jhb

Been a Bochum supporter since the season 1992/3, when for the first time in 22 years Bochum were relegated from the 1st Bundesliga. In those 22 years, they averaged 2 spots above relegation, earning them the aka “un-relegatables”. In the first 6 years I experienced all the joys and fears possible, starting with relegation, instant promotion, instant relegation, instant promotion, surprise qualification for the UEFA-cup, and a mediocre Bundesliga season with an impressive UEFA cup tie against Ajax. In the years since, we had one more successful run in the UEFA-cup, three more relegations with instant promotion following, and all the time I was moving farther and farther away from the city itself. Having never lived in Bochum, I started off in the Ruhrpott, then moved up the rhine (near Cologne) in 1999, even further to the south of Germany in 2001, and right up almost to the North Sea in 2007. My distance to the Ruhrstadion increases every couple of years, and at the moment I am happy if I manage to see one home match per season, though I try to throw in as many away matches as possible whenever I visit friends and relatives, or the VfL is coming to Hamburg or Bremen. That said, I take particular interest in following the development of the VfL kit over the years, which oscillates heavily between the profoundly boring (often) and the screamingly mad (once in a while).