Euro 2008

Grindelwald

My surname is Fletcher so it comes as no surprise that I have always been known as "Fletch". A given, you might say.

The problems started when my dad got a dog for Christmas several years ago. Not so much the fact that a pet entered his life - it has given him nothing less than the greatest of joy - more the fact that my family decided to call it "Fletch".

The westie in question is a touch excitable and I'm often faced with a chorus of "Fletch, Fletch come here" whenever I visit my parents now. It can all become very confusing and tiring.

I only mention this because I recently dreamt I was taking Fletch for a walk. Normally I've a pretty good recollection of my dreams, but this is the first I can remember during Euro 2008.

I'm in Switzerland and not Austria, the homeland of Sigmund Freud, at the moment, so maybe I shouldn't analyse it too much. Yet I can't help but think it has something to do with the competition coming to a close. The day when Euro 2008 ends and I leave this feast of football is looming larger than the Stay Puft monster in Ghostbusters.

I got a taste of the emptiness that awaits me yesterday. With no football to get the pulse racing, I had to find other ways to circumnavigate the day. So I headed to Jungfrau, a region of Switzerland that erupted my hitherto undiscovered hay fever to such an extent that the hordes of tourists on my train suddenly found an interest of indescribable proportions in their footwear.

Complete with odorous feet that the Tudors would have cured by sawing off, a pulled muscle in the left buttock and a suspected hernia, it left me hoping I'd bump into England physio Gary Lewin once again.

My guidebook insists that Goethe, Lord Byron and Mark Twain would have had trouble describing this part of Switzerland, so beautiful as it is. Naturally, I'm reticent to try, but I doubt whether many signposts were written in Japanese when those three famous wordsmiths were around.

Not far from the Reichenbach Falls where Sherlock Holmes met his maker - or did he? - the primary attraction in this region is the train to Jungfraujoch, at 3,454 metres above sea level the highest train station in Europe.

I had heard that a football pitch had been cut into the glacier up here, but when I arrived I discovered it had disappeared long ago.

Instead, I had to content myself with stupendous views - the north face of the Eiger one way, two million Americans capturing the scene for eternity in the other.

What gave me the greatest pleasure was watching some Indian children, with the sort of wide-eyed delight and indescribable joy that is lost past a certain age, smash their unwitting parents with snowballs. There is no feeling like the first time you see snow.

Indians are drawn in huge number to this part of the world because it is used as the location for many Bollywood films. There is even a "Bollywood Restaurant" at the end of the line.

One little Indian boy sat across from me had alighted at the final stop wearing woolly hat, gloves and, bizarrely, swimming goggles. Meanwhile, his younger brother wailed with such an incredible sense of abandon that I could only imagine what was happening to the inner workings of his ears.

With picture-postcard views in all directions and mountain goats, cows and sheep all wearing bells that tinkled a soothing symphony of sound, I half expected Peter to appear from round the corner and proclaim that Heidi has taught him how to read.

If you wanted to escape the football, then the village of Grindelwald and a trip to Junfraujoch was just about perfect.

But it is very much back to business now. There are three games left in Euro 2008 and I'll be in Basel for Wednesday's semi-final between Turkey and Germany.

In the meantime, I'll be trying to find out just what the vibe is in Germany, a country that boasts a substantial Turkish population, and be working out whether Fatih Terim's side have any chance of upsetting the odds.

Can Turkey be the new Greece? That would take some historical untangling.