Hey.I know it’s a bit late, but I wish everybody a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!
So...My trip with Luke has gone very well indeed.
After London, Paris and a Guitar Hero-filled night in Luxembourg, we spent Christmas in Basel, a city in Switzerland that’s right next to the borders with Germany and France. We couchsurfed with a French lady who threw a party on Christmas eve that turned out to be a lot of fun, plus we went out on the town after that! After somehow finding our way back to our host’s apartment, Luke and I had a long sleep-in on Christmas Day itself, before cleaning the apartment of our host for her (admittedly after we’d made most of the mess), then finally seeing something of the city we were in. We even walked all the way to France and back that day.
We then headed through Munich, where we did a walking tour and went for a swim, and Rosenheim, which is a city between Munich and Austria. We went to Rosenheim because a potential CouchSurfing host in Munich had told us she wouldn’t be at home when we wanted to couchsurf with her, but she invited us to her hometown instead. It was nice to have some time in a family home in a town more authentically German than the tourist-populated Munich. After Rosenheim came Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia that’s really transformed into quite a nice place that I recommend to anybody out there!
Definitely the craziest time of my year, and of anybody else’s year, even for those who weren’t there, was the Budapest Winter Camp. This six-day event organised by CouchSurfing members for CouchSurfing members takes place every year around new year, and this time around the location was Budapest, Hungary. Each day, there were activities you could do such as walking tours of both Buda and Pest, ice skating, laser tag, visiting the largest thermal bath complex in Europe, participating in a free hugs campain, cooking goulash and hot wine, or learning some Hungarian dances, as well as a couple of day trips to other places nearby. But as time went on, the camp began to focus entirely on the nights, and with each night came a new party. It began with a pub crawl night that turned into a party, then an international night that turned into a party, then the new year’s eve party was the biggest of them all – it took place inside the Citadella, the massive castle-like citadel on top of Gellert Hill that overlooks Budapest. I don’t know how they did it, but the organisers booked our party for in there. Then we had two more parties in the new year before everybody finally farewelled each other and headed back to their everyday life, definitely far less exciting by comparison. By the end of the Budapest Winter Camp, Luke and I had spent 7 days in a row going out and getting drunk, and I really don’t think that was good for us! But... it was so much fun!
From Budapest, Luke and I flew to Madrid, where we spent a couple of days couch surfing with an American woman who plays guitar and sings, then a few days in Barcelona couch surfing with a Polish woman with an 11-month old baby. Luke and I even spent yesterday looking after this baby while our host tried to get some work done. He’s got a whole lot of toys, so it wasn’t too hard to keep him entertained, and it was a lot of fun! Also in Barcelona, I managed to catch up with Camilla – you know, that New Zealander who lived in Dresden at the same time as me earlier this year? She happened to be in Barcelona at the same time as us and we spent some time with her and her friend Bridget. Our Spanish experience turned out not to be extremely authentically Spanish, but I’m glad I made it to Spain while I was over here.
Barcelona marked the end of my trip with Luke. He’s flying home from Paris on the 10th, so he booked a night train from Barcelona to Paris that gets in tomorrow. I’m flying home from Frankfurt on the 14th, and before I go, I have a couple of people to see and I have to go to Dresden to get my suitcase. I left Barcelona last night on a different night train that’s seen me end up back in Basel, and tomorrow I’ll be on my way up through Germany!
A fore-warning to anybody hoping to travel with a Eurail pass:
FRANCE AND SPAIN SUCK.
Clarification:When you travel with a Eurail pass, you can take unlimited trains on your chosen days in the countries where your pass is valid. The Eurail pass does not guarantee a seat reservation, which is fine for most people, but when it comes to useful trains in France and Spain, a reservation is compulsory. They won’t let you on the train unless you’ve reserved a seat.This is all well and good, but unfortunately, the websites of these countries’ rail services do not allow you to book a reservation on its own. You have to go to a train station to do it.
Furthermore, the French railway does not allow Eurail pass holders to book reservations for trains less than 3 days in advance. This means that if you are Luke and Patrick, turning up in Paris on the 21st of December and wishing to leave Paris by train on the 23rd of December, TOUGH LUCK. The user-unfriendliness of the SNCF’s website, plus this 3-day rule, makes it impossible to do so. That’s what led to Luke and me being stuck with no way out of Paris until our CouchSurfing host found a ride share for us that took us to Luxembourg.
Spain, on the other hand, isn’t quite as bad because it doesn’t have this 3-day rule. However, in addition to not selling reservations online on its even more user-unfriendly website, it’s extremely difficult to get the reservation even after turning up at a train station itself. Luke’s and my story goes like this: We went to a big Madrid station to try and reserve our night trains. After finding the international section, we went to the “advance tickets” area and took a paper number to get in line, pressing the button for an “international” paper number. When our number flashed up, we went to the counter, the girl ignored us for a while then looked at us and asked us something in Spanish. We asked if she spoke English and she said she didn’t, instead she got her English speaking colleague who looked at our paper number and seemed to think it was useless, even though it was one of two options on the paper number machine. She told us to take a ticket of the other type, so we pressed the button for the Spanish term for advance ticket. When our number came up on screen, we went to the desk, and this guy didn’t speak English either. We didn’t understand what he was saying, but his gestures suggested we should go out of the ticket area, go to the information desk, find somebody who speaks English who can write down the train reservations we want to book, then we can bring this piece of paper back to the guy who will sell us the reservations.There’s nothing particularly wrong with how we were treated, but,as I told Luke afterwards,Spain is a Eurail country. Therefore, they know that people with Eurail passes are going to travel on their trains.Therefore,they should either make it possible for Eurail pass holders to book reservations online,or,they should supply their international ticket desks with English speaking staff so that the Eurail pass holders who they know are going to come (because they can’t do it online) can actually get the reservations they require without being directed to desk after desk after desk.
Oh and France’s railway service tricked me in December 2008, detailed in a blog post from that time.
I always used to bag out the German railway a lot because everybody thinks their trains run on time when they actually don’t, but having now tried to deal with the French and Spanish railways, I am extremely excited to be able to get on a German train tomorrow. I don’t have to worry about any compulsory reservations, I’ll find a seat that hasn’t been reserved, plug my laptop into one of the powerpoints because there’s a powerpoint between every single pair of seats, and watch Skins until I arrive in Hamburg several hours later.
Now...It’s the 8th of January.
And my flight leaves on the 14th,
Arriving on the 16th which is the 15th in European time.
So I arrive home in one week.
Scary?
Yep.
Exciting?
Yep.
We love your blog, are you going to post another blog post before you leave Europe?
Yep. Probably.
Not long now.
Patrick
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