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Pan-EU vaccine passports are approved and should be implemented by July 1: https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/news/eu-citizens-can-start-travelling-with-covid-19-certificates-from-july-1-the-council-says/ Not sure how this will apply to Americans or semi-EU members like Switzerland, but here's hoping it will be semi-unified. I get my second vaccine on July 1, so I'm sure as hell taking a good long vacation starting on July 15.
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May 25, 2021 09:46
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Europe finding a way to keep the dipshit Chud percentage of Americans out would be very enviable
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May 25, 2021 16:10
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most of the dipshit chud percentage of Americans don't even own a passport
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May 25, 2021 16:27
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Plenty of chuds make it to Europe, they're the ones who eat at McDonald's in Paris and complain that nobody speaks English. Does the EU vaccine passport change anything about Spain opening to Americans on June 7th?
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May 25, 2021 17:36
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The X-man cometh posted:Plenty of chuds make it to Europe, they're the ones who eat at McDonald's in Paris and complain that nobody speaks English. sure, and a much larger number never leave Texas let alone the country
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May 25, 2021 22:41
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Americans in the US have some idea that Americans are largely disliked in Europe or whatever. There might be very specific places where that is the case, but by and large you don't encounter American tourists very much at all, especially not loud and irritating masses of them, unless you're at a cruise ship dock site or in Florence. Even in Paris I have never seen a herd of ugly Americans ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugly_American_(pejorative) ). Even in places like Florence the stereotype is that they are well-meaning but bumbling and badly dressed ignoramuses with a camera around their necks buying awful nicknacks. It's basically the same stereotype that people have (had?) of Japanese tourists back when they were ubiquitous. The only other negative American stereotype I've heard, which has largely borne out, is that when you hear a super loud group of girls talk-screaming, they're almost inevitably either American or Spanish. The only really negative stereotypes I've encountered and largely believe are against British tourists in specific places (Cyprus, Malta, Red Sea coast of Egypt, coastal Tunisia, coastal Turkey) where they just get shitfaced hammered drunk and belligerent (not so different from how they behave at home), Russian tourists in mostly the same places and for the same reasons, and Dutch tourists for doing the same thing, but only at campsites. In any case such groups are largely easy to avoid, just don't go to Hammamet or Ayia Napa in high season, or Saint Julian's ever. Badly behaved Dutch tourists are the hardest to avoid IME because they're nearly ubiquitous at campsites, but I guess it's only karmic for the rest of Europe having destroyed the inner canal areas of Amsterdam. But, it might not be that Dutch are the worst campers, but rather that any campsite in Europe will be populated by > 50% Dutch from June until September, during their annual migration season, since every Dutch person gets a camper van on their 10th birthday and is mandated by law to use it 5 weeks a year.
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May 26, 2021 10:54
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They don't have to be a herd to be annoying, though. I watched a lady in St. Peter's harass a guard because she wanted to know "what part of the church Jesus was born in" and he thought he wasn't understanding her because the question was so loving stupid. I've also been on small group tours where a single American/American family has been so obnoxious that they've basically ruined the entire trip for everybody else. Sure, there aren't Americans everywhere. And some are fantastic, like the dude we ended up on our boat tour in Egypt with who was a political history scholar. But when you get that annoying one, especially in a situation where you're unable to get away from them when you'd like to enjoy another country or culture, it can be very, very annoying.
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May 26, 2021 16:35
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In Angkor Wat I listened to an American tourist lecture his own tour guide about how the temples must have been built -- something about how Cambodians couldn't have known how to build structures that impressive so it must have been someone else. It was very insulting, and the guide didn't seem to know how to respond.
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May 26, 2021 16:41
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I'm an American with an Art History degree and I definitely felt like I was swimming upwards when I was in Florence. It is unsurprising to me that most of the Italians in the area seem to prefer to live outside Florence. It's like my friend who lives in Brooklyn but works in Times Square and wants to tear his hair out every minute he is there. Some American who thought Michelangelo built the entire Florence Cathedral kept shouting "who?" when they were talking about Ghiberti's doors. I also noticed a lot of tour guides they assign to Americans are also American. I feel like this isn't happening by chance.
