Serious question.
How safe is this trip likely to be?
Where are the dangers here and how can they be avoided?
Avoid the police, the robbing bastards.
I went to watch us versus Spartak in 2002. Great trip, but be streetwise.
No pick pockets or any of that shite, but the police were the ones to watch out for, especially at night, when less people were around.
We found out that the average copper was on wages of about $6 USD a month, so anything they could squeeze out of unsuspecting tourists was a bonus to them.
They would use their cop cars as taxi's, on the sly, and ferry you around for a few dollars. etc. And a few lads on our trip were rolled by the coppers.
For us, we were walking around looking for somewhere to find a drink, at about 1.00 in the morning, when a cop car pulled up, and two coppers lined us up against a wall( 6 of us) and tried to squeeze us for some cash.
Where do you run to when there's two coppers with Kalashnikov's rolling you?
It was ok. We had it sussed earlier in the week, as we all kept the majority of our cash down our socks, only having a token amount of money in our kecks pockets.
After a bout five minutes of us crying poverty, and turning out our pockets, they realised we weren't getting rolled, and they weren't getting anything from us, so let us go.
Don't know how much it's changed in the last 15 years, but it's a great Euro trip to tick off the bucket list.
Not cheap to get to, because of the distance etc. But worth the trip if you can afford it.
Again. Don't know how much the local hooligan situation is these days, and being an English team, we might well be targeted etc.
Watch out for any advice from LFC or Merseyside police, ahead of the fixture.
