I know it's probably early, but I am thinking of taking the trip to Poland-Ukraine for the Euro's - like South Africa - I did my preliminary research about 2 years ahead of time and 1.5 years ahead of time is when i started getting tickets and looking into lodging. Any Americans who went to the Euro's in the past? Would love to know the logistics for getting tickets to games and the ease/difficulty with obtaining lodging, trains in europe, etc. etc. how much time in advance should things be booked? What things should i keep in mind when setting up a trip like this? thanks!
I might go. Dont really like any European teams, but its going to be the summer after my summer graduation, so I might be going on a Euro Trip anyways. And my roots come from those 2 countries, so why not?
b/c it's uefa, i imagine face value will be more than world cup, but getting the tickets through brokers and 2ndary markets will be much more expensive, especially considering it is much easier to travel through europe than south africa, so the demand will be much higher... i would love to know what people in 2008 paid for their tickets - face value and street value...
Have not decided if will go, however, looking at it from a North American perspective, first thing that comes to mind is do I need a Visa, both Canadian an American nationals do not require visas for either Poland nor Ukraine. Second thing that comes to mind is where to fly into. A quick look at flight availability and pricing as of right now seems to be pretty good, flying into Kiev ( final game played here ) seems a bit more complicated, did not find any direct flights from either Toronto nor New York, would probably choose to fly into Warsaw ( opening game is played here ), then make my way around either by Train or Car, gas prices is something to keep in mind, it is very expensive to fill up a tank of Gas anywhere in Europe, generally travelling by train is cheap. Ticket sales start next year, per UEFA's site sometime in early spring, might have a go at it, see what can get, even though have a feeling this Euro will not be as popular as last one.
good info futmotard... I think if I decide to go, I'll do quarters, semis and final and would like to visit both countries especially Kiev and Warsaw. I hope to see holland, germany, italy in those matches Does anyone know if there is a direct train route from Kiev to Warsaw ?
uefa.com hasn't really issued anything in terms of hte ticket sales process except that in the spring of 2011 is when they'll go on sale. hopefully it's more user friendly than the world cup ticketing process...
Do not travel by train in any of those countries if you can't help it, it will be much closer to the SA experience than from what you are used to from 2006 or other European trips. Sharing a car should be affordable, otherwise use buses/coaches, more comfortable and cheaper. I think I will go, but being German and living here, plus having a girlfriend living in Wroclaw makes the hole experience much easier for me.
I'll be going to this (tickets permitting), but probably only for a long weekend as opposed to my normal two weeks. In 2008 tickets varied in price (face value) from about 35 Euros to about 90 I think if I remember correctly (I had some in both categories). In terms of touts, I went to the group game between Germany and Croatia and people were asking for about 3-400 euros. A friend of mine sold a spare for 550 euros for that game. In terms of planning, we booked flights (from England) about 6-9 months beforehand and then accomodation only about 1 month beforehand. Having said that we were staying in fancamps (like big conference centres converted into dormitories), and I wouldn't really recommend those. They cost 20 euros a night so were very cheap, and the atmosphere was excellent (thousans of fans from other countries), but after two weeks in them it started to get a bit tiring.
what's wrong with the trains there? my travels through europe are limited to a few places so I thought there were the same all throughout europe. appreciate the clarification
Slow (no high speed trains like TGV or ICE, most trains don't even come close to the speed of a Dutch or German IC (that's without the E for express), Prague - Wroclaw is a 5 hour journey, Prague - Hanover as well, and Wroclaw is like half the distance away, and the train system doesn't get better within Poland than compared to the neighbouring countries, and gets worse in the Ukraine), expensive (buses are much cheaper), less comfortable (2nd class is only benches, 8 people where in Germany you'd have 5 seats; no electrical plugs whatsoever) and less save (much more theft, sleeping on the train in Germany is no problem, the few people that I know who have done that in PL lost basically all their stuff to theft, nothing life threatening though) than in Western Europe. In Short, comparable to how I imagine the US train system is Europe is more diverse in the US, and even in the US travelling around Boston, through North Dakota or LA are completely different things. Because the different European countries have different amounts of moneys the state of the roads or train system is vastly worse in the East of the continent. The only thing that is relatively the same is flying. Poland is trying to built a better infrastructure for the Euro (can't comment on Ukraine, but as they have less money it should be worse there, not better), but they have a long road ahead to catch up with the west, something they just won't achieve in two years (as they still have far less money than us: my girlfriend is earning less than 2€ an hour, and that's considered a well-payed student job over there). Poland basically has three decent highways, only one of which is longer than a 100km.
thanks very much! very informative. i guess first thing is first - i gotta get a group of hooligans, i mean friends - to travel with over there!
