FOOTBALL smells better in Austria, no doubt about it.

For a pre-season friendly, Wanderers 2-1 defeat against Sturm Graz was pretty exciting – three goals, plenty of chances, a sending off and (nearly) a mass brawl.

Anyone who watched on Sturm’s YouTube channel would have seen all that – but they wouldn’t have sampled a very unique atmosphere at Stadion Kumberg.

Everywhere you turned, someone was roasting meat of some sort, crunching through pretzels, or necking ice cold beer. Had I been a fan, and not one of Her Majesty’s Press, I would have been in my element.

Instead, I joined four other journalists on a picnic table with no protection from the 32C sunshine, sipping fizzy water. I’m not bitter.

Even though Wanderers’ camera man Craig bailed us out with some sun tan lotion, passed from English journo to Austrian journo like a symbol of international peace, my head still ended up so red you could see it from space.

Truth be told, I was lucky to get to the ground at all.

Rather than be all ‘Mr Moneybags’ and get myself a taxi to the ground – which would have been about 30 Euros – I opted for the bus, at a cost of four.

I’d like to thank a Wanderers fan by the name of Keith for his advice on Twitter.

He was 100 per cent correct on how to get to Kumberg, whereas the Information Desk at the Hautbahnhof will be getting a snotty email in English sometime soon for their shoddy directions.

I had a nice chat with another Whites fan on the bus up to the stadium, so nice, in fact, that we missed the stop entirely.

In England that’s usually an error of 500 yards. Here in Austria it’s much worse.

For what seemed like an eternity the bus drove on up into the mountains before coming to a halt and letting us out. It had to be a two-mile hike back through the forest to get back into Kumberg and by the time I got to the ground I was cream crackered.

On my return to Graz I stumbled across a massive festival in the city park, another thing the mainland Euopeans do better than us.

Thousands of people were camped out to watch the music with a few drinks. It would have been perfect... But I had more copy to file.

So, back in the air conditioning and free wi-fi of my hotel room, I started typing, pausing momentarily for a bite of chicken kebab.

Rock ‘n’ roll eh?