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Shy posted:Just came back from Istanbul and wow, what a fantastic city. I think I'll just go there again if EU doesn't let me in. It is great and so vast. I'd like to go back one day.
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Sep 26, 2020 10:11
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Fitzy Fitz posted:OK, I mentioned several months ago that my trip to France was cancelled because of COVID. It's been five months, and Air Canada and Priceline are still refusing to offer me a refund. Both of them just push responsibility onto the other. I filed a complaint with DOT several weeks ago but haven't heard anything from that. I opened a dispute with AmEx as well, and the refunded my money initially, but then they took it back when Air Canada complained. I'm genuinely not sure what to do at this point or who to talk to. Any ideas? Personally, I'd go back to AmEx and try and gently escalate it or at least find out why they aren't refunding your money if the vendor couldn't deliver the agreed service. Then escalate again if unsuccessful until I was talking to someone who could tell me what exactly the issue is and who was responsible for getting my money back. I would also want it in writing at this point.
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Sep 26, 2020 10:47
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I finally heard back from DOT, and Air Canada a couple of days later. Here's a relevant portion of DOT's email to me:quote:Generally, passengers who purchase non-refundable tickets on a flight that is still being operated without a significant delay are not entitled to a refund. A passenger is entitled to a refund if an airline cancels a flight and the passenger chooses not to accept an alternative flight on that airline. A passenger is also entitled to a refund if the airline makes a significant schedule change or significantly delays a flight and the passenger chooses not to travel due to the significant change or delay. Additionally, passengers may be entitled to a refund based on the terms of an airline's contract of carriage. My flight was delayed several times and then cancelled, so I should be covered, right? Here's the only part of Air Canada's response that addresses the DOT policy: quote:Our policy of offering the remaining value of the ticket for future travel is not only consistent with how major airlines are managing this unique situation, but it is also in line with our publicly published tariff rules. Our policy states that in the case of uncontrollable cancellations, the airline’s responsibility is to provide alternate travel options (as opposed to refunds), at the end of the event that caused the cancellation. Unbelievable.
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Sep 26, 2020 22:36
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Yeah, pretty much every airline is playing the "After careful consideration of all applicable laws and the unprecedented circumstances the industry is currently facing: gently caress the law, gently caress you, you ain't getting no money, now take this voucher and get the gently caress out..." card these days. All you can really do is keep bitching at them, complain to the appropriate regulatory body, or take it to court.
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Sep 28, 2020 20:55
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We've been really lucky with our flights that we booked over Finair last march. We got all our money back (and not even just vouchers), but it took quite some time. But we firsts didn't even realized it as they just refunded it and no email or anything letting us know that it happened.
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Sep 29, 2020 10:27
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I just caved and took the vouchers. Valid til end of next year, and no restrictions. Sucks but it was money already earmarked for those flights anyway. Might even get two flights out of them with how low they're dropping fares.
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Oct 1, 2020 09:50
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Shy posted:Just came back from Istanbul and wow, what a fantastic city. I think I'll just go there again if EU doesn't let me in. How is Istanbul from a safety standpoint? I remember hearing that things were a bit sketchy a year or two ago, but hey, we went to Cape Town/Jo-burg and survived.
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Oct 11, 2020 22:19
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I went 3-4 years ago and it was completely unremarkable safety-wise. It's a big city (really loving big) with a lot of tourists so you'll definitely get approached by someone offering a tour or a shoeshine or something and all you have to do is say no thanks but that was it. Don't get falling down drunk and wander about at night and you'll be fine.
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Oct 11, 2020 22:50
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Yeah, Istanbul is pretty fine to be honest. It has the typical problems of a big city, but if you're sticking to the typical tourist areas around Sultanahmet and Galata it should be fine. Be aware of the usual tourist scams (taxi overcharging, foreigner menus, pickpockets, "coin collectors" etc) but otherwise I wouldn't worry too much. If you've been to notorious harassment places like Egypt, India or Morocco, it's nowhere near as bad as that, but probably a little worse than say Paris or Rome. And as greazeball said, wandering around drunk at night is a bad idea, but that's a pretty good general rule regardless of where you are.
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Oct 12, 2020 04:09
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the most dangerous thing i encountered was the bazaar guys luring in endless clueless tourists with bad deals. great city
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Oct 12, 2020 15:45
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I wandered around drunk late at night in Istanbul a few times. That's the most dangerous thing I saw there.
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Oct 12, 2020 16:11
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An acquaintance told a story how he was lured into a girly club by a super-friendly guy. Inside the manager/owner was again super friendly and even spoke Croatian and asked him what he wants to drink. He asked for tea. They were like tea wtf, ok find some tea for this guy! After some more super friendly conversation it turned out the cup of tea was like 50€. He didn't have that much so they took all his money. This was some 20 years ago in Istanbul. Similar thing happened to me 7 years ago in Buenos Aires.
