Yes you do have to pay to get into most european casinos. I really had to pay at one place. We were in Amsterdam and doing the tourist thing. They didn't care about my not having a coat and tie during the day but they wouldn't put up with my athletic shoes. Told me to go around the corner to visit the shoe store. Apparently I was not the first one to have that problem since they had a sale rack labeled "casino shoes" Paid the equivalent of $50-70 for a pair of shoes that didn't fit, went into the casino only to find that they had chips in common with another casino I had already visited and THEN I lost about $75 gambling! Not my best memory of a european casino.