River travel in Germany and Austria

Just got back yesterday from a family trip.

Five of us took a week long river cruise from Nuremburg, Germany to Vienna, Austria.  It was, on the whole, much better then I expected.  C and I like to try and do as much as possible while we travel.  The river cruise forced us to relax and take it easy.  Too be honest it was nice not having to re-learn public transportation systems, search for hotels and restaurants etc.  Towards the end however, C and I joked that we felt a bit like cattle- wake up, eat, be herded around, eat, rest, eat, sleep and repeat.

Nuremburg and Vienna were the only larger cities we visited.  We also had a day in Salzburg and the rest were tiny, picturesque towns along the Danube.

While the trip itself was quite nice and we were lucky to have near perfect (if COLD) weather for the entire trip.  However, on the trip to and from central Europe, Murphy was a constant traveling companion.

On the day we left for Europe, we hired a shuttle bus to take us too the Airport.  The appointed time came and went, so we called the company.

Turns out that the driver scheduled to take us simply decided not to show up to work that day and another driver was on the way.  So we waited for the new driver, but he still did not show up.  So we called the company again, and turns out the driver was lost.

After the driver shows up and we pile into the van, he runs completely up and over a curb while making a right hand turn.

Then we see him constantly fussing with a GPS rig.  Apparently he had absolutely no idea how to reach THE AIRPORT.  So we had to give him directions and nursemaid him all the way to our gate.  He also had trouble staying in his lane, and almost side swiped a semi-truck. (My parents still gave him a tiny tip, however, my tip to him was to learn to friggen drive.)

Then at the check in counter the clerk decided to only print four out of the five sets of boarding passes, and getting the situation fixed became a fifteen minute ordeal.

Of course, C is hasseled repeatedly at every security check.  One of the problems is that she changed her name when we married.  Airport security personnel, possessing an average IQ equivalent to that of a Rhesus Monkey cannot understand the large, bold printing that reads “Passport amended; see page XX” – where it states that her legal name has been changed.  After explaining to them, and on occasion, their supervisor, the simple matter that C has had one of her legal names changed, she still got pulled out of line at almost every leg of our journey.  Either they check everyone that is even the least bit unusual, or they are perverts looking to pester a beautiful woman.  Personally, I think the latter explanation is correct.

Then of course is the actual flight itself.  My parents paid for this trip, and the tour company told them that this was a Lufthansa flight.  We were happy with this because, as I have previously mentioned, American based airline companies are bottom of the barrel. 

This was not exactly an outright lie, as the last leg (hour) of our trip was on a Lufthansa plane, making it, technically, a Lufthansa flight.  (More on this later)

The other fourteen hours (LAX to SFO, SFO to Frankfurt) were on United Airlines.  The 747 we flew on from Frisco to Frankfurt was old.  (To be honest, every United 747 I have been on seems to have been old enough that one could expect stone spear heads to be uncovered if they ever bothered to renovate)

The in flight movies did not work.  Now airplane movies are generally mediocre at best, however I did not realize how important they were in helping one to forget that one is trapped in a little tube with four hundred strangers suspended a few nautical miles in the air.  By hour nine somewhere over the Atlantic the various cabins of the plane had descended into Lord of the Flies-esque inter-tribal warfare.  (I tried to seize power as war-chief but my long legs and the fully reclined seat ahead of me conspired to keep me pinned securely in seat 58-e.) 

Needless to say, morale was not improved when they announced that due to some mistake, a full supply of food had not been stowed, and that it would be really nice if some people could volunteer to not eat.  I volunteered to eat one of the flight attendants instead.

When we finally arrived in Nuremburg, we were pleased to discover two things.  One is that my father’s luggage was missing.  Two, is that my wife’s brand new, hard shell suitcase was destroyed.  One corner was entirely punched in.  On the other side, there was a large crack.  The entire exterior, that just a few hours before had been a shiny metallic silver, was now covered in black, red, and green stains. 

Now, the one silver lining in all this.  Remember how I said that since the last leg of the flight was on Lufthansa, it was technically a Lufthansa flight?  It also means that we got to deal with Lufthansa baggage service.  My father’s bag magically appeared in his cabin just a few hours after we left the airport.  My wife get fully reimbursed for her destroyed bag and it took only a couple of minutes at the Lufthansa baggage service.

More on the rest of the trip tomorrow.  This post is turning into a full length novel.

Travel Tip: Just say no to traveler`s checks

Recently my wife C and I spent seven weeks in Europe. Unfortunately we had to carry most of our money in the form of travelers checks. All I can say is that I wish we could have just said no.

We ended up taking many travelers checks because here in Japan, many banks do not have integrated ATMs. That is, generally, customers cannot use their ATM card at another Japanese banks ATM, let alone internationally. In order to get a bank card that can be used in properly networked cash points requires a special, expensive account at only the largest national banks. Which of course, have few branches and fewer ATMs out here in the country side.

So we decided to go with American Express travelers checks. The Yen/euro exchange rate at the time was very favorable and we thought it would be worth it to lock in the good exchange rate as well as avoid the hassle of setting up a new account in a new bank that we could draw funds from internationally. (Let alone the hassles that invariably come from a foreigner trying to set up an account.) So we converted a fat stack of Yen into Euro in the form of Amex travelers checks.

American Express advertises that it has thousands upon thousands of locations world wide where you can cash your checks without commission.

As far as I was able to ascertain, this is a dirty, rotten lie.

While there are many, many places to cash travelers checks, there are very few places that will cash the checks without some form of commission. Most places want to charge a 2-5% fee in addition to a 5-10 euro surcharge. So not only do you pay a fee when you buy the checks, you get hit again when you want to actually use them. (Very few places, outside the most overpriced of tourist trap stores, will actually let you use travelers checks “like cash”)

While you could indeed cash them without any charge at (most) Amex offices, and a few other companies (usually) like Travelex usually let us cash them without fees, finding a place that didn’t want to charge a 5% commission was a huge hassle. Even some Amex buildings, like the one in Barcelona would only cash them with a commission. Other cities, like Milan, simply had no Amex facilities. Well, Milan HAD an Amex storefront, and we got directions to go there. When we got there, however, we discovered that it had been closed down.

Even when there was a place that you could cash the checks, like they advertised, for free it was still far from easy. In Florence I had to wait nearly two hours in line in order to cash some checks. Which I thoroughly enjoyed. After all, when you are traveling in another country, who would not want to spend hours waiting in line to cash their checks.

The net result of this was that when we could find a place that we could cash our checks and not lose our shirt in the process, we would cash very large amounts at a time.

Which means, of course that we had to carry rather large amounts of cash at a time, which was exactly what we had hoped to avoid by buying travelers checks in the first place.

If I didn’t bring my ATM card that is tied to an account in the U.S. a few times C and I would have been in real trouble.

When we travel again, will we carry travelers checks? Possibly, if we get a chance to lock in a very favorable exchange rate, or we were going someplace where we knew they wouldn’t be a problem. Other then that they seem to be mostly pointless. Sure there are ATM fees to consider but overall it seems that travelers checks are going the way of the dinosaur