Sachsenring Automobiltechnik”, an automotive company that were seeing themselves as the direct successors of Zwickaus famous Sachsenring car building plant. Yeah, this is where Trabant was build. They put some decent money into the accounts of the club with the aim of re-promoting within one year and renaming the club back to its original name BSG Sachsenring Zwickau, which would have been the best marketing for them and on top gained them support by the fans who never really liked the newly adopted name after reunification since all of the success was connected with its historical name. Dynamo Dresden-legend Hans-Jürgen “Dixie” Dörner was hired as coach, assistant manager role got occupied by former Carl Zeiss Jena-player Konrad “Konny” Weise, the squad was reinforced by big and highly paid names like striker Rocco Milde, goalie René Groß and several other high profile footballers. The budget in those days was approx. 4 million Deutsche Marks which was top of the league. We went to see all the games all over former east German territory, the selection of clubs was marvelous, just like another incarnation of GDR-Oberliga for people that didn’t had the chance to be there in the old times. But lot of the clubs suffered a lot in the years after reunification. Stupid managers, lack of experience in a capitalist world, laundering of money, bad sponsorship deals in comparison to the west, decline of attendances because people just had other problems in life, horrible organization of internal club structures. Two other major obstacles forced us nearer towards hells kitchen: local rival Chemnitzer FC played a remarkable season and finished 1st under the guidance of coach Christoph Franke, a true football maniac and modest man born in a village just outside Zwickau. FSV managed by Dörner was an unbeaten force at home but sucked away too often. Also German football federation declined the request to rebrand the club back to its old name since they didn’t follow our arguments that this would just mean a return to the old historical name and nothing more. Instead they claimed Sachsenring in the lovely money-is-everything-world is also a commercial company and according to the statues of the governing federation it is strictly forbidden to name a club after a sponsor. Baaaam, what a blow! The company lost interest with the same speed they took the club management over just about a year earlier. The summer break didn’t go well, reinforcements were rarely hired, already on the 2nd match day at the away encounter with FC Berlin which was the name of BFC Dynamo at that time turned out catastrophic when we got beaten 6:1 by a team that was not considered anything near to our strength. It was obvious something is wrong in the club. Just some weeks later the financial manager went to court and filed for bankruptcy. That was the begin of a rather dark period for football in Zwickau that lasted for almost 15 years and was bringing us down to even 5th level of German league pyramid in 2005 – Saxonian State-League. But let me clarify, even if those were the worst years when it comes to terms like “success” and “being proud of the club” those were truly incredible years for us fans. When I say fans I specifically mean the core of people that is attending most or even all of the matches. I emerged into their ranks over time, it’s a natural process, everybody following a club will understand what I mean, you just meet likeminded people along the way, you share other common interests besides the club itself, you meet other outsiders just like yourself. I was that student guy, I know how to use words and to express myself, at least in those days I did despite also facing problems with stutter, eh,, long story, nevermind. In German terraces by the mid 90ies the ultra movement became the new hot shit for the youth. In Zwickau some five passionate teens started it in 1997 in a neighborhood called Eckersbach, a typical socialist living quarter with those most ugly architectural crimes you know from all over the former eastern block countries. Today the new stadium is situated there. I got in touch with them, the scene wasn’t that big, 20-30 people were the core and less than half of them was of any use when it comes to doing creative stuff together – haha, talk to other groups, it’s the same everywhere, you have some leaders and some that like to be led. We spent a hell of a crazy funny intense time together, growing up, graduating, failing, first steps in working life, thinking we are the greatest of the world, spending time painting choreographies, arguing and screaming at each other, removing unwanted presidents from the helm of the club, supporting the club in its worst days, all that stuff. It is for sure heavily defining the person that I am today even I don’t have much to do with it anymore in recent years. It wouldn’t like to miss that period. When you are young and kinda accepted for the first time in your life by the society that surrounds you of course your confidence grows, so I turned into a proper big mouth. It must have been a pain in the ass sometimes for the others to stand my presence. But I guess the people analyzed also that we had the ability to get the things done, the influence of ultras and other regular faces of the terrace was far bigger in those days. Even I was elected to some board within the club for about six years from 2004 onwards so I could at least in theory be an influencer in the very heart of the club structure. German clubs traditionally are member-based associations so of course when there are elections you can get your share of power if people trust you and give you their votes. A kinda famous local lawyer who was member suggested to put me on the list so it all emerged suddenly. But honestly I cannot advise anyone to do this because it is mainly a very dirty business there and not anything near to that romantic view that you might have when you’re looking to a club from the outside fan perspective. I was forced to work with some criminals, egocentrics, big time amateurs, actually I was one too. It ruined a lot of my former idealistic passion over time. You need to sanction things that are morally not good to put it in simple words. Also people are forced to work together by the votes of the members who would never work together in the outside world because of just being total different characters. So many internal fights, people being bosses of top companies and responsible for hundreds of workers yelling ridiculous words at each other ended in lawsuits where I wasted my time as witness. No, no, no, better stay out of it and enjoy being a fan, I should have known! In 2011 another turning point for my personal history with the club: the last match in our historical home “Westsachsenstadion” versus some shitty irrelevant team from Dresden. What was intended to be a big farewell party was destroyed by police and sheep-like backbone-less club management. We held a party the night before the match, people got drugged, drunk-shitloaded and music was loud, just like it should be when you are on the verge of a new chapter. The following morning security and/or police found some pyrotechnics and declared the traditional sector of active supporters as closed. Emotions raised to the max, all discussions led to nowhere so fans first decided to remain outside the stadium for the final game ever. Later the entrance was stormed and the group forced their way to the block and when police fought back escaped to the pitch to finally abandon the match. Looking back now I think at that day I lost it. Still I was going to matches afterwards in a temporary stadium without any flavor and of course I paid a couple of visits to the new 100% plastic artificial crappy bullshit everything-cheap arena but this is honestly not my club anymore. There has been another change of leadership some years ago, they gave the club some structure and step by step winning became regular again and led us up to 3rd division I think 3 years back. But no, it doesn’t work for me anymore, they now want to change the clubs identity with plans of separating the 1st team from the rest of the club to attract external investors from a dessert that hasn’t yet been found on the globe and recently spoke at the annual gathering that the main task of a club today is to create “content”. Earlier on I described that it was pure emotions seen in the stands that brought me to the club back in time and hearing this now just is not my world anymore. Those guys running the club now are doing okay when you leave aside the emotions and see it as business only, but I refuse to do so. Football in the last 20 years has changed dramatically and surely not to the better: with the money Zwickau used to play in 2. Bundesliga from 1994-98 you are considered bottom of the table in 3rd league nowadays. Players who qualified the team to 2nd level then were all having regular day jobs and trained afterwards, today one league lower we’re all professionals and it is basically impossible to ever get back to former glory in the upper leagues since the system is designed such that good players will leave once they can pass the ball 5 times without falling over their own feet. Oh my god, I’m talking way too much, sorry mate. Let me just briefly add that the roots of the club date back to the year 1912 and over time it got re-named several time, ultimately 1990 after attachment of the club to the Sachsenring factory officially folded. Club management at that time included legendary player Alois Glaubitz and they were seeking for a new name and club logo, so besides the traditional red and white they also included some light blue and the swans which shall reflect the big “swan lake” from the center of the city. Our most famous player of all time is without a doubt goalkeeper Jürgen Croy who was also on the field when East Germany beat our Western counterparts during World Cup 74 – to quote a famous saying from GDR days: “uvek napred, nazad nikad!”, hahaha. After 2nd world war the team won the eastern zonal final tournament 1948 and just one year later became 1st ever national champion of GDR-Oberliga. In GDR the national cup went into our non-existing throphy room three times (1986, 1967, 1975) with the final of 1975 versus Dynamo Dresden in Berlin held at long gone “Stadion der Weltjugend” bein’ considered the most dramatic ever held in East German history. BSG Sachsenring Zwickau used the drive they gained in this period to advance into semifinal of European Cup Winners cup beating the likes of AC Fiorentina, Celtic Glasgow, Panathinaikos Athens and losing only to later champion RSC Anderlecht. The than-called Georgij-Dimitroff-Stadium was über-packed for all the matches while away travels where basically impossible and only offered to a bunch of SED (socialist unity party of Germany) leadership loyal fucks.

- Your passion for football converted into the hobby – you became a photographer whose main obsession are football fans. How did it all start?

Shame on me, but this is mainly due to the fact that my skills in support are rather limited. I was never really good in keeping my arms up high and singing all match long so I preferred to serve another use around the fan sector. I never considered myself an ultra but because of the size of our local fan scene we were together all the time. I understand or shall I better say understood the way of their thinking. As mentioned earlier on we spent endless hours painting choreographies and stuff to leave a visual impact on the rest of the stadium and even beyond that – hello internet! Ultra culture has always been a way of self-marketing presenting yourself as some kind of outlaw not respecting rules, authorities, mainstream culture and therefore has this ability to create a very strong bound among the people involved, gang mentality. You go together through good and bad, the enemies are clear, the surrounding codex is there, pretty much to identify with, so you enjoy diving deep into that subcultural bubble. For many youngsters it is a necessity to belong somewhere while emerging into adultery – hopefully I will never get there, hehe. Besides helping occasionally with ideas for or organizing the materials for the choreographies those guys from Red Kaos, the name of your local group, needed some volunteer who would take the pictures of those performances to preserve them for eternity and of course the virtual world. That was me. With financial resources getting better after entering the job market I could invest a bit in proper gear while for the start it was amateur as amateur could be. The club also realized that this young idiot was taking pictures all the time so during the period some bandits took over the lead of the tumbling club they requested if it is possible to take less pictures of fans and instead focus on close-ups of the players of the team losing. Did both for some time to make them all happy. It shouldn’t be forgotten to mention that fanzine culture has some strong roots in Zwickau too. One friend, he is also one of the founders of Red Kaos and I to this day consider him the only valid leader because of his endless knowledge about ultra culture, started once doin’ reports about his trips to Poland. That country in the 90ies was a Mekka for lots of weird action around football matches and to some certain extent still is nowadays. He has good colorful writing skills so people loved to read his stuff which was spiced with a lot of internal knowledge that you can only get when you are very close to the fans themselves. Later that emerged from a hobby into a serious project when fanzine “Blickfang Ultra’” appeared on the market. We travelled a lot together in the last twenty years so I gladly supported his work with providing pictures of the places we went. Of course also some stuff taken at home during Zwickau matches found its way to the magazine. Finally, there is another aspect which made me take photos that much: everyone’s memory is transient. It would be a tragedy to accidently forget all the places, things and happenings me and we together with all the people I had the joy of travelling with saw and experienced along the way until now. So I try to keep the best memories by havin’ them on camera or some harddrive later on.

- The camera has taken you all over Germany, Europe and world. What are the most bizarre clubs or destinations which you visited?

When it comes to bizarre places nothing will ever beat the toilets under Jug in JNA. I think some experts can find bacteria there which are believed to be extinguished in the rest of the world already for ages. Seriously, that is a hell of a fucked up place. My friend Benjamin, a true Grobar from the heart, and me are currently the most actively visiting guys from Zwickau in Belgrade, make jokes with elderly Grobari in town that it is life-endangering to go there, some never came back, dinosaurs are still active down there and I’m sure no one from UEFAs chair- farters ever did an inspection of this place. Leaving that aside I feel a strong affection to everything connected to Caucasian mountains and the puzzle-like distribution of different people there. Those break-away republics like Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabagh or South Ossetia are really fascinating places. Because of their remote location and unclear status in front of the world community they are basically frozen in time, since the 90ies there is a standstill or more realistically seen decline of economy which makes life there not a too simple task. Still some people have decided to resist and live there within this deadlock of different geopolitical interests. While my 2nd visit to Abkhazia I got to see two matches of their regional championship, first one was in a rather remote town up in the mountains close to the non-official border with Georgian mainland. The town Tqwartsheli was inhabited but like many places there it has probably seen much better days in soviet times when mining was the big thing. The scenery was just very special-surreal, it was raining slightly, fog too, unless some singular bird makes some noise it’s pretty quiet everywhere until some grim looking Babushka is throwing the water she used for cleaning the stairway in the house right onto the streets, slim dogs and cats are strolling around, deep green wood surrounds everything and the minibus with the guest team finally arrives. Stadium was fucked up of course, there is no money for any investment in the infrastructure, only Russian tourists are coming in summer to enjoy the beaches around Sukhumi. I checked it afterwards and it turns out the league can rely one on one pair of skilled referees so every match day is divided into several days so that those three guys can serve all the needs. Got the chance to drive homewards to the local capital after the match since there wasn’t any public transport at all and during the ride established basic communication with some of the players utilizing my horrible self-taught Russian language skills without any grammar: it was a mix of local Abkhaz guys and Gastarbajters from other former Republics of Lenins once great country. I could not tell one of them my personal opinion because that youngster saw himself on the way to stardom in some higher league, it was so sad. He was a product of Dinamo Stavropol in southern Russia famous for being the home of the later in Germany really beloved Michail Gorbatchev. That early twenty-year-old man lived in the illusion that after you didn’t make it into Dinamos squad competing in the 3rd Russian league and therefore loaned out to some Abkhaz superpower those name I shall look up again still will get you to the top of the pops. Mama mia, can’t stop thinking about that poor lost bloke. Also the other parts of Kavkaz are just very cool to visit, no matter if north or south. Especially the northern mountain ranges are still enjoying a rather negative image in the west because all of the conflicts the region saw in the nineties with both Chechen wars and insurgents destroying most of the touristic glory the whole area gained under red flag rule. Today I consider people from various Republics down there my friends and met most of them through the proxy of football even the heydays of Caucasian presence with four clubs in the Premier League (Spartak Nalchik, Alania Vladikavkaz, Terek Grozny, Anji Makhachkala) have long gone. People are extremely friendly and hospitable guys, doing everything in their power to make the stay a blast. Funny coincidence: on my 3rd or 4th visit to Chechen capital Grozny I was hosted by a guy named Abdullah through Couchsurfing and he only some months earlier had his 1st Serbian guest – Partizan cyclist Dragan Sibalic from Kraljevo!

- Your connection and dedication to Partizan is obvious. You often come to Serbia to watch Partizan, no matter whether it is “the eternal derby” or the game in Backa Palanka. The inevitable question is – why Partizan, how did that connection begin? Why not Red Star, who share the same colors with your FSV Zwickau?

I was lost right from the start, haha. It all begun in 2001 when some kiddies including me where attending a match of female football on one of the training pitches of Bruno-Plache-Stadium, the traditional home of Leipzig’ historical only relevant and up to this day most successful club Lokomotive. Of course the quality of the match was not the best so the discussions about European fixtures of the following week emerged soon and deserved full attention. There was one specific encounter that got into the spotlight: Rapid Vienna vs. Partizan Beograd! One of our guys was stupid enough to declare his car available for the trip. Somehow there was still one place empty in that red Renault Clio and even I didn’t consider myself worth that honor since I was not so close to those guys at that time I got an invitation to join them. We arrived with decent time prior to the match, parked the car and walked around in Hütteldorf, the neighborhood where Rapid’ Gerhard-Hanappi-Stadium is located. I did not have much clue of anything back then, just Rapid fans were considered as top guys in and out of the ground. But then suddenly a bunch of fucked up busses arrived at the scene, some of them barely functional, at least in my memory. Grobari successfully made their way to Vienna. Keep in mind I was a 21-year-old young idiot from a western country and the next thing you see is a human Parni Valjak (Steamroller) totally occupying the place and not even thinking about a second that there are some strong men from the other side rotating around in the streets as well. Those dark voices, this strange language, this quite different style of clothes, it all left a lasting impression on me. The game itself was an easy 5:1-win for the Austrians who were trained by Lothar Matthäus in those days but Grobari did not care that much and kept singing while the local audience addressed some rude swears towards the guest sector. We went home to Saxony at night and it was clear for me: you need to learn about those barbarians. Internet was still in its childhood days but Partizan already had a website with Verano Motors Advertising and other funny graphic elements. I could only guess what they write there, there was no such thing like Google Translate etc., but nerd that I am I kept going through the statistics, saw the faces of Bjekovic and Zezevic for the first time and on some other site found a picture of the Jug on the occasion of the match vs Rapid in Belgrade two weeks earlier: it was showing a message “Bin Laden 1 : 0 Bush” only few days after the airplanes crashed into World Trade Center. How the hell could someone do this so shortly after this tragedy? This is the maximum a provocation can get, shocking and also kinda impressive to that guy in front of the screen. I wanted to dig deeper to understand the background and reasons and so I did knowing that I should visit Yugoslavia in the near future. That first visit was in October 2002 for the 119th eternal derby at JNA, a 2:2 in front of about 20.000 spectators. Coming to the country than wasn’t that easy goin’ like now, we used my car, I green Peugeot 106 with big FSV Zwickau logo on the back window, a big scratch on the driver side four travel buddies inside. At the border coming in from Croatia we needed to buy special insurance, regular green cards didn’t like Yugoslavia way back then. Additional there was a need to buy some visa-like visitor card for I think 7-8 euro and you needed to exchange all the money you’ll need for the trip right at the border since there were no ATMs in Belgrade and Banks were closed for the weekend. I still remember that specific smell of low-quality fuel in those days whenever you got close to Belgrade. Also the air seemed polluted a lot. The beauty of Genex tower and the big houses of Novi Beograd, everything most impressive to a young person like me. So leaving out too much details about every further step I together with a group of other more or less stable admirers of Partizan and the Serbian way of life progressed over the years. First it was the derbies only, then you wanted to see other stadiums too, and why the heck not also go on international matches as well. We were tourists, had no contacts to anyone, separated from the rest for a long time. Only in 2008 when I had my first visit to Russia by my host in Moskva and dear friend Yuri I got introduced to one of his colleagues working in “Ultras Life Magazine” – Mr. Dejan Vladovic which most of you will probably know because of his Fanzine “Daj Gol” and being part of the founder generation of Juzni Front. He was the first one who really let me have a deeper insight into Grobari fan movement with quality information that is not a product of internet research using dubious and non-reliant sources. We are friends until this day and him, Yuri and some other fine human beings around them supported me in a very dark period of my life some years back when I forgot to take care of myself for a while leading me close to the edge. This I will never forget! So I made some very important friendships within this world of football. You’re asking why not Red Star when even their colors are matching with those of Zwickau. Several reasons: Partizan was the club that came earlier in my life, fact. Also I don’t like to be with the obvious choices, prefer to not staying with the mainstream. When I started to attend the matches Partizan always sucked at the derbies despite winning the championship itself more often, a draw was the maximum, it took quite some time until I finally could witness the first win. But, as I learned over time, pain, suffering and hardships is something that Grobari tend to enjoy a lot, so I just kept it going. I preferred the often non-existing organization inside the Jug in comparison to the drill and order of the Sever down the road. It never gets boring in and around Grobari, chaos is a constant!

- You are often dressed in Partizan shirts, you even have a great and splendid tattoo of Partizan logo on your leg. Are people from Serbia shocked when they see that all, knowing that you don`t have any family relations with Serbia?

It’s not really that they are shocked, it’s more like a mystery to them why the hell someone from a country with far stronger league has chosen Partizan as the team to support. Of course I get asked from time to time if there are some historic family roots around former Yugoslavia but that is not the case. Both of my grandmothers share Saxonian roots while one grandfather was born is todays Poland near the Baltic Sea and the other was a true Prussian blood which just died last autumn at the biblical age of 97 years after surviving Stalingrad earlier on in his life. Some guys consider me a spy, but it is more kind of an often repeated joke since they can’t understand or accept Partizan as valid reason to show up in Belgrade that often, hehe. About the tattoo, yes, that caused some surprise as well, even among my longtime mates. I was already thinking for half eternity about getting tattooed in general but since I also was a regular in GDR hospitals during my early childhood days and got uncounted injections there that forced me to the wheelchair for a brief period in the mid 80ies I feared and honestly still don’t fancy syringes at all. But some other private circumstances got me to the point where I decided that it is about time to face some of those stupid fears and have some new challenges. That was when I first went to the tattoo studio of a close friend of my sister and got the first one done – the iconic front cover of Henry Rollins’ album “The End of Silence” (1992). Many people with tattoos can probably tell a similar story, but there is some truth behind the saying that once you start you can’t stop anymore. So things went their way and now on my right upper leg there’s some ink that represents my affection to Partizan, Belgrade, travels, nature, music and art in general. E.g. one part of the illustration shows an excerpt of a painting by Mati Klarwein that was used for Miles Davis’ album “Bitches Brew” (1970) while other parts feature well-known architectural sights of Belgrade like Genex Tower or Hotel Moskva. I did the composition of different parts myself, the tattoo artist just helped with her own style of putting it under the skin. All the shirts and stuff I wear – I sometimes have to laugh about myself because of this: my wardrobe is full of that stuff; I keep collecting over all those years. It’s like a small kid’s habit, but I guess also that is quite typical for any fan too. In recent years the supply of pretty cool stuff has increased a lot, in the 2000ies there was crap sold mostly, shitty designs, not very creative. I have to admit I still have my very 1st shirt from 2002, official product from the shop under north tribune of JNA, a plain black shirt with “Mnogo Smo Jaki” written on it. It won every battle versus the washing machine and other attacks, outstanding Serbian quality. The neighbors and their supporters for years where miles ahead when it comes to provide products that people would like to buy and wear but Grobari have closed the gap in recent years and especially the stuff Grobari Trash Romantizam is putting on the market is ahead of others – very creative stuff, quality production, I especially dig the cross-connection to music and subculture in their designs. Wearing official Partizan team shirts in rather remote places during travels like in Tajikistan near the Afghan border serves different purposes: it’s pretty convenient for a fat-belly like me out in the heat and you can easily break invisible borders between people because they’re mostly curious why somebody is not wearing this usual Messi or Ronaldo shirts and you’ll end up in nice conversations with people that wouldn’t have approached you if it was not the shirt that grabbed their attention, so it’s a multi-cultural-icebreaker tool as well.

- What the hell did you find in Partizan and horrible Serbian football venues, which is not available in Germany?

Half of your question is already part of the answer: horrible old venues are actually a nice thing if you look at it from a different angle. Those places have some story to tell, a history, have got some marks over time. Authentic style, everything but not plastic. This is the issue many let’s name them traditional fans are facing now in the west. The infrastructure did change a lot in the last twenty years and even our not so well with money equipped clubs in the former east of Germany now have more or less all newly renovated or completely new constructed grounds. Of course this is a good thing if you are someone who attends the matches primarily with the interest to get some proper entertainment on the pitch and simultaneously enjoy eating popcorn and other unhealthy stuff which is usually sold in this places. Also a roof above you can be a nice commodity when there is rain. I totally understand the people who are asking for this and are not happy if their clubs have to compete in outdated venues. But me, and I guess I’m not that exceptional in this topic, have some kind of emotional connection to stadiums with a decent legacy. For sure this can be said for at least some Serbian stadiums where there have been major domestic and international encounters. SG Dynamo Dresden played FK Napredak in Krusevac, Napoli got kicked out in Nis, Vosa played on international level so many times in their stadium. No need to mention Partizans matches or the ones of the team from the Rajko Mitic field nearby, there is just a shitload of emotions and information connected to those places. For a nerd like me this is literally a never drying out source for research of something which is called “unnützes Wissen” in German language – it means knowledge that does not provide you with any valid benefit besides the joy of just knowing it for the sake of knowledge itself. But that is just what nerds do, they can drop some info that the rest already forgot or never was interested at all. Also I’m of course more than just a bit melancholic that “my” stadium in Zwickau which once held up to 60.000 people in the glorious European days is now doomed to an existence as training ground with tribunes removed and the club itself moved to this artificial new place that was mainly build on EU regional funds those main criteria was to make it uttermost cheap and functional. The result is something that looks like an oversized box for shoes from China. All the materials used in construction are the most standard elements out there. This put together sure fulfills its purpose and current day “customers of football” are okay with it but me, no, it doesn’t work. I’m aware many readers will consider this position maybe as a little strange, you would be happy to see the clubs progress and close the gap to other nations around a bit. It will happen, be sure, those maniacs in the upper seats of some Balkan countries have already this plans of doing a joint bid for hosting the European & World Cup in the not so far future to secure their personal spot in the history books but personally I hope it might take a bit longer to achieve. Besides the architectonical aspects which many times provided superb motives for photographic shots (fuck does the Cair in Nis after renovation some years ago already look like a hell hole again, hard to believe it was chosen by FSS guys as venue for the cup final, have they even took a single look there before making this decision?) I also enjoy a lot this rather reduced level of organization around matches in Serbia, seriously I love it from the bottom of my heart. That starts with absolutely chaotic planning of fixtures: nobody from so-called officials to media outlets (jebote, the quality level of local press to me seems pretty low, copy+paste overflow, even worse than in Germany) and fans really knows anything about kick- off times and dates until the very last moment and they still have the guts to call it Superliga. Also the match day organizing is not seldom kinda funny, just so much unexpected things still can happen, standardization of routines are stuck in childhood stage. Pyrotechnics, physical action in- an outside the stadium, everyday importance of the football topic in society, neglecting of political correctness in chants and presented banners, people without tickets magically appearing in the stands (legendary quote by one well-aged Grobar from Vracar ahead of the away match in Plzen where only few tickets where given to FKP fans: “for us Serbs doors they don’t exist, just go there and let magic happen!” – he was right), the still rather acceptable sanctions and fines by the authorities. Hordes of people flushing their money down the drain with terrible brave-weird bets in Kladionica. The generally spoken more emotional based characters of Serbs in comparison to widely believed sense of humor-less, organized and well- structured German minds. The plus of “living in the moment” element instead of feeling the need to have a long-term strategy in mind. Those constant links between different spheres of society towards and from the subject football. The at least felt still existing proximity and emotional connection of players towards their clubs and supporters, that it’s not exclusively all about the money. All these factors are summing up to a big pot of reasons to come back here over and over. I’m addicted to you crazy Serbs, believe it or not, hehe. You always put a smile on my face no matter how fucked up the concrete of the tribunes in e.g. Omladinski stadium may appear at the moment!

- For all these years with Partizan, you must have memorable games, players and encounters?

We already talked about the Vienna initial kick-start of my relationship with Partizan and the also about the 1st derby back in 2002, so I’ll leave out my associations to those ones here. Soon after my first derby we with some friends went to see the team at the away trip in Prague versus than not so strong SK Slavia. We came into Strahov stadium some minutes late because Bush Jnr. was in the Czech capital that day and therefore border checks were heavily intensified. Another heavy defeat, again 5:1, coach Tumbakovic resigned right after the match at the press conference if I remember right. Partizan was dominating the league by far, in that winter our Lothar Nationale was brought in the club and had no problems with claiming the title. Marko Vjetrovic was serving as his translator and in some interview with a German tabloid Lothar mentioned that he has to have a close look at Marko because he is focused on pretty girls a lot. It’s quite funny since Matthäus has a legendary image in Germany for being an experienced hunter for fresh female blood himself. In 2004 there were two derbies within only some days, one in the league and another in the cup. Our travel group in my car was a “multi-football- ethnical” composition (FC Union Berlin, 1. FC Magdeburg and of course Zwickau), we used the days in between the matches to explore the former Yugoslav regions, had a trip to ghost town like Srebrenica and attended a concert of the electronic act Faithless in KK Partizans old home Hala Sportova in Novi Beograd. I was in the final days of my student life so financial resources were always short. Near to the roundabout at Autokomanda there is this gas station, I think it is Nis Petrol nowadays. Back then it was cash only and semi-motivated blue collar service guys filled up your car. Some youngster there fooled me with returning the wrong change, the damage was around 15-20 euros, so not much, but still too much for me. I was mad at myself that I got fooled and after coming back from Bosnia when the fuel was going low I told my buddies “I think I know what he did last time, we go there again, this time it’s not gonna happen”. Well, end of story, we left the place, I counted my Dinars and instantly turned red in my face, snapped completely. The car was quite, nobody dared to say anything, it could have been their last word, they knew me. I drove the others to our hotel next to Bulevar Oslobodenja and told them I have some unfinished business to do. Left the car, walked back down the road, got even more angry with every single step and finally approached the guy. I’m not a strong person but when you are really on the verge of exploding and a lot of adrenaline is flowing in your system there´s some extra unexpected power to rely on. He knew I was coming for him and he also knew the reason. While I was yelling at him and gave that bastard some shivering too his boss came out, wanting to know what is wrong here. Still furious I told my version of the story and said my next stop will be Blic newspaper where I will tell the world about this big time double theft, hehe. He got kinda afraid, most likely knew his worker wasn’t doing this trick for the first time with cars from other countries and gave me 2000 Dinars plus a tasty Bambi chocolate to convince me not to do it. When I came back to my buddies smiling and shared the chocolate they confirmed once more I’m totally nuts to make all this extra fuss, risking to get beaten up by an angry Serb. A young angry man memory, indeed. The 2005 spring derby (23/04) was quite “entertaining” outside, street action going on, meeting of the ideologies, some extra heart beat on this sunny day. Only some weeks later the complete opposite, super- boring derby in the cup, both sides were boycotting against the FSS. When Miroslav Dukic was at the helm of Partizan for the first time there was this magnificent 2:4 in Marakana, lots of pyro, quality chanting, Lola Smiljanic goin’ crazy! In 2008 we went by car from Germany to Istanbul to attend the Champions League qualifier Fenerbahce vs Partizan. Those were the days with “Crna Mamba” Diarra up in the front while Dr. Mo took responsibility for the creative aspects – great team. Turkish officers first would not let us pass at the overcrowded border since I did not have a local driving license. After some night hours of waiting and walking around from one office to the next as well as constant pretending that this football match is very important they finally let us go without receiving any Bakshish. It was only some weeks later when Partizan met with Politehnica Timisoara. I had just quit my unsatisfying 1stjob ever so this trip was like a return to freedom. Both matches (home / away) were gifted with proper away supporter appearance. Poli had big problems at that time with some Italian Pro Poker gambling thief named Claudio Zambon stealing the rights of the club’ identity (colors, logo, even name) so they were forced to compete under a more neutral term. I know a bunch of people –some of them with Serbian heritage– from Politehnica’ stands and for them those were some very dark days in the history. Memorable derbies will of cause also remain those two with the super late and match-deciding goals by Milos Joijic (2013) and Nemanja Kojic (2014). Back in 2010 Partizan secured the title with an easy 3:0 away win at OFK Beograd just some days after winning yet another derby at home – I was still doing photographs of the Navijaci (much belated hvala lepo to Dragan Velanac down there in his small room under Sever tribune, No. 204 if I remember right, for always accepting my pseudo-professional accreditation requests, hehe) and therefore was right in front of the visiting sector, even today have uncounted pictures stored on various hard drives at home. Because of the photographing I also got in touch with the Grobari who were involved in “Izaberi Partizan” magazine – Miki, Miodrag and Zgro from Novi Sad, Filip and Plavsa from Beograd. Unfortunately this project faded. The same year I made it to Armenia or see Stanojevic’ boys take on Pyunik in CL qualification – it was fucking hot in Yerevan in the middle of July, still Cleo put the ball where it should be. Together with some friends we made it up to London in rainy December for the final group stage encounter versus Arsenal at their super-plastic Emirates stadium where people would appear in the stands only after the game had already started for some minutes because they were still occupied eating shrimps and other overpriced shit in the food stalls / VIP boxes – football itself basically was reduced to a necessary evil by-product. I remember the provocative chants by Grobari, but not sure if it was intended exactly that way: instead of “!” it more sounded like a “?” when the group shouted/questioned “are you homosexual” to ensure the next heavy UEFA fine for the club. On domestic level the away match on the 2ndmatch day of the 2011/12 season in the newly renovated Uzice stadium will remain within mind as a pretty nice encounter. Full away sector, everybody with filled up batteries after the summer break, people even looking from their balconies from the around area, sunny weather, great landscapes in Western Serbia, local Freedom Fighters also on top of their existence. When Novi Pazar made their way into the Superliga by magically buying off the license from BASK we went to the Sandzak away battle in 2013. And it really was like this since home and away supporters were constantly throwing stones at each other during the match – quite some bloody heads needed to be fixed by the red cross staff. The more animalistic side of the action under the helm of FSS, sure. Two months later at Humska 1 the title once more was celebrated. It was Grupa JNA first concert in front of the Jug, people stormed the pitch and grabbed their piece of the goal net or grass. Many great images were shot on this day, pure joy. Flags with Tole Karadzic got waved on the pitch by heavily tattooed “men of honor”, surreal funny scenes. My good friend Darko who besides video-recording the madness for Srpska Tribina online addicts was also a driving force behind the great “Srpski Navijac” fanzine which sadly defunct after the happenings around the match of the national team in Genoa did one funny picture of me being still without beard and mega- shy placed between two Serbian beauties which later presented the trophy to the team around Sasa Ilic, what a day! Few hours prior to the kick-off of the EL match vs. Tottenham Hotspur at JNA in autumn 2014 I got the news from home that I just turned uncle to a preterm birth lady named Anni. While trippin’ with my FSV Zwickau buddies by train from Saxony (our team had winter preparation in Turkey after decades of being way too poor to do so) all the way down to Antalya area we managed it to see one of the few matches with Dragan Ciric in the sports director seat of the club against Austria Vienna in Belek. As usual also some other Ex- Partizan figures strolling around on those occasions like Igor Duljaj (Shakthar Donetsk) and Vuk Rasovic (Dinamo Minsk). Later the same year attended the international games in Bilbao (fuckin’ diabolic ticket prices in Basque Country, hell!) and in Alkmaar. Let’s not talk about Augsburg here, hehe. I was pretty optimistic when Ivan Tomic got appointed as the head coach early 2016, but while in Lubin for the Zaglebie match that finally turned out a proper misconception. Switched the controls back to Celavi Marko Nikolic saw happier times for all of us, so time to celebrate again in May 2017 after the neighbors stumbled at the roof of the Vozdovac mall – flew in twice for the match vs Mladost Lucani at home (“umesto pehara u rukama …”) and shortly after for the triumph in the cup as well. Bam bam. While in Belgrade for the concert of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds in Arena the almighty fixture gods at FSS were kind to me and Benjamin and moved the match in Cacak to Sunday. The match itself was not that spectacular, even heavy rain and wind made it a proper challenge to watch, but in the morning we got the not so usual chance to attend the baptizing ceremony of Misa Tumbas in Baric with Dule Vujosevic.

- I have to admit: I am a little bit obsessed with Dynamo Berlin. That was my first European game that I watched live from the stadium, we won 1-0 (not enough for quarter finals of European Cup), the stadium was over-crowded, Dynamo`s goalkeeper Bodo Rudwaleit was saving his goal like nobody before and after that night, two Dynamo players defected to West before the game and Dynamo players were full of amphetamine, what we all have found out decades later. What is your opinion of Dynamo Berlin?

Well, Dynamo surely is one of the more interesting clubs from the former East. Even today their reputation is still legendary but it is based completely in the glorious past while the current incarnation of the club serves a rather boring term in the 4th division – Regionalliga. In the time Partizan played with BFC Dynamo it was the top club in GDR, e.g. they won the championship 10 times in a row from 1979 onwards. All the top players of the socialist republic where forced to join the club, it was more or less impossible to refuse a transfer to Berlin if they decided you are worth for them, otherwise serious personal consequences for the player would occur. This is due to the fact that Dynamo was the favorite club of Erich Mielke, boss of infamous East- German secret service “Stasi” (Staatssicherheit = State security). If you dare to oppose their desire, face the punishment! So besides being the best team on the pitch they also where the most hated guys out there. This was heavily attracting hooligans because who wants to be loved when you want to cause havoc anyway? Supporting a team which is hated by the rest of the country because it’s symbolic image as the prime outlet for the socialistic system – it can’t get any better! So when GDR fell and especially the re-organization of the police apparatus from 1990 to 1992 was not fully accomplished the times where rough in the stadiums of the east, it was basically anarchy. Police did not intervene that much because they weren’t sure about their jobs anyway so why get hurt in a fight with gone wild hooligans? There a crazy stories floating around from those days, the fans of BFC Dynamo were considered one of the worst, strongest and most extreme gangs out in the streets. In contrast to the ever-rising respect for the supporters the club itself lost its state-backing and had a hard time finding sponsors because no company wanted to be connected for the symbol of the fallen ideology. Level of administrational amateurism in most of the eastern clubs was at a peak, Dynamo got renamed FC Berlin to get rid of its own past but success was zero, all quality players had left after calls from western managers offering good cash so in principle nothing of the former structure was left, a common scenario in those days. The 90ies saw FC Berlin mostly competing in 3rd league while the fans remained in stable number with huge amounts of shaven baldheads especially if there where encounters with traditional teams from the long gone glory days. Away trips to Berlin and their historical stadium in Hohenschönhausen district always required a lot of attention and you better don’t wear any scarves or other stuff that marks you as visiting supporter, it’s just not very smart to do so in their hood. For a certain time even motorcycle rocker organization Hells Angels wanted to make the club their property. Around the millennium fans voted to rename the club back to the original name which also happened but they could not make any money from this move since the rights to the classical club logo had been bought by some western Berlin business guy that was also doing the fanshop for Hertha BSC – capitalism at its best. The last nearly twenty years the club in general achieved nothing, filed for bankruptcy and never climbed higher than 4th league. Few current day highlights are matches in German cup which they entered a couple of times by winning the Berlin regional competition. Draw ceremony was mostly kind to the club so they faced some big names from Bundesliga in Berlin and the elderly 90ies Hooligan generation that does not regular appear at the shitty matches in the lower division uses those rare occasions to remind the rest of Germany that the club may suck big time today but you shall never forget about their legendary fans. So to finally answer your question about my personal opinion about them: I consider the club a valid reminder of our recent history and heritage within the football system, it’s a plus for any league, people are aware of its reputation so they come in bigger numbers, all away matches of Dynamo are still seen as highlights for the hosting clubs so they can make some extra cash with this living history fossil. So I’m absolutely not against them, even all that surrounds this club is pure nostalgia, it’s a bit like old Yugoslav people wishing back Tito times.

- Last summer, you and your friends were participants in a great adventure. You bought an old Audi and decided to visit Kazakhstan, where Partizan were expected to play against Irtysh Pavlodar. But the things changed meanwhile and sent Partizan to Lithuania. Please, don`t spare words to describe that journey. You travelled 12,000 km?!

During each summer preparation break of the local leagues the attention of most football fans shifts to the happenings at UEFA headquarter where the draw for the qualification matches in Europa League and Champions League is held. This for me and my friends usually is the true highlight of the year since you’ll have the chance to be send to regions that you may have never seen before and face teams you’ll never even dreamt of, especially in the earlier competition stages where also clubs from smaller federations have a good chance to be still present in the race for the group phase. So last summer, as usual, I sat in my Leipzig’ work office, pretended to be a highly productive little figure in the capitalist chess game while in reality havin’ the live stream of the drawing ceremony activated. Partizan was sent to Crne Gore for the 2nd year in a row in the opening round vs Rudar Pljevlja while the team should afterwards face the winner of the encounter Irtysh vs Trakai. It was more or less clear that we shouldn’t have big problems bypassing the neighbors so the attention could be drawn to the 2nd round travel planning. Since Kazakhstan in general has a stronger league than any of the Baltic countries I assumed Irtysh would progress in the direct duel. Checked prices for flights instantly, roughly 450 Euro return from Berlin. WhatsApp messages where sent out to my buddy Benjamin, it was already a sure thing we would go there. The same eve I played a bit with Google maps and sent further messages around that clearly indicated that I somehow like the very stupid idea of going there by car since plane is kinda boring and too easy, there shall be some challenge for such a match. Benjamin just said “yeah, let’s do it, go ahead with the planning”, so I did. Time for organizing everything was quite limited since we also had the travel to Nicksic ahead of us. The original idea for the trip to eastern Kazakhstan was to buy an old Zastava. I asked Deki in Belgrade for offers but got slowed down after just some days because it’s impossible to get a fast operation license for that type of car in EU since it doesn’t have proper catalyst system. Of course we could re-fit the car with some of this but again time was our main opponent. Second choice was to buy a Volkswagen Golf 2 Diesel because also this type of car is heavily connected with Balkan in general and supply of repair parts in case of damage on the road should be at least decent even in the most remote places on this planet. Unfortunately offers were shitty, too expensive for rather crappy conditioned cars. 3rd and final try was to opt for Audi 80. Benjamin works in automotive engineering industry so he has by far more clue and knowledge about this technical topic than me. He found an old Audi in some village near to Zwickau. A family of peasants who owned the car wanted to sell the old donkey since the driver, their grandmother, had just passed away, so we got it for some small money. Registration and insurance was done in some days, each of us also needed to apply for an international driving license because our European ones are not fully accepted outside EU borderlines. It’s basically only a money thing and of course you’ll need to wait some hours in slow working German federal offices. Some days prior to the initial start of the trip Irtysh Pavlodar fuckers crashed all of the plans when they got kicked out by the 100% no-name Trakai team. Au jebote, uzas, kosmar, sramota grande! We now faced the hard decision to re-plan all the trip or just skip the 2nd round away match and calm ourselves down with instead heading to 3rd round at home at JNA. This surely was not so easy for the mind to accept, but it was a good decision in the end, I’ll tell about it a bit later. Also the car gave us some real extra headache, several experts seriously warned us to use the car for a trip any further than to the next vehicle cemetery: the car frame was rust and rust only, the brakes didn’t work well, all the exhaust system was crap, fuel pipe covered with moss. Basically the Audi was a rolling danger for us and others, hehe. We did some minor repairs using helping hands from the black market, just didn’t want to waste too much money in the burgundy bolide. Finally the expedition left western Saxonian soil on 26/07 with some student girls from Blablacar towards Polish capital Warszawa and further on to Belarus border city Brest where legendary Diego Maradona had landed a pseudo-job as sports director for local Dynamo football club. We saw their match in ELQ and went on to Ukrainian capital Kiev where we met with our good friend Yuri and his wife Katja. Together continued to Sumy to meet with fans of the local 2nddivision club and entered Russia the next morning. In Tambov again action in 2ndlevel of the pyramid before targeting Volga river city Saratov for Russian cup. In Samara the car we in the meantime named Horst (very traditional, outdated German first name, also current minister for internal affairs famous for being stubborn and senile, Horst Seehofer, is gifted with this great name) for being pretty ugly, moody and without proper manners lost the exhaust system already for the second time. Russian Audi garage guys said repair is senseless, this is a piece of shit, but they still helped us to find another guy, driftcar racer Kostya, who gratefully took care of our vehicle and fixed the damage with his Armenian fellow in his facility situated near to the World Cup arena. We went to see Krylya Sovetov vs CSKA Moskva in the meantime. The next days we still stood in the region, visiting Lenin’ birth city Ulyanovsk and famous Lada plant in Tolyatti. Of course some football also there. Next destination in the list was Kazakhstan: with Pavlodar not making the cut to 2nd round I needed to adjust our route slightly so we went to Caspian Sea city Atyrau. Benjamin and me shared driving duty all along the way but I had better luck in finding the deep holes in the asphalt frankly spoken. I hit another one at night, concentration was not at peak, light was low. We needed to stop to check what exactly was broken and where surrounded by camels immediately. That probably was the moment when we realized we were quite some kilometers away from home. The match in Atyrau was the widely expected crap, free entry, shitty stadium, few supporters. Also not much to see besides football in the industrial town. The next day welcomed us with the most horrible road we had ever experienced. It is only about 250 km from Atyrau back to the Russian border but it took us about 8h to get there. Holes so big that you can store intercontinental rockets in there and no satellite system will ever discover them from space, pure hell! To stay focused and carry the car around all of them was the task of the day. It truly was like balancing raw eggs on a flat plate in a rollercoaster without seeing the end coming. Really the worst stage of the trip. That was the moment when we both were really really glad that Kazakhs can’t play football and Irtysh was already kicked out because driving on road like this for several thousand kilometers more would have definitely not only killed the car but our nerve costume too, unbelievable conditions and a true shame for such a rich of natural resources country like Kazakhstan. Local politicians pump all the money into Astana and Almaty while the rest of the country is still in infrastructural stone age. Sooo good to be back in Russia shortly after. Had a short sleepover in beautiful Astrakhan, home of the watermelons. Right on to through widely unpopulated Buddhist Kalmykia to lovely Dagestan and the oldest Russian city, 5.000 year old Derbent. Soon after some Champions League qualification action in fast developing Azeri capital Baku, touristic stuff in Kavkaz mountains towards Georgia, enjoying the delicious food there and on to Armenia’ 2nd biggest city Gyumri which Partizan’ fans surely know well since the team played here several years ago in European qualification as well and former striker Beko Fofana was transferred to Belgrade from the squad of domestic FK Shirak right after the match in the municipality stadium. Gyumri was destroyed heavily in the devastating 1988 earthquake; some reader may remember the news. We did not spend much time in Turkey during this trip, Erdogan is going nuts, not a very welcoming climate for Germans right now. At least the man with the mustache had recently started some serious beef with the idiot in the white house in Washington and that caused the local currency to fall so fuel was incredibly cheap for us in the few our we were driving on Ottoman highways back to geographical Europe. Bypassing Greece, Northern Macedonia and catching another Sarajevo Derby at Grbavica on Wednesday we found ourselves back in Serbia the day of Partizans match with the Danish side from Nordsjaelland. The tour concluded with visits of matches in Bijeljina and Ljubljana. Overall our well-aged Audi named Horst within 26 days of travelling passed 22 borders, brought us to 17 matches in 17 countries and afterwards had 11.900 km plus on the counter. That was also the last big adventure of the car, it got sold shortly after re-arrival in Saxony to some Polish guy for 200 Euro cash. He brought it to his country to slaughter it right away. Like George Harrison once sung: all things must pass! For sure one of the longest, complex and funniest travels I’ve ever made. Met so many nice and kind people along the road, saw many new places or different aspects of already known one. Great time, great trip!

- Bundesliga, is it your cup of tea?

Nope, not really, especially in recent years. Most of the matches are on Pay-TV exclusively these days, only short sum-ups will be shown on Free-TV later in the evening. And the style of reportage changed a lot to the worse in the last years, it’s too much bubblegum-entertainment, not much about the football itself. Players and coaches are media professionals nowadays, everything is optimized for the consumer market, no edges and realness. Money has fully taken over the business in the last two decades. Prices in stadiums in Germany are still somewhat okay if you compare to other countries like UK or Spain, but still I don’t see the point of paying that much to this business machine. Another reason is also we, meaning the East, currently has no team up there. I don’t consider this marketing tool of the Austrian energy drink tycoon in Leipzig a football club, its 100% plastic, bullshit. Also Hertha BSC is not one of ours since from former western sector of Berlin, so no connection to them either. Sometimes I go with SG Dynamo Dresden to a few games in the 2. Bundesliga since I know a couple of leading guys from the stands there – Zwickau and Dynamo do have a vivid supporter friendship for +15 years already. It started on Ultra’ level and further evolved while time passed. It’s okay to discover some new stadiums and cities that you would never see in normal life with them but I’m not that excited about it anymore, those trips lost a lot of their former magic, it’s too much regulations and level of German organization can be a pain in the ass as well. The guys in charge in Dresden have grown up / aged just like me so it’s not that total madness anymore. Those good times when the newspaper headlines Monday morning were granted to “away trip football misbehave” are gone – reason, restrictions, laws and structure have won the battle.

- As I can notice, you can communicate in Serbian, you have visited many places important for Serbian history. It seems that you do enjoy your travels, wherever you are?

