Going to Gdansk? Make sure to bring your Euro 2012 Survival Guide

The first game might not have gone our way but we still have giants to kill in the shape of Spain and Italy. Here’s some Euro 2012 survival tips for Irish fans in Poland.

Those 20,000-plus Irish fans who’ve made it to Poland over the last few days won’t allow the small matter of a bitterly disappointing 3-1 defeat to Croatia to dampen their spirits.

The camper-vanning, loudspeaker-wielding, Home-and-Away-singing Irish supporters have started to make the 250-mile move from Poznan to Gdansk, where the boys in green take on Spain on Thursday night.

They’ve managed to survive well enough up to now – on the evidence of one video from last night our lads were dangerously proactive on the peacekeeping front out in Poznan.

But you can never be armed with too much knowledge, so Irish supporters heading for Gdansk could do worse than pack a copy of the Euro 2012 Survival Guide put together by the FAI, the Department of Foreign Affairs and drinkaware.ie recently.

If you haven’t got a hard copy by now you don’t need to worry – the Euro 2012 Survival Guide can be downloaded from the drinkaware website. If you happen to have a smartphone (and judging from the amount of photos and videos coming back from Poland everyone out there seems to) you can carry that PDF around with you everywhere you go.

Sample nuggets of information include tips on how to protect yourself from anything from sunburn, STIs and passport loss headaches. There are emergency numbers for the Irish embassy and consulates, as well as plenty of info about the local culture and customs, travel information for getting around the country and all the phrases you might need to get you out of a pickle/into the arms of a local lovely.

And guess what? The phrase immortalised by Kazakh fictional invention Borat – Jak sie masz – is actually Polish for “How are you?”

You learn something new every day...

Download the Euro 2012 Survival Guide from drinkaware.ie here