MATT LAWTON'S EURO BLOG: It's all UEFA's Fawlty as Basle hotel farce forces a one-hour semi-final sleeping drag

After leaving my hotel in Vienna at 6am this morning to fly to Basle for tonight's semi-final, I rolled into the Europe Hotel in the city centre at shortly after 10am and informed the chap behind the desk that I had a reservation.

'Are you sure?' he said after studying my passport. 'Absolutely I said. Even checked the hotel on the internet before instructing the travel agent to book it.'

For the high jump: Holland fans jump in the River Rhine from a bridge in Basle

Take off: A Dutch fan jumps into the River Rhine

'Are you sure it's the Europe in Basle? he said.

'I'm not an idiot,' I replied. 'I'm hardly going to book a hotel somewhere else when the game's here.'

Only I had, or rather the official UEFA Euro 2008 accommodation agency had.

'You're in the Europe in Luzern,' declared the chap behind the desk after concluding that I was, as he suspected, an idiot.

'It's about an hour away on the train.'

Which wouldn't be quite so disastrous were it not for the fact that I'm flying out of Basel at 6.40am tomorrow morning to return to Vienna for the second semi.

After asking my travel agent to discover what had happened, it turns out that they list the Europe in Luzern under their 'Basle hotels'.

Which would have been a bit like rolling into Manchester during Euro 96 to be told that, while the semi-final between the French and the Czechs was indeed at Old Trafford, your hotel for the night is in Leeds.

And they still think Austria and Switzerland have the stadia, the hotels and the infrastructure to host an event like this.

Fortunately, a colleague I now owe a beer had decided not to come to Basel but still had a room in a different hotel.

No need to go to Luzern, or sleep rough in the airport for a few hours after the game. I did have to wait for the room, though, and decided to take a stroll down the Rhine to kill a bit of time.

It would seem that, as well as the finest tennis player the world has even seen - Roger Federer - Basle produces the strongest swimmers on the planet. I'd imagine the current out in the middle of the river to be pretty damn strong.

But that didn't stop an amazing number of casual bathers floating down stream in nothing more than their swimming costumes in, what to me, looked like the middle of the shipping lane.

All very impressive, I thought. Either that or I've just witnessed a multiple suicide and failed to raise the alarm.