Euro 2012 Diary: No food, no sleep, no joy for Portugal

The train journey up to Gdansk was bad, but the journey back to Warsaw was infinitely worse. In a chaos of fans and late trains, I ended up jumping on a train bound for Katowice, having been told I could change at Bydgoszcz. "A fine speedway town," said the ever unruffled Keir Radnedge, the former editor of World Soccer, who ended up in the same compartment. The first hour and a half or so were fine and I happily dozed.

At Bydgoszcz, though, we discovered the connection was half an hour late. When it arrived, it was packed. I ended up lying on the floor in a four-foot gap between the end of the heater and the corridor door, my head on my laptop bag, kicking the door whenever anybody approached to encourage them to open it outwards. I eventually arrived back in
Warsaw at a little before 06:30, having managed perhaps 20 minutes uncomfortable sleep. My back still aches.

I know moaning journalist stories quickly pall - after all, I am getting paid for doing on paper pretty much what I'd do in the pub anyway - but arriving back in the flat on Monday morning 24 hours and 4 minutes after I'd left was a pretty depressing experience. I managed three hours sleep before I had to be up and writing again and it was
only at about 2am that I realised in the previous 36 hours all I'd managed to eat was two bananas, a cheese and ham croissant, a bowl of cabbage soup (from the media centre in Gdansk - very tasty) and six squares of white chocolate.

Ravenous, I turned to the only food in the flat other than bananas - three slices of left over pizza from Saturday. I hunted round the kitchen for a microwave or an oven - nothing. Just a two-ring hob, although encouragingly the dials went up to 11. Couldn't they just make 10 hotter? I don't know, but it amused me. It still didn't solve the problem of how to heat the pizza but I managed it by dry frying in a frying pan. A simple homemade rigatoni with a tomato, aubergine, pepper and sausagemeat sauce that evening was my first proper meal in 48 hours and tasted like ambrosia.

Having just about recovered from that trip, though, there was the second Battle of Warsaw to dodge as Polish hooligans attacked a Russian march to celebrate Russian national day with predictable consequences. In total, 56 arrests were made before kick-off and police admitted using plastic bullets, auditory grenades, tear-gas and water-cannons to disperse crowds but all I saw was lots of riot police wandering around - as well as a bloke dressed as Darth Vader, who kept mixing with the police.

After a thrilling game, played in a raucous but non-threatening atmosphere, I left the stadium with five other British journalists - just to be on the safe side. As it turned out, we found cabs quickly and although I saw one fan being arrested and a lot more riot police, the centre of Warsaw seemed relatively calm.

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After one game that echoed through history comes another today as Germany face the Netherlands. After losing their opener to Denmark, the Dutch would go out if they lost and Denmark avoided defeat against Portugal. And the tension was clear in their coach Bert van Marwijk's tense press conference yesterday. Depending on the result of the day's first game, a draw would probably suit Germany, in which case it may be value at 3.4549/20.

The striking long price of the day, though, is in that opening game. Denmark's liveliness on the break against the Netherlands and the fact they beat Portugal in their final qualifier seems not to have impressed: 4.94/1 on a Danish victory looks very long, or at the very
least it must be worth considering laying a nervous Portugal at 1.9420/21.