The joy of football.

June the 7th sees the start of Euro 2008 being held jointly between Austria and Switzerland with a total of thirty-one games played over nineteen days.
Switzerland have really embraced their role in the games and it’s pretty hard not to get swept up in the excitement of it all. For example; the Swiss need no encouragement to display their nation’s flag, but there are loads of flags being flown from poles and cars, hung from windows and being worn on clothing at the moment.
There’s a ton of Euro 2008 merchandise you can buy in supermarkets, sports shops, train stations and airports. A guy up the road from me has decorated his hedge in Swiss flags and hats. There’s product placement and everything; it’s mightily impressive.

According to an article in an in-flight magazine I read recently (I never thought that I would be flying so much as to get excited by the prospect of a new in-flight magazine) giant screens are being erected in some cities during the championship that will allow up to 50,000 people without tickets to watch the games in a huge crowd. I could have this fact very wrong, but I like to think it’s true because I was thinking of going along to one.
I have a hatred of huge crowds and I’m not really too bothered about football, but when there’s a number of huge football games happening up the road from you why not pop along?
I was thinking of going to Basel for the Switzerland vs. Turkey game. It should take about an hour to get up there by train. I might not stay for the game itself, but it would be fun to have a walk round and soak in the atmosphere of a city before it’s national team plays that night. It’s something I’ve never done in Scotland before, mainly because we haven’t had many tournaments on Scottish soil.

Since there’s no British team in the event I will be giving the Swiss team my full support. I think that one of the home nations has every right to do well and I hope that it does.

The one problem that I have with the whole thing is that I leave Switzerland for a while six days into the tournament and it’s going to cost me a bloody fortune to get back here when I need to return. There’s good and bad news about leaving on the 13th (other than getting on a plane on Friday the 13th, I’m glad I’m not superstitious).
The bad news is that both games that are being played on that day are taking place in Switzerland. The good news is that one is happening in Zürich while the other is happening in Berne, both roughly to the North of here, and Geneva is roughly to the South. Also both games kick off at 20:45 local time, so I’ll be happily in Scotland, so I have no idea why I’m worried.