Bratwurst und Fußball Euro 2024

Bratwurst und fußball

Leon the Scottish piper in Marienplatz, Munich

If you're reading the headline above and thinking Bread and Circuses, then you'll understand why I am having a hard time putting pen to paper.

Anyway here we are at another major tournament, as time goes by I expected things would get easier, however this tournament has been a nightmare to get tickets for.

I as usual, set up an itinerary for the group stage, and set about making it happen. It took me until the day before the tournament started to get the tickets for the games I intend to go and see.

Beer in Munich

I enlisted the help of a few friends when tickets first went on sale and gave them explicit instructions. I believed that the first phase would be the best opportunity to get cheap tickets with prices as low as €30, it was too good an opportunity to miss.

As results from the initial ballot of ticket sales came in I realised I wasn't going to have many tickets…. that was until the last person contacted me. “I've got six games” they said. Well my instructions had been quite clear on what games and what categories to apply for so I told them to purchase all the tickets.
Then they told me how much they cost! There was clearly a misunderstanding the total was far more than I was budgeting for.

Turns out they hadn't read my instructions and had applied for the most expensive tickets. Never mind, I was grateful for their help and speaking to other people realised that I had more tickets than anyone else at this stage.
Having those tickets enabled me to start booking my flights and accommodation, last November, before the draw for the tournament had been made.

As expected accommodation was expensive, I used booking.com for most. I started to get emails from a number of the places I had booked, asking me to confirm my booking by giving my card details. Wary of this I contacted the establishments and they were aware of a scam. Luckily I did not respond to any of these requests but they all appeared genuine and I can understand how people could have been duped. Clearly there has been a data breach, as how else would scammers know the details of my booking. But as seems the norm now no fuss is made over the matter.