The Footie!

I'm pretty sure that our first visit to a game of football in Switzerland counts as an adventure. I was kind of expecting it be an FC Basel game rather than an international, but heigh-ho!

But first...

Haven't really been up to much the last week, but I did go to the Munster with Claire's friend who was visiting and this time climbed the tower. Everyone who visits Basel should be obliged to do this - it's 4CHF for adults, free for kids and it is hairy! Even if you don't have any problems with heights (I do, a bit, less so in a solid tower made of stone that I know has been standing for centuries than in a little fibreglass bubble on a wire), the stairs start out steep at the bottom and you have to contort your body to get around some of the woodwork and then as you get higher they turn into a very steep, narrow, "spiral" staircase [not that there's any such thing of course; they should be called helical staircases]. There are several stages to get up there so you have to walk around the outside of the tower a couple of times to get to the next staircase. It's about two hundred feet tall and offers a stunning view over Basel and its environs. Well worth the effort and the little bout of vertigo.

Joggeli (pron. "jockley")

On the 7th September 2010, the national football team of England played a Euro 2012 qualifier against Switzerland at St. Jakob-Park [in case you weren't aware] and we got tickets. Of course, we were sat in the home end so I didn't wear colours and celebrated our goals half-heartedly, which I was quite glad about when it started turning ugly when they got a guy sent off.

Lovely, modern stadium with a shopping centre built around it, but we did have a couple of issues. Firstly, the weather was AWFUL. Seriously, that was the worst weather I've seen in Basel. Secondly, getting into the stadium was ridiculous. For the whole of the D block, there was one gateway, maybe wide enough for ten people to get through at a time and no organisation outside at all. Plus they forced Claire and I to separate as the female entrance has women doing the body searches and the male, funnily enough, had blokes doing it. Claire did not enjoy that at all. It was lucky we got there as early as we did or we might have missed kick-off. Ludicrous! Similar problems occurred on leaving - there are no barriers or anything at the trams stops, so it was every man for himself trying to get on the trams. I'd be surprised if there weren't any injuries.

Inside, the stadium is well-organised - from the concourse you can see the game, which basically reduced the size of the queues at half-time as people didn't need to remain in their seats to see the game. If you can't be bothered to take your seat, there are TV screens all along the concourse as well. Unfortunately, we were in row two, right at the front and pitch level which does give you a different view of the game, so that was OK, but the guys in row one in front of us had decided that they didn't want to sit down at all during the game which meant we had to stand; the stewards had a word with them after about twenty minutes, which bucked them up a bit but we still had to stand up for the whole of the last twenty or so (once Shaqiri had scored that wonder goal).

All in all, a pretty positive experience. Looking forward to the Wales game in October now!