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Oct 12, 2020 21:19
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Yeah, that's up there on the list of incredibly common scams.
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Oct 13, 2020 00:06
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Yep, it's pretty common in a lot of places, especially ones with heavy drinking cultures and unconcerned law enforcement. I think the most common variation is for two attractive women to strike up a conversation with two tourist guys on a night out, take them to "their favourite bar" where a bunch of drinks appear, then at the end of the night the girls disappear and you're presented with a bill in the thousands. You start to argue but two enormous security guards show up and "escort" you to the ATM to "pay your bill".
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Oct 13, 2020 01:01
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webmeister posted:Yep, it's pretty common in a lot of places, especially ones with heavy drinking cultures and unconcerned law enforcement. I think the most common variation is for two attractive women to strike up a conversation with two tourist guys on a night out, take them to "their favourite bar" where a bunch of drinks appear, then at the end of the night the girls disappear and you're presented with a bill in the thousands. You start to argue but two enormous security guards show up and "escort" you to the ATM to "pay your bill". Yeah, this happened to a friend of mine in Rome 3 years ago, on his first solo trip ever (at like age 30). An older friendly guy was hanging out with him outside and suggested they get a drink inside at this bar to chat more, then two apparently really hot girls came up to them, then the older guy left after a few minutes, the girls suggested ordering champagne, my friend said yes, then two bottles and a couple hours later they gave him a bill for around €1000. The girl (and only the girl) went with him to an ATM because his credit card was declined. Then she suggested she'd sleep with him for an additional €500, which apparently he tried to do but had hit his daily ATM withdrawal limit. Then he thought about going back the next day, lol. A friend of my brother's had it happen in Ankara but with just the "friendly guy" and without the hot girl. But also with the burly dudes taking him to an ATM. It's the only scam of any severity (other than rental car scam damages) that I've personally known people to fall for. I've been attempted-scammed by rental car companies twice, once in Israel and once in Nicaragua, but was able to just get it reversed by my CC. The Israel one might not have been a scam, it might have just been damage that was not noticed previously as it would have been missed normally, except that I had parked on a curb in a weird way that highlighted otherwise-invisible undercarriage damage.
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Oct 14, 2020 11:09
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The hot girl scam happened to me in Budapest and Istanbul in the past. Both times I smirked at them and said "im gay!". We all laughed.
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Oct 14, 2020 19:05
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In my case there was a guy handing fliers on the street who begged me to come to that club so that he gets paid for bringing me there. And I don't have to do anything, I can leave right away. It sounded shady as gently caress but actually I had just gotten there from Peru and it did work that way in Cuzco. A sorry looking guy brought me to a bar/club in Cuzco, went to the barman, pointed at me, got paid and left. It was a regular place, I hung around a bit and left without any issues. I expected the same in Buenos Aires, but this time there was a scam behind it.
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Oct 14, 2020 23:09
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Hey so, has anyone found a travel forum that they like? T&T was never very active, but it died down even a lot more in the past few years for anything that wasn't Disney-related. Lonely Planet was dying off for a while and finally they put it out of its misery earlier this year, TripAdvisor is hit-or-miss depending on the country (some are great, others are dominated by retirees who dominate -every single thread--hi Egypt, Switzerland, and Namibia), and Reddit country forums are overwhelmingly in English and thus seem to be dominated by locals in the age group/demographic of 16-25 "gamer nerds who speak English because they spend all their time on the Internet". I tried Reddit for the first time before going to Lebanon last year and was amazed at how absolutely zilch Lebanese redditors knew about anything in their own country. Although maybe I should not have been surprised, since it's not like Parisians have ever been to the Eiffel Tower, and it's not like any Swiss person has ever crossed the heavily-militarized Röstigraben, barring the few people living in the DMZ like Fribourgers. Someone mentioned NomadMania a while back which I love as a mapping site, but they don't seem to have any real way to communicate / share easily with other users. Saladman fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Oct 15, 2020 |
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Oct 15, 2020 16:47
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The generic /travel Reddit isn't too bad, though the usual Reddit caveats apply. There's a dozen or so people who'll happily answer questions with a reasonable degree of knowledge, though the further you get from typical American college holiday destinations (Italy, France etc) the less of a response you'll get to your questions. But if you're looking for somewhere to just hang out, I'm not sure I'd recommend it. Posts are usually about 1/3rd travel photos (and a decent chunk of those are stolen from elsewhere by people farming karma), 1/3rd moronic questions (can I fly to Europe with just my US drivers license, I lost my passport), and 1/3rd reasonable questions plus a handful of occasional interesting discussion topics.
