Euro 2008

Fans,

As you will probably be aware, the European Football Championships are well under way in Switzerland and Austria at the moment. We bought tickets to see France v Italy (both 2006 World Cup finalists) way back in December last year. Unfortunately, we bought the tickets off a thieving scamming company and the tickets never arrived in the post. We emailed and called them about a hundred times asking where our tickets were but we got no response. We since discovered that hundreds of people have suffered the same fate. However, we have been told that we will get a refund from Visa, so it's not all bad.

We had planned to stop in Zurich for a day to see the match on our way to Croatia (for a summer holiday). So on Tuesday morning, we left London and arrived in Zurich without tickets for the match but determined to have a good day! Zurich was packed full of football fans, which made for a great atmosphere around the city. Tim supports France in football so we joined the thousands of French fans parading their colours in the streets.

The main street that runs along the river and down to the lake was closed to traffic and was full of stalls selling food, drinks and football souvenirs. They also had a "Fan Zone" set up down by the lake, with lots of big screens and more bars and stalls. After wandering around the shops (in particular the chocolate shop!) we stopped in at some of the bars for a few drinks. They had a bar called Coyote Ugly, where the maids danced on the bar, just like in the movie!

Then we made our way to the Fan Zone to watch the game on the big screen. Unfortunately France did not play well and they lost to Italy 2-0, which meant they were eliminated from the tournament and Italy progressed to the quarter finals. We met some English fans who were quite funny. They had made the trip to Switzerland to protest at England's failure to qualify for the championships. They livened up the atmosphere a little with random chants about English striker Peter Crouch and shouts of "Come on England", which got some confused looks from the Italians around us.

After France's dismal showing, we walked / stumbled back to the hotel via the hot dog stand. On Wednesday morning we set off for 6 days in Croatia!






Tim and
cardboard
Euro trophy













Megan by
Grossmunster
















Coyote
Ugly











Ditto














Megan in the
Fan Zone


















Allez
les Bleus















Giant statues
of football
stars in Zurich
train station