Euro 2008 / Jonathan Wilson / 30 June 2008 /

So, there it is then: at last, it's goodnight Vienna, and a deserved victory for a very good Spain side. It has, almost everyone agrees, been a fine tournament, but, leaving the football behind, what has it really been like?

The highs:
The food has been excellent - why are more Austrians not outrageously fat? Schnitzel has been almost universally superb, while the piccata Milanese at Norma's on Singerstrasse in Vienna was simply sensational.
Hearty praise also for Casa Novo, an Italian restaurant just across the bridge from the bear-pit in Bern: a beautiful setting with a terrace looking out over the river, and excellent food.

The ice-cream has if anything been even better. Vienna was supposed to be the tournament's sundae centre, but actually Casa Novo in Bern trumped anything in Austria: chocolate and coffee especially recommended.

The U-bahn in Vienna, if you can ignore the zombie drunks in the Tunnel of Doom at Karlsplatz, was excellent: rapid and convenient.
And, most crucially of all, the exit at Stadion station brought you out 50m from the media entrance. Heaven.

The view from the stadium in Innsbruck would have been stunning anyway, but when the clouds rolled in and illuminated the Alps with flashes of lightning, it was quite spectacular. What made it even better, of course, was the free booze (Heinrich wines - really soft and velvety) and food in the media lounge. And a visit from Haddaway, of course.

Swiss railways, and their decision to add a series of extra trains to shuttle fans between the major cities even in the early hours of the morning. An example for the rest of Europe to follow. If only they could have found sentient waiters to staff the buffet cars.

The Cordoba fixation - as demonstrated by the constant playing of Edi Finger's commentary of Hans Krankl's late winner before games - was hilarious. Yes, Austria beat West Germany 3-2, but it meant nothing to them; they had already been eliminated.

The Dutch fans were a magnificent sight, flooding the old town of Bern with their distinctive orangeness. For about a week the Swiss capital buzzed with their noisy bonhomie.

The lows:

Escalator discipline in Vienna was very poor. There were signs advising people to "standen rechts; gehen links" but they were rarely obeyed. Anarchy reigned.

The stadium in Zurich was a long, badly-signposted walk from the station, and was staffed by stewards who almost universally seemed incapable of answering the simplest questions. And it was too small, and the food in the media canteen was dreadful.

Teams changing the traditional colour of their shorts. Why? Once upon a time, Italy could be relied upon to wear blue shirts with white
shorts: now, they wear all blue. France, similarly, have done away with the white shorts and red socks that used to complement their blue shirts for an all blue number. Romania wear yellow shorts rather than blue, and Portugal deep red rather than green. What's wrong with contrasting shorts? Let's have them back.

The Dutch fans: there might be a lot of them, and they might be very orange, but they do seem to love themselves rather more than they love their team. Their silence as Russia passed Holland into the ground in the quarter-final was astonishing in its timidity, particularly for people who seem to struggle to order a coffee without making the windows rattle.

The Portuguese journalists whose meandering questions at press-conferences make you yearn for the succinctness of Garth Crooks.

Worst of all, though, was the PR woman for one of the tournament's major sponsors, who greeted journalists arriving for a press conference with the words, "I would shake your hands but I'm not going to remember you" and then left them standing outside in the baking sun for 40 minutes on the grounds that "we're in tight lockdown until 5 and if I let you in early I'd have to kill you". And then, as soon as the conference was over, she kicked everybody out, leaving them to write their stories and file them on the dusty pavement outside. Always good to feel wanted. Well done, Castrol.

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