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Oct 15, 2020 23:12
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Residency Evil posted:How is Istanbul from a safety standpoint? I remember hearing that things were a bit sketchy a year or two ago, but hey, we went to Cape Town/Jo-burg and survived. It’s not overcrowded, there’s a lot of police, I haven’t seen anything that resembled an attempt to swindle a tourist. COVID probably contributed but I felt safer than in Rome for example. There are large stray dogs, but they tended to be calm. A lot of beggars who seemed harmless too.
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Oct 20, 2020 08:07
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webmeister posted:Yeah, Istanbul is pretty fine to be honest. It has the typical problems of a big city, but if you're sticking to the typical tourist areas around Sultanahmet and Galata it should be fine. Davincie posted:the most dangerous thing i encountered was the bazaar guys luring in endless clueless tourists with bad deals. great city WaryWarren posted:I wandered around drunk late at night in Istanbul a few times. That's the most dangerous thing I saw there. greazeball posted:I went 3-4 years ago and it was completely unremarkable safety-wise. It's a big city (really loving big) with a lot of tourists so you'll definitely get approached by someone offering a tour or a shoeshine or something and all you have to do is say no thanks but that was it. Don't get falling down drunk and wander about at night and you'll be fine. Shy posted:It’s not overcrowded, there’s a lot of police, I haven’t seen anything that resembled an attempt to swindle a tourist. COVID probably contributed but I felt safer than in Rome for example. There are large stray dogs, but they tended to be calm. A lot of beggars who seemed harmless too. Thanks guys, we'll add it to the list of places that we should go to when we can again. I've always wanted to go. 
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Oct 20, 2020 13:58
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webmeister posted:But if you're looking for somewhere to just hang out, I'm not sure I'd recommend it. Posts are usually about 1/3rd travel photos (and a decent chunk of those are stolen from elsewhere by people farming karma), 1/3rd moronic questions (can I fly to Europe with just my US drivers license, I lost my passport), and 1/3rd reasonable questions plus a handful of occasional interesting discussion topics. Pretty low interaction rates for most of the threads, but a lot more variety than I expected. I guess now that the stereotypical gen Z attitude towards anyone who flies on a plane for vacation is that they are a racist murderer limits new travel forums from developing as much as they did in the mid 2000s-2010s. Davincie posted:the most dangerous thing i encountered was the bazaar guys luring in endless clueless tourists with bad deals. great city The bazaar also has a lot of real shops and actual Turkish people will buy things there, so don't skip it either... just make sure you know what a scarf or carpet should cost, and how to tell the materials apart if you want to buy a pashmina or whatever, as you will find both real and fake of everything there.
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Oct 22, 2020 15:28
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Residency Evil posted:Thanks guys, we'll add it to the list of places that we should go to when we can again. I've always wanted to go. I went for Christmas in 2014 and it was great. You will make it one day!
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Oct 25, 2020 16:43
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I went again last week and the weather sucked. Don't go.
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Nov 11, 2020 20:38
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For anyone living in the EU, have you traveled recently / plan to travel anywhere within the EU? Seems like entry into Spain is relatively straight forward (negative COVID test with no quarantine) and indoor dining is opening up again. Any other countries similar to this?
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Mar 7, 2021 12:33
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From what I heard from people living there Spain has pretty much given up on the whole Covid measures thing, though it depends a lot by region what measures are still there. All I know is don't go to France or the Netherlands, they are pretty much locked down and have a curfew. Or y'know, just don't travel during a pandemic. It certainly won't help the situation.
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Mar 7, 2021 14:21
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Entropist posted:From what I heard from people living there Spain has pretty much given up on the whole Covid measures thing, though it depends a lot by region what measures are still there. Lmao I wish.
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Mar 7, 2021 16:03
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Yeah my dad keeps complaining about being locked in at home (Valencia)
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Mar 7, 2021 17:32
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My municipality doesn't have any amenities and I wasn't allowed to leave until last week.
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Mar 7, 2021 18:19
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Huh, apparently in Madrid schools, bars, restaurants and stuff are open. But local travel restrictions would indeed make tourist visits a bad idea, if it wasn't already a bad idea.
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Mar 7, 2021 18:59
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Here in Barcelona:
I wouldn't recommend coming yet.
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Mar 7, 2021 19:01
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Oh yeah and in Madrid the curfew is 1AM! Don't tell the French that.
