The World Cup
The cost of travelling to next year's World Cup finals in Germany is rising fast. A one-way ticket on Ryanair (ryanair.com) to Frankfurt Hahn (90 minutes from Frankfurt) on the eve of England's first match against Paraguay shot up to £250 this week. Air Berlin (airberlin.com), meanwhile, is charging £152 for a flight to Nuremberg for the match against Trinidad and Tobago. A trip to Cologne, for England's final group game against Sweden, currently costs easyJet (easyjet.com) passengers £202, including tax. Even BA (ba.com) is at it with an overnight tripling of its prices.
Help for England football fans comes from an unexpected source, although it too is guilty of inflating its prices on the eve of England matches. Lufthansa (lufthansa.com), Germany's state carrier, is offering bundles of internal flights for as little as £41 per flight, plus tax. The "GloBall Airpass" is available to all fans flying to Germany with Lufthansa and Star Alliance partner BMI (bmibaby.com). To make a bargain of the deal, ensure you book your flight into Germany at least two days before an England match. Prices for flights to Frankfurt, for example, are still going for just £76 one-way.
You must buy a minimum bundle of three GloBall flights and a maximum of 10 to qualify. The tickets are flexible, so if England progress beyond the group stage you can follow their progress all the way to the final in Berlin. Fingers crossed. Sadly, you can't book the GloBall pass on the internet. You can use the Lufthansa site to plan a schedule but ultimately you have to talk to a call centre, which is a bit of a fluffed pass. Lufthansa says there are a limited number of the £41 fares available.
Alternatively, consider taking the Eurostar to Germany. Deutsche Bahn (bahn.co.uk) is laying on special trains to scoot fans across the country on its excellent high-speed rail network. A World Champion Pass, which offers unlimited travel between the host cities for the length of the tournament, is on sale for £255, with other discounts of 25% and 50% on single fares available through its website.
Getting to Germany by train is slightly more difficult booking online. The cheapest way to book online is via a Eurostar (eurostar.com) ticket to Paris and then a connecting train to Frankfurt booked via SNCF (voyages-sncf.com). Return fares are as cheap as £118 (see seat61.com/Germany) and the journey should take about eight hours.
If you still need a ticket, the lottery at fifaworldcup.com is still an option. But even if you don't win one, the German Tourist Board is encouraging English football fans to travel without a ticket to Germany to soak up the atmosphere and watch the games in the country's public squares. That's right, the German Tourist Board is encouraging English football fans. How times have changed.
All prices correct at time of going to press
