Travel to Euro 2008

When I attended Euro2004 Portugal, (had tickets to all the QF matches), I couldn't reserve any hotels in Lisbon in advance at any price. So I winged it any went to the tourist office at the airport praying they would have something, anything. Turned out they had plenty of rooms, in fact and there was a 5-star hotel downtown that was on the push-list with half price rooms. Long story short, the "Cinderella" Greek team happened to be staying there as well.

Your first task will probably be to see if you can even get tickets for any of the matches. Applications for tickets ended at the end of last March, and they were so over-subscribed they had to hold a lottery. 20 per cent of the tickets were held back for the various national soccer associations of the countries involved in Euro 2008, so you might want to check to see if any of them still have any available. Unfortunately, none of the teams from the UK are involved. You can probably find some for sale thru channels on the Internet, but make sure they're approved by some sort of participating national squad, or you may find your tickets are worthless when you arrive at the stadium. Hopefully, Andreas can provide more info about that. As well, hotel rooms, I notice, are already in short supply, especially in Basel and Vienna, where the playoffs will be held.

This will be the first European Championships I will not be attending since 1996 as I was not able get tickets this time around; both Austria and Switzerland have tiny stadiums so I wasn't too surprised. In terms of purchasing black market tickets that don't have your name on it, it's not a big deal. Every tournament the organizers make threats that they will check IDs to the names on the tickets, but it's just a giant bluff. On games days my id was never checked not did I witness anyone getting IDed. In terms of hotels if you check the major web sites it will say the hotels have "no availability". But the reality is that many of the rooms are simply being held by the official hotel booking service. To get around this contact hotels directly by phone or email; but rooms will be expensive! Basel and Vienna aren't the only venues for the tournament other cities include: Salzburg, Klagenfurt, Innsburck, Zurich, Bern, and Geneva.

I have to comment on this one, right?! ;-)About flights: Try to get a cheap flight to Munich as from there you can easily travel to the Austrian match locations. If you've got tickets for Basel or Zurich, either fly into Frankfurt and take the train or fly to London and take Easyjet. Also Geneva is well-connected with London via that low cost carrier. Also flying into Milan might be an option. If you're like 99.9% of us and don't get tickets still go there as the Austrians and Swiss will copy what the Germans introduced at the 2006 WorldCup and what turned out to be even better than being at the stadium: Fan-Miles. You can watch the matches on giant screens in a carnival-like environment and party with fans from all the countries. Book your accommodations ASAP, actually better last week than today! For Salzburg accommodation also look at Rosenheim, Freising, Berchtesgaden, for Vienna also look at Bratislava, for Basel also look at Lörrach, Grenzach, Freiburg, Moulhouse, for...

... Innsbruck also look for Garmisch or Mittenwald (Germany), for Klagenfurt also look for Maribor and Bled (Slovenia, also €uro-zone country), for Geneva also look at Annemasse (France) etc.Book your flights as soon as you get the price you're looking for. However, I wouldn't wait until April or so...

Oh, and reg. Norm's comments on the UK teams: Yes, you are right and it IS a pitty that England won't be part of it. But then again, hey this is a tournament for the BEST European football (soccer) teams to find out who's the single very best one (as if we didn't know the answer already) and since there are hardly any Englishmen playing in the UK Premier League...

Ooooh, Andreas...that hurt! Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of language issues if they wanted to try to get some tickets out of a national association. In any event, the point you raise is a good one....the giant screen approach in 2004 seems to have worked very well. And I echo your comments that it would be best to book yesterday....even the hotel websites are showing few rooms open. They can try accorhotels.com for the inexpensive Ibis or Etap hotels in some of the locations Michael has listed. And yes, there's no question we already know the best national squad....Spain! (if they let Raul play) ;)

Norm, I suppose we should kinda bookmark this thread and check back June 29th... or June 30th when the Germans celebrate their victory on Römer square in Frankfurt, which is our traditional national victorious home coming event... in football, of course! ;-)