Sorry for the somewhat tardy delivery of today's diary. Like most here I spent a sizeable proportion of the evening celebrating last night's fantastic win. The Blue Army are a bit quieter this morning with hangovers to nurse and planes to catch.
Thursday saw strong winds again, although perhaps not as strong as the previous day when we had seen a park bench blown over. We spent the day wandering the town, round by the North Harbour which is being developed with stylish flats and bars. A bit like on Neptune Quay, only on a much grander scale.
The day saw increasing numbers of fans and by mid-afternoon most people on the streets were Town supporters. Apparently we brought more fans (3,000 according to local reports) here than Chelsea, Aston Villa and Inter Milan when they faced Helsingborg. Pretty impressive stuff.
Harry's was the venue of choice for many but by late afternoon was one-in, one-out. Given that Harry's is much the size that Flour and Firkin was, that's quite a lot of Town fans. The management hadn't expected a busy day and so the numbers of bar staff were inadequate in the extreme. 55 members of the Scandinavian Branch of the ITFC Supporters' Club were in attendance and persuaded the management to play Singing the Blues over sound system. David Sheepshanks was there and was raised shoulders high. He and his wife had been in the town earlier meeting the many supporters.
We went to the ground in the afternoon to get in some early souvenir hunting. Whilst doing this we met a couple of young Swedish lads who were working at the stadium and who had put up the large banner in tribute to Sven Andersson at the opposite end to the Town supporters. One of them told us that he hoped Town would win. He explained: "I am not a Helsingborg fan, I just work here." Which was fair enough. What we weren't expecting though was for him to proclaim a love of Bournemouth. Funny old world.
When we came back to the ground later on we went to the stand we were in, helpfully renamed Ipswich Town Supporters on all the maps. As we went past the stewards they welcomed us to Helsingborg and the same thing happened as we went through the turnstiles. I don't think the same thing will happen at Chelsea on Sunday.
The attitude of the stewards was generally relaxed with beer, which we had thought would be unavailable, being openly drunk on the terraces. Standing was also permitted.
The game itself was superb as we all know, well it was after a sticky start. Afterwards it was back into the town to fill the bars and decide where we want to go next.
The players and many of the staff were in the Marina Plaza hotel on the Knutpunkten. Marcus Stewart, Jamie Clapham and Matt Holland were the notable faces on view while someone claims to have heard Darren Bent on his mobile ringing home to give them the news of his debut: "Dad, I played tonight!"
For us it was then back to our hotel for a bit of banter with the staff who took the defeat in good spirits, typifying the friendly manner of our hosts all the time we have been here. Their PA announcer even wished us good luck in the next round. Can't see many of our clubs back home doing the same in similar circumstances.
At least one more European trip then. So far both have been fantastic experiences, very different, but both great in their way. Here's to many more...