My final evening in Zurich was spent with my brothers and sisters in arms in the volunteer centre and surrounding area. After the fans had long made their way home and car horns signalled the end of the road of Euro2008 in the city, the team dressed in blue who gave up their time for the last few weeks were able to let their hair down and celebrate a job well done.

It takes a special sort of person to spend their free time working at a tournament where the hours can be long and unsociable, for no pay and no compensation for travel or accommodation. Fortunately, these are exactly the sort of people you want to meet when you do embark on such a trip. Though officially not allowed to watch the matches in the stadium, it was great to be able to see our work rewarded on the pitch. Each person who wore the uniform had a role to play in putting together what happened out on the field.

Even after the the VIPs and press had all long since gone home, the volunteers were still celebrating in a bar in the stadium overlooking the pitch. With not a soul about we had free reign of the Letzigrund and I swear I could still hear the faint ghostly songs of the Italian fans echoing around the stadium. We drank until the sun came up and embraced each other and swapped contact details, though in truth we could never expect to create the same atmosphere anywhere else.

Though a hackneyed phrase, it probably was a once in a lifetime experience. Filling the void between being a student and future employment, I can only hope to recreate the feeling another time. But with Germany recently having hosted the World Cup and Austria and Switzerland as co-hosts, I’ll probably not get the opportunity to throw myself into a volunteer position as a German-speaker again.

For 15 days I watched football, met journalists and famous ex-players, spoke German, drank beer, met new people, made new friends, took day trips and didn’t pay a penny for accommodation. If volunteering sounds like work, then I can’t wait for a life of unemployment.

Headline translated from the German of my third article in the Tagblatt der Stadt Zürich: “Zum Abschied, eine Tasse Tee”