is that I am going to be going to Europe for 6 months starting Feb 1 and this will be my first trip there of any significant length. I will be living right outside of brussels so pretty much all of western and northern europe is accesible for a day trip. i basically just wanted advice about which soccer events would be the most fun to see for a huge fan who has never experienced live european soccer before. thats all Thanks
I hope these 'day trips' involve flights at some point, because you might be a little disappointed to find you can't drive to Madrid from Brussels in a day.
i know, but flights are really cheap and anywhere in the Netherlands England France Germany or Belgium is just a train ride pretty much. round trip airfare from brussels to milan is like 20 bucks for instance so yes some of them would have to be weekend trips but the point is that I have access to most of europe
There are very cheap flights available. I may go to Milan on the 8/9 Feb and currently you can get a return flight for £10. On the other hand you do have to book early and there's no guarantee that prices will stay that low, or indeed be that low on all flights. How many budget airlines fly out of Brussels anyway? Big airline prices will not be anywhere near that range. Without being rude, if you think you can just hop on a train and nip up to Liverpool or something like that you could get something of a rude awakening. Europe isn't the tiny little place many Americans seem to think it is. If you are planning a train journey use the web page bahn.de. It's a german site, but if you click on the 'suchen' button on the left, you go to another page which lets you change the language to English. It allows you to work out train connections across all of Europe.
There are quite a lot of cheap flights from Brussels to... a lot of destinations. I'll be flying RyanAir to London in february. 35 euros for a two way ticket. Not expensive.
The Travelling is not the issue I am more concerned with advice about where i should go. RyanAir flies out of brussels as well as london. I know i cant hop a train to liverpool but I can hop a train to london and stay with my friends there and then hop a train to liverpool in the morning. and I can get anywhere in france pretty much via train in less than 7 hours most places in less than 4 and all of germany is within 10 hours by train pretty much, i mean i wouldnt just go for the game and come back I would go spend the weekend there. but a lot of places are really close is my point and I would like help trying to decide where to go and then I will figure out how to get there.
Just as a tourist, I would really recommend Berlin, Stockholm, Budapest, Istanbul, Barcelona, and Madrid. Istanbul is absolutely incredible and very cheap. It should only be about 3.5 hours flight for you. I suppose you could take in a game at Ali Sami Yen, but I imagine it'd be dangerous. Nuestro Campo, Santiago Bernabeu, Guiseppe Meazza, and Highbury are all fantastic stadiums with decent to great home teams. If you have the funds, check out the CL final at Old Trafford.
Make sure you make the drive / fly to the most beautiful city in Europe - Hamburg, Germany. They also have a new arena, the AOLArena, which is top-notch. Try and catch them against a good team like Dortmund or Bayern or a great Derby match against Werder Bremen...
I would just think twice before going there. Foreigners=money and going into a very crowded place where tensions will be high already is taking a risk. I would worry about getting mugged. Aside from beggars and con artists, I had no trouble at all in Central Europe and Turkey. Never got pickpocketed, never got robed. The Turks are great, but it's just that you are taking a chance there.
Where are the beautiful bits of Hamburg? I'm sure there must be some, but the city centre looked like one giant 1960s built pedestrianised precinct. Very dull, but then again I was there on a Sunday). You could also go and see a match at St Pauli and wonder how they ever got 20000 in there. It's straight out of the English third division.
Go to a couple lower division games, specially in England (I mean D2 or D3). I loved the few I've been to, but mainly for the atmosphere. Get behind the home goal if possible. Those are the real fans who sing and chant all game long. As for where to go, it various on perspective. Try and see a "big" game somewhere during your time, if possible. Most will probably already be sold out, but try anyway.