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May 26, 2021 17:52
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Saladman posted:There might be very specific places where that is the case, but by and large you don't encounter American tourists very much at all, especially not loud and irritating masses of them, unless you're at a cruise ship dock site or in Florence. Yeah, this. I've spent my adult life in three European capitals, and I don't remember any run ins with obnoxious American tourists. Tourists generally feel like a seasonal swarm that you quickly learn to dodge, and the actual problems related to tourism are totally external, like housing issues and the way central areas of cities are dedicated to basically scamming foreigners
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May 26, 2021 18:56
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Yeah it probably depends entirely where you are for what type of rear end in a top hat tourist you get the most and associate with the most. In Switzerland there aren't really that many ugly tourists in the first place, and the few that are always congregate in Luzern (mostly Indians, Chinese, but also people from all over), Interlaken (mostly Americans, Australians, miscellaneous 20 year old Europeans), campsites (Dutch), or Geneva (miscellaneous wealthy foreigners who spend more money on diamond encrusted watches than you make in a year). I don't remember really ever seeing any obviously-tourists-and-not-expats-or-immigrants in Zurich, and I never saw a tour group even once. One of my friends worked at a Starbucks in central Luzern for three years during his bachelor though and he said it was hell, with Indian customers being the worst, as the ones visiting Luzern are all rich and used to housekeepers and staff and etc at home, and they assume if you're serving them, then you're part of the servant class who is beneath their consideration. That Jesus question about being born in St Petersburg inside a church is a real mind bender, particularly for someone who grew up in a Western country and presumably didn't hear about Christianity the day before from their tour guide. It'd be like going to France and asking if you're in the mosque that Mohammad was raised in?
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May 26, 2021 18:58
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My closest guess is that she somehow got all turned around over the years after hearing St. Peter is buried in the catacombs below the church. And they don't let the general public go down there anyway.
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May 26, 2021 20:02
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I overheard an American boomer asking with genuine sincerity if the lightning conductor atop Angkor Wat was a tv antenna That said, I also saw a group of Australians assuming that cornetti pastries were Cornettos, a brand of cheap lovely Australian ice cream, and wondering why the gently caress this stupid hostel would serve ice cream for breakfast
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May 27, 2021 00:52
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webmeister posted:I overheard an American boomer asking with genuine sincerity if the lightning conductor atop Angkor Wat was a tv antenna Italian
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May 27, 2021 01:28
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I'm an American who lived in Italy for close to five years. I lived mostly in Bolzano and Trento, where the former has mostly German and Austrian tourists and the latter had none that I can think of. The only American who I ever heard speak English in either city was a middle-aged father who asked me in fluent Italian where the Archaeological Museum was (home of Otzi). I told him it was around the block in Italian, and then switched to English to make him feel more comfortable. Every time I would go to Verona or Venice for work, I would immediately be able to pick out the American voices in the crowd. It's not hard, since the average American is so loving loud. My birthday is in February, so I went to Florence to celebrate it three or four of the years I was there. This is the low point in the tourism numbers there, and yet every street I would walk down hear a bunch of young American women "studying abroad" talking nonstop about shopping and food. The last time I went to my favorite restaurant there, the only other people there were young American women with their visiting parent(s). There was also the time that I was with my coworker/best Italian friend and his friends in Treviso at a bar during the middle of the week, when a very drunk 55 year old American woman starting hitting on the Italians in my company. She claimed to be a retired Microsoft executive with a very big house in Seattle! In Italy, the wine gets to everyone's heads! At Auschwitz, they separate your tour groups by language. The only other Anglos in my group was an American couple. The wife kept interrupting our guide, a sweet old Polish lady. The American tried to correct the guide or provide her own commentary, as she was pointing stuff out to us. Talking over someone who has lived there their whole life..."Well ackthