kraken allows you to deposit euros and has quite a few alt coins as well as bitcoin.
it looks like their verification is pretty slow at the moment though.
other than that if you want to trade alts then buy bitcoin wherever and go to one of the alt only exchanges like bittrex. it don't matter where you live then. bitcoinic.nl, bitcoin.de, localbitcoins, all are good option to buy bitcoin in europe.
I made a research on Kraken as well, the only way I'm trading there is if I buy some bitcoins from wherever, as you put it. However, I noticed the traders at exchanges like localbitcoins sell large quantities of bitcoin for quite a bit of money. And I wanted to start with a small amount just to see how the system works, so to speak. I don't want to risk buying a lot of crypto, then losing it to a hacker only because I'm not very experienced at keeping it safe.
I'm fine with waiting through the process of signing up on coinbase, but some of the reviews I see about that platform... yikes! Frozen accounts, non-existant customer support, a bunch of people complained they even sent cash to their Lithuanian bank account, but never got a response about their account being activated. I suppose if I was to trade through coinbase, I would just instantly transfer my coins somewhere else after I'm done with the trade. Oh wait, people complain sometimes coinbase fail to transfer money to other accounts as well.