Hopp Schwiiz!

Welcome to a straight month of football. I'll be spending the next four weeks of my life watching more soccer, and hopefully by the end I won't be terribly sick of it. I doubt that will happen, though. There are 24 opening round games, four quarter finals, two semi finals, and a final. That's 31 games. That's 46.5 hours of nothing but football. That's not even counting half time, pre-game and post-game coverage. I'm going to be a busy man. And this is going to be a lot of fun.

I rolled into the first host country, Switzerland, Friday after a day of train riding. I can now hold my head high and say I've been to Luxembourg, which I doubt many can say. Disregard the fact that I only spent an hour there in between two trains; it's Luxembourg, do you need more than an hour? Anyway, I got in around 7 p.m., and proceeded to get lost finding my hostel just like at every other city. Once I found that, I scoped out the rest of the city and checked out how they had prepared for this extravagant tournament. Their streets are covered in Euro garb, and there's an electricity in the air. It's going to be an exciting place to watch games, that's for sure.

So by poor planning and a lack of rooms, I didn't actually get to spend the evening in Basel, where the tournament was set to kick off. Instead, I had to catch a train to Bern where I would be catching the game. But no fear, in all the host cities they have giant "Fan Zones," where all those of us without tickets can congregate. And there are a lot of fans, most without tickets. I'm amazed that people just give up work for a month to hang out in a foreign town and spend money like there's no tomorrow. I guess Switzerland and Austria must love it.

The wonderful thing about Bern is that the Netherlands (or Holland, I'm not really sure how that works (and on that notew, why do we call them the Dutch?)) play all three of their opening round games here, meaning that thousands of Dutchmen (some with tickets, many without) have descended on this tiny mountain town all decked out in their obnoxiously orange jerseys. I say this is a good thing because, in my experience, the Dutch are incredibly friendly and fun, which should make Bern an interesting place to watch a match.

So for the opening match, everybody was nuts for Switzerland, because, after all, I am in Switzerland. It was almost impossible to find somewhere to stand and watch the match in the Fan Zone. It was sad that Switzerland lost, because it would have been exciting to see the kind of revelry that happens - but I'm sure that will come as the tournament progresses and I make my way to Vienna.

I did get to see the Portuguese fans go nuts when they beat Turkey in their opening game. Why there were tons of Portuguese in Bern, Switzerland, I'll have no idea, but they love their team. I think women in Portugal must love guys with mullets. That's the only reason I can conjure why every Portuguese man between 18 and 30 had the same business in the front, party in the back cut in the image of their country's new national icon, Cristiano Ronaldo. It was like some weird Portuguese version of that "My new haircut" video where all the guys look the same.

I don't know if anybody has ever been to something like this before, but the atmosphere is incredible. The town has been completely consumed by Euro 2008, and store windows of every shop carry some sort of football or Switzerland paraphernalia. The streets are lined with Euro 2008 flags, and booths have been set up everywhere hawking European football goods like jerseys, face paint, noise makers, and anything else under the sun with team colors on it.

Bern is one of my favorite stops so far, and I wish I was spending more than 24 hours here. It's tiny, and exactly what I think of when I think of Switzerland. It's set up on a hill and surrounded on three sides by a river. Its streets are cobblestone and the buildings are not modern at all. The entire city was named a UNESCO world heritage site in the 80s.

Now it is back to Basel where I'll be sleeping for two nights, but I will be coming back here to Bern to watch Holland play Italy, which I'm excited about. Tonight's match between Germany and Poland should be an interesting one. There's a lot of noise about ill feelings from Poland towards Germany (I wonder why) that could manifest at the game. I wish I could go, but it doesn't seem feasible to get to Klagenfurt for that. Then again, I'm running around like a madman for the next few weeks anyways, so I might eventually make it there.

I haven't quite picked who I'm rooting for, but I'm sure it's not Portugal. I like the Czech Republic, and I like Croatia, and I think it would be fun to go to Germany right after they won. I think if I hang around with the Dutch much more, I'm going to fall for that team. Plus, who wouldn't want one of their electric orange jerseys. Or at least a hat.