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Mar 7, 2021 19:03
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Busy Bee posted:For anyone living in the EU, have you traveled recently / plan to travel anywhere within the EU? Seems like entry into Spain is relatively straight forward (negative COVID test with no quarantine) and indoor dining is opening up again. Any other countries similar to this? There are too many variables at play here, it depends largely on what country you're in, as a few ban non-essential foreign travel (UK, Belgium, probably others), and there is also the huge question of what restrictions are "real" and which ones are "theoretical on paper" (e.g. Belgium isn't doing regular land border controls). There are all sorts of inconsistent or bizarre restrictions too, e.g. Germany controls people coming from the Moselle region of France, but people from Bas-Rhin do not have the same restriction. A fair number of places allow non-essential travel if you have a recent negative COVID test, but this tends to be extremely regional. For instance, you can go to some of the Canaries (Tenerife, Gran Canaria) but others are still locked down (Lanzarote). If you really need to get out and go somewhere, anywhere, then go by car, plan it last minute, and don't ask people on the internet because you'd have to basically doxx yourself to get any useful information as the myriad restrictions are so specific now you'd need to find someone in the same situation as you and who has also looked at regulations within the last week for your target destinations.
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Mar 7, 2021 21:46
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I reckon that at the moment basically the only fun you can count on to have is outdoors stuff, and that you can do in your home country (assuming you don't live in a microstate). We've had pretty much the laxest covid restrictions in all of Europe here in Finland, but even here everything but everyday services are closed, and restaurants are closing again for a few weeks. Last summer was entirely normal and I'm hoping for this summer to be too, because we should get a lot of vaccinations done over the next few months, but right now travel isn't worth thinking about
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Mar 7, 2021 21:55
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Ras Het posted:(assuming you don't live in a microstate). Out of curiosity, does anyone know what happened to Andorra during the lockdowns? San Marino obviously was "Italian", Monaco obviously "French", the Vatican not a country in any sense of the word, and Liechtenstein was considered part of Switzerland (notably, not Austria), but I never figured out what Andorra was considered 'part of'. Did they get to go to France, Spain, or did they get locked inside a tiny mountain valley for months? The other European microstates are islands (Malta, Iceland) so afaik they went their own way which I guess gives them some credibility to being real countries and not microstates.
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Mar 8, 2021 23:07
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Saladman posted:Out of curiosity, does anyone know what happened to Andorra during the lockdowns? San Marino obviously was "Italian", Monaco obviously "French", the Vatican not a country in any sense of the word, and Liechtenstein was considered part of Switzerland (notably, not Austria), but I never figured out what Andorra was considered 'part of'. Did they get to go to France, Spain, or did they get locked inside a tiny mountain valley for months? I can't speak for Andorra specifically but most of the borders in Europe were never fully closed. They've always been open for: - Cargo transport by trucks - People who need to travel because they work on the other side of the border - Medical emergencies and the like As for other reasons to cross the border, this depended on each country's own decisions, as well as when during the pandemic you're looking. Obviously the restrictions were stricter during the peak of the curve. Another thing is that the restrictions during the first wave were like "We need to act now, work out the details later", while during the second wave that started in the fall and the third wave that started around christmas and is still going on now, governments had a better idea of what they're doing and made any restrictions much more specific.
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Mar 9, 2021 08:17
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Calling Iceland a microstate seems very dumb
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Mar 9, 2021 08:18
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Carbon dioxide posted:I can't speak for Andorra specifically but most of the borders in Europe were never fully closed. Yeah I live in Europe, so I know what the rules were, I meant in terms of basic daily travel. Like could people in Andorra go and shop for groceries elsewhere, or go for a hike somewhere besides in their valley in mid-May before borders reopened for normal travel. I guess France and Spain were so heavily restricted during the first lockdown that their borders were closed for normal traffic since no one in either of the bordering countries could go more than a few km from their home, unlike Liechtensteiners who could drive to Geneva (but not Vienna) to go grocery shopping. Ras Het posted:Calling Iceland a microstate seems very dumb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microstate I do think the limit of 500k people is kind of high though, since countries like Belize and Iceland do function like larger countries (militaries, diplomatic missions abroad, have full normal control of their foreign affairs), unlike say Greenland which, even if it got independence, it would still function as a microstate for all intents and purposes. Something like 100 or 150k people probably makes more sense to make the word have any real meaning. Saladman fucked around with this message at 08:34 on Mar 9, 2021 |
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Mar 9, 2021 08:21
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I've always though of microstates in the context of their histories -- how they were created, or how they weren't unified with a neighboring country -- as much as their size tbh. Like a relic of pre-nation state times, or a carving out by a colonial power.
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Mar 9, 2021 15:29
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In case anyone is planning to go to Europe soon - don't. The vaccination campaigns are only just starting up and in many countries, infection rates have been on the rise again. A bunch of countries are doubling down on their lockdowns again and others just keep their already strict lockdowns in place. Latest is that we shouldn't even hope for any release until somewhere late May. The only exception seems to be the UK who somehow got their hands on much more vaccines much earlier than any other country - but they are scared of travelers bringing in new mutations so their borders are locked tight as well.
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Mar 23, 2021 08:35
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