Michael Burgess: My crazy 400km taxi ride to see England v Sweden

Herald football writer Michael Burgess with his football friends. Photo / Twitter/@mikeburgess99

The World Cup can be a once in a lifetime experience for football fans.

Herald football writer Michael Burgess is one of those lucky fans who travelled to Russia to experience the tournament firsthand.

Speaking to Newstalk ZB's Martin Devlin about his experience travelling to watch this morning's quarter-final between England and Sweden, Burgess detailed his incredible journey to Samara, which included a crazy 400km taxi ride.

"It was a hell of a journey," Burgess said. "It was quite tricky to get here. I was in Kazan, which is about 400 kilometres to the west for the Brazil-Belgium game.

"But then there was no buses and trains available to go to Samara, so what we ended up doing was arranging a carpooling service to meet us at four o'clock in the morning at a shopping mall in the outskirts of town. [But] the carpooling service didn't turn up, so then we ended up just getting a taxi.

"The driver was quite shocked. We told him, look, can you drive us 400 kilometres. He was a bit of a lunatic, he was doing about 150 kilometres per hour at times. But we got here and we're all in one piece."

Despite the long journey, Burgess said the taxi only ended up costing 7000 RUB (about $160-170NZD).

"[The driver] was probably at the end of his shift. It was 4.30 in the morning. He's probably thinking I'll do one more job and go home and suddenly he's driving these three foreigners who can't speak any Russian 400 kilometres down this very dodgy highway at times, full of potholes, full of everything.

"So it was certainly an adventure. It lived up to all the cliches, he was smoking the whole time, flicking ash back into us in the backseat, he had the music blaring, it was just a complete experience."