You’re exactly hitting the point: travelling for me is one of the greatest joys and sources of happiness in life. It’s not limited to Serbia exclusively, every new place and / or sight is offering something specific, unique. Also re-visiting of already known places after some time is a quite entertaining procedure, noticing the changes or their absence. Guess what, I’m a quite talkative bloke, so meeting new personalities along the way always is a pleasure, hearing the stories, biographies, tales of hardships and pleasure, lifelines created in different circumstances. The football serves mostly as the igniting spark to start another trip but after seeing not a small number of matches until now for me establishing those personal contacts like the two of us did some months back in Belgrade are actually much more valuable than counting stadiums, derbies or choreography ideas. My Serbian language skills are very limited, I can make myself heard and drop some basic phrases but I’m far form understanding grammar or advanced vocabulary. I just don’t care much about all the mistakes I’ll produce in the even most simply sentences and keep talking. The main idea is widely understood and people acknowledge that that guy is at least trying. When I started to come to then Yugoslavia I could not even read Cyrillic letters. It took some time to practice and the growing importance of the internet and availability of relevant content sure boosted things. I don’t care much about things like nationality and belief and at least try to treat people crossing my personal path equally. During the time I’m wandering around I made 99% positive experiences with this rather simple and may naïve strategy, but for me it works. Now since we’re livin’ in a time where the dividing factors are again much more highlighted than the unifying ones I consider myself really gifted to have the chance to meet people from all over the world and hear their personal opinions instead of pre-manufactured and manipulated media bullshit. The vast majority of people are actually nice guys, yeah.

- Looking from the distance and comparing with Germany, that may be easier to see: what would you change in Partizan or around Partizan to make the club better?

Before giving my answer on this subject I want to remind that I’m still having only limited access to information and backgrounds due to the existing language barrier, my few words Serbian are not enough. So I heavily depend on the input my friends provide and the progress that online translation platforms achieved in recent years. But my impression on Serbian football and also Partizan more particular is that there are a lot of figures in there for the wrong reasons. I mean it is obvious that the political powers interfere in the sport, the clubs are like toys, marketing tools and likely also source of cash for certain political parties, the success on the pitch shall help to polish the image of associated personalities, money from transfers may ends up in some election campaign, who knows for real. Already from the early visits to then SCG people were talking to me about very likely match fixing, highly advanced money laundering, connections of members of the board of directors to dubious guys from the criminal world, unpaid loans, super-shitty organization, lack of mentality in some players minds, that are more interested in partying than training etc. I predict most of these stories are true. That all sums up to an amount when you can’t take anything serious anymore, the club and the world around it becomes part of a very bad scripted reality show but just in reality. This is what I observed during many in-depth discussions with Partizan and Serbian football fans in general. I hate the word itself but analyzed from the outside that thing called football is more than ever before a product. You will only intent to “buy” the product if you really believe in its deeper value so the main thing is credibility and identification. Right now, let’s be very honest and straight forward, Partizan is in a very sad state, it is actually hard to convince people to start following the club because most of the symptoms mentioned above apply to Partizans current situation. So if you want to change things to the better there is no other way than a proper cleaning of the house, a big reset. But since the club is deeply embedded in a relatively small country were all this cross-interferences from showbiz, sport, politics on to crime are pretty much the “widely accepted regular” it is hard to achieve on the short or even mid-term, you’ll need to work on the described mentality “it’s Serbia, you know, it was always like this, we have to accept” first. To gain credibility as a club you need well respected and modest people with a clear vision for the club and not primarily themselves and their importance inside the club. Just now I remember all the very weird bullshit that surrounded for example the election process of the Uprava some 2, 3 years ago when Bjekovic and his fellows tried to get back in the director’s chair. This was so surreal to watch, Roger Corman or John Carpenter would make a fantastic B-Movie out of it. Pure comedy but also very sad on the other side of the medal since all this surely didn’t help to create a better, more professional image of the club. Ask yourself: is or was there a single person in the last let’s say 20 years inside the administration that was not connected with some major scandals in- or outside football? Still these people are in charge, they may change designated positions and move on to FSS just to come back to the club some years later and vice versa. It’s a joke, you can’t achieve anything with such people, no serious investor, sponsor or strategic partner will give them trust so the development of the club is fundamentally harmed by this. Let’s just assume this could be fixed so the club would have the opportunity for a fresh start which leads us to the next valid factor: the club must find other ways to secure a decent budget. Selling of youngers who have not even played for the first team more than 1-2 season for peanut money and getting funds from the public hand will lead nowhere in the long run. We see this happening right now: obviously the clubs bank accounts are successfully emptied to the max, the country leadership openly supports the other side of the hill on Ljutice Bogdana ulica so even the re-directed tax payer money washed trough public structures does not flow as it used to. I know the talks about privatization of the clubs started earlier than Cecas first plastic surgeries and still there is zero progress but this just needs to be done otherwise any board of directors basically is a toothless white tiger. Influence of player agents shall be limited, but that is kinda wishful thinking in theory, I’m quite aware of it. It’s just not anything near pleasant to see that most clubs are nowadays in the hands of such guys whose main interest is profit and not the being-well of the club itself. The quality of the squad in the last two decades heavily depended on the status of the personal connections of the leadership towards those few influential guys who manage to acquire the rights to represent the rising stars to be of SC Teleoptik and elsewhere in the country way before those youngsters even leave school. But that is for sure not a problem limited only to Serbia, its more the standard modern day slave trading of people with some feeling for the ball in their feet. Money talks! Not so sure if I already mentioned it before but it shall be acknowledged that within the football world just like the real world the pieces are drifting from each other, I mean the differences between clubs become bigger and bigger. There are few super giants, you can see them every year in the knock-out stages of the Champions League and pay money to cheer in front of the Pay-TV. This is the modern version of Roman theatre. Then you have some clubs who are looking back at a colorful and successful history and now are havin’ a hard time to fulfill the fans expectations in a changed economic environment. And of course the vast majority of clubs that never achieved anything, may create some talents, but are basically okay with keeping up their own existence. Serbian football with its two big names right now is still in the 2nd group but the future will tell if this position can be kept. General progress of the country, good governance and creating life / work perspectives for educated youngsters to stay will be a deciding factor also for the football sphere in where the way may lead. It is impossible to ever get close again to clubs like Real Madrid or Manchester Utd.; sure they can be beaten on a magic night but their financial abilities are by far out of reach unless an oil field will be accidently discovered beneath JNA so Partizan can only focus on becoming a regional power again. Dinamo Zagreb under guidance of thief Mamic and his family did some good European campaigns in recent years – this probably is the maximum achievable nowadays for any club from former Yugoslavia and therefore should be the benchmark for Partizan as well. If performances like getting into CL group stage from time to time and becoming a regular in Europa League can be realized not just by getting “easy” opponents throughout the draw as well as under a creditable and stable club leadership added with keeping the squad together for more than just a competitional season to raise identification potential among followers I’m pretty sure fans of Partizan would already be very proud again. Well, there is a lot of work to do. But, to quote the befriended fan club Eptalofos slogan from PAOK Saloniki: “Never give up!”, the joy will be on the side of those who keep it going even when times are rough, so keep the faith i samo napred!

- Thank you again for this incredible story, see you in Humska soon, or wherever Partizan are playing…