h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yesterday was Bob Dylan's birthday. On that day in 1985 I got married (yes, I was a child-bride at 21)

So that meant it was our 30th Anniversary. and I have been having a bit of a weekend of it.

We started on Saturday with buying a "new" car in the morning (our current Golf will not make it through the TÜV - which is like the MOT) and in the afternoon headed off to the final match of the season, which was luckily a home game for the Mighty Borussia Mönchengladbach. Against Augsburg (who beat us away last time). We were right next to the away fans this time, but the atmosphere was like a cup final.

Gladbach couldn't do worse than finish 3rd in the table, so their Champions League place was safe. A win for us and a win for the hated Köln would have put us 2nd above Wolfsburg, but nobody thought that would happen. There were flags on every seat in the stadium and the fan end (the Nordkurve) had arranged a massive flag-waving (different, bigger flags) and a huge banner that stretched right across the upper stand at their end. Spine tingling, especially when they announced a group was over from Liverpool (there's a sort of partnership thing between the two clubs) who then hung out their banner and the whole crowd burst into You'll Never Walk Alone.

Not a song I like but that one really raised goosebumps.

Then our fan song, scarf waving (and I'm finally not getting tied in knots when I do that) and the game started. Gladbach traditionally have 10 minutes at the beginning of each half that I can barely watch, and this was no different with Augsburg having all the ball. But eventually we scored and the place went bananas.

Unfortunately, Augsburg were in with a chance (if they won) of getting into the play offs for the Europa league and they seemed to want it more and the final result was 1-3, but even so. The home fans just stayed in the ground, cheering their team. It was lovely. After that outside the ground was a stage for an End of Season gig, with the players due to come on stage. Apparently there were 20,000 fans there but we're short and can never see so we got the bus/train home again.

On Sunday we were up early, back in our football shirts and off to the stadium for a bit of fun. WDR TV and Radio is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and one of the things they're doing to mark the occasion is to go round all the Bundesliga clubs in Nordrhein Westfalen and record the fans singing the club anthem. Accompanied by the WDR orchestra. They needed about 500 fans to make it work.

The other clubs averaged around 600, we were more than 1,000. It was great fun, first we had a run through of the song, clapping as usual, then the orchestra - who were in tails - played and we had a go at that, which was useless. Then we were told not to clap because it distorts the sound. Which was weird, but lead to more flag waving and scarf spinning. We went through it 15 times in all, and there was a lot of chanting and fun to be had between takes.

At the end we were having a beer outside when a young chap with a camera rolled up, having heard us speaking English, and insisted on filming us saying what we thought of it all. So it may or may not make the final cut. The film will be cut together with those from Dortmund, Schalke, Düsseldorf, Köln (boo) and should be available to view Sometime in August.

We did think about zipping over to Düsseldorf to watch Fortuna try to salvage some dignity this season, but we realised we only had our Borussia shirts on (it was about 20°C) and that would never do. (they lost 2-3 in the end which was quite useless) so we went home instead.

Yesterday evening we went for dinner in a local posh-ish restaurant with the Gruesome Twosome and had a lovely time. And that's where the pearls came in - gave me a neclace with a pearl pendent (30 years = pearl anniversary). He got the new football strip (Saturday, so he could wear it at the match)

so all in all a good weekend.

Congratulations to you both for these 30 years, and here's to 30 more at least!

Hooray, yet another reason to celebrate! Congratulations to you and hubby and Die Fohlen and Dylan

Congrats on 30 years! We have our 25th anniversary in September. We can't afford the trip to Italy I was hoping for, so we'll be spending a month in Scotland.