The evening after the main event: tickets, late finishes and a booked hour

There is a particular kind of message that arrives on big evenings. It is typed from inside a crowd, often with noise in the background, and it asks for someone to arrive at an hour that was chosen by guessing. Sometimes the guess is right. More often the guest is still in a queue for the exit, or on a tram going the wrong way, when the window opens. Nothing about the booking has failed; the planning did. This guide is about getting the planning right, whether the event is a football game, a set at a festival, a concert of classical music on a canal, or a day spent at the side of a parade route.

Start from the fixed point, then count backwards

Every event evening has one moment you cannot move. A game ends around two hours after kick-off, give or take added time. A headline set ends at the published time or a little after. A parade passes your spot when it passes. That moment is where the planning begins, and from it you add, in order:

• The exit. Leaving a large crowd takes longer than anyone expects. Fifteen minutes to get from your seat or your spot on the bank to open street is optimistic; thirty is realistic after a full stadium or a packed festival floor.
• The journey back. Look at it for that evening, not for a normal one. Trams leaving an event are full and some stops are closed. A walk back through a crowded centre is slower than any map makes it look.
• The room. A shower, a change of clothes, a glass of water. Twenty minutes is comfortable. Nobody wants to open the door still in the day's clothes.
• A margin. Half an hour on a normal event evening, more on the few really big ones. It costs nothing if you do not need it.

The total is the hour to ask for. If a game kicks off at half past six, it ends a little after half past eight; thirty minutes to get out, forty minutes back, twenty in the room and thirty of margin put a comfortable start at around a quarter to eleven. Most people, left to guess, would have asked for half past nine.

Booked in advance, or written on the way back

There are two ways to fix the hour after an event, and both work.

The first is to book it in advance, from home, with the start time worked out as above. This is the right choice on a peak date, when the evening hours are asked for weeks ahead and a same-day message may find few free names. It is also the right choice if one particular woman matters to you. An advance booking fixed more than twenty-four hours before it starts carries half of the fee ahead on any date.

The second is to write on the way back. Once you are out of the crowd and moving, you know the only number that was uncertain, and the arrival window of forty to sixty minutes from confirmation will run while you walk. On an ordinary date this is often the simpler way, and a returning client asking for one or two hours at a city address pays the whole fee on arrival. On a peak date the same message carries half ahead, and the free names will be fewer.

What does not work well is the middle path: a booking fixed from inside the venue for an hour that is a guess. If you do that, guess late rather than early.

A football game

Home games bring a crowd that arrives and leaves at the same moment. After the final whistle the streets around the ground and the transport serving them are packed to capacity, and the pressure lasts about an hour. If you are staying in the centre, your journey back takes longer than the journey out, because everyone is leaving at once. A booking for the evening of a game works well from about two hours after the final whistle. An afternoon game leaves the whole evening open, and the slot of seven or eight o'clock is natural.

A festival set

Festival nights, above all during the dance event in October, run on a clock of their own. Sets end late, the one you came for may be moved on the day, and many visitors go on to another venue afterwards. If the set is the high point of the night and you intend to go straight back, work from the published end time. If you are likely to carry on, do not book against the set at all; book the next afternoon or early evening instead, which is often the more comfortable hour after a long night anyway. The dance event page lists the slots that suit a festival day.

A parade

A parade has no final whistle. The Canal Parade takes most of an afternoon to pass, and the day around King's Day has no single moment when it ends. Here the fixed point is the moment you choose to leave, and the honest planning is to decide that moment in advance. Visitors who say they will stay until the last boat and then book for an hour later usually find the last boat later than expected and the walk back longer. A start in the early evening, with the decision to leave taken beforehand, is the reliable version. So is a late start, after the parties that follow have been seen through.

A concert or a performance

Seated performances are the events that plan around most readily, because they end at a known time and the audience leaves in an orderly way. A performance that ends at half past ten, with a twenty-minute journey back, supports a start at a quarter past eleven with room to spare. The same logic applies to a museum late night or a classical concert on the canals in August.

Tickets and times that change

Event times move. A kick-off is shifted for broadcasting, a set is swapped with another, a parade is delayed. If a change pushes your plan, write in the same thread as soon as you know. A change of time on the same day depends on who is free at the new hour, and the reply will tell you. A change of date is free once when asked for more than twenty-four hours before the booked time, to a date within fourteen days; the deposit moves across untouched. A change asked for inside the last twenty-four hours is treated on the notice scale exactly like a cancellation arriving at that moment. The cancellation page sets out the scale.

How long to book after a long day

After an event most visitors want something simple and unhurried. An hour at EUR 180 or ninety minutes at EUR 270 suits most evenings after a game or a parade. Two hours, at EUR 360, suits a guest who wants the rest of the evening to be the booking and nothing else. Longer sessions, three hours or more, carry half ahead on any date and are better planned for the day after, when the body is less tired and the evening is not already late. The formats that suit a long day on your feet are the ones that need nothing from the room: erotic oil massage, sensual massage and body to body all take place on the bed with nothing to prepare.

The state you are in when she knocks

An event evening often involves drinks, and a guest who has been out all day is not always a reliable judge of how awake they are. She may decline a booking at the door, with no reason owed, and a guest who cannot manage the arrangement is one reason she might. Keeping the evening in a state where you can open the door, show a photo document if she asks and hold a clear conversation is part of making the booking work. Everyone in the room must be twenty-one or over, and anyone who is not part of the booking should not be there.

A worked example, from kick-off to knock

A visitor has a ticket for a game on a Saturday that kicks off at a quarter to nine. The game ends at about twenty to eleven. Leaving the ground takes thirty minutes, the journey back to a hotel in the centre takes forty on a game night, and twenty minutes in the room come after that. The honest arrival is around midnight, and with a margin the booking is fixed for half past twelve. Written from home a week earlier for ninety minutes, the booking carries half ahead, EUR 135, because it was fixed more than a day before. The remaining EUR 135 is paid at the door. If the visitor had instead written on the tram back, with forty to sixty minutes to run, and had booked with the house before, the whole fee would have been paid on arrival.