How could the WC ticketing process be any easier? It was like going to the ATM machine. I think the process used in the WC reduced the amount of illegal selling of tickets by scalpers. And no chance of losing your tickets en-route. I had some trouble finding lodging in Portugal. Although I only started looking about 3 days in advance. Still found a nice place to stay in Lisbon, but had to sleep in the train station in Porto one night. lol For Euro 2008, I planned further in advance. But had trouble getting tickets though the UEFA lottery (got only 1 match - Spain v Italy). Anyway, not much can be done about that since its not first-come, first-serve. Just put in an application or two (under a friend's name) and hope. I was hoping to buy more tickets when I was over there but as others have pointed-out they were often selling for several hundred dollars each. No thanks.
I think Poland will be very popular. Certainly if England qualify. Lots of cheap flights and an increasing reputation for having a good time! Ukraine is also well known for some of its attractions! Rail travel: http://www.seat61.com/ Airlines: Wizz Air Aer Lingus Air Berlin Blue Air Brussels Airlines easyJet GermanWings Iceland Express Jet2 Norwegian Air Shuttle Ryanair
will you be going whiskerxx regardless of england qualifying or not ? those airlines you mentioned.. are those from all over europe flying into ukraine/poland or/and between the host cities in poland and ukraine ?
The former. Try to stay away from Ryanair (I can recommend Germanwings and Whizzair though, haven't used the others). And if you want to use one of those instead of a better-known carrier to get there from Western Europe be advised that they sometimes start from airports that are more remote (ie only accessible by buses, not by trains for example, and with no intercontinental connection). I'd advise everybody to go, just be prepared to have differences between Western and Eastern Europe. Poland is a great country to be in (and I imagine the same can be said about Ukraine) and it's quite cheap. There will be lots os Europeans travelling as well, so the fact that older people speak less English should be not as big of a problem as it might be now (which it isn't, really).
is the lottery system for getting tickets similar to what is was for this recent world cup? as an american will i be able to get tickets as easily as i was able to for the world cup? does citizenship play into applying for tickets?? given that travelling to poland/ukraine will be easier than south africa will it be more difficult to get a ticket for any of the powerhouses? for the world cup - i was able to get tickets in the first lottery phase for individual games for spain, germany, england, brasil, argentina and france... i have a feeling this will be more challenging...
But those collection of teams you saw was purely down to the luck of the WC draw, not the luck of the ticket lottery. But yeah, I imagine the success rate will be somewhat lower in applying for Euro 2012 tickets during the first lottery phase than it was for WC 2010. Easier countries to get to and fewer matches to apply for. Each country will only host about 15 matches which should ensure a pretty high demand for all games.
It seems like the result of the draw will determine if I am going or not because I only intend to be there for quarters/semis and the final Are TST's also part of the draw ?
I seem to recall TST's function a bit different from the World cup, in the sense that if you buy a TST6 and your team is eliminated, you have to give up your tickets, as opposed to the World cup, where you would follow the winner.
Hum language barrier, can tell you it is starting to be a problem for me. Have done some research on web sites in Poland, this for Rail travel, no English is available, hope things improve, else might have to recruit some Polish friends, would be nice to see locals posting here.
Don't think any Polish person will tell you anything else than what I have been telling you: Bus travel is much better than train travel in Poland (also, their websites are more likely to be in English out of some weird reason).
While Ryanair is poor for customer service (they charge you for every possible extra, and the customer is always wrong) it is cheap if you book well in advance and don't want to take much luggage. Also they fly to a lot of places in Poland from the UK.
I hear you, however for my specific needs, bus travel will not cut it, we plan on using bikes as a way of getting around, this within the cities, to go from city to city, we plan on taking the bikes on the Train, not sure if we can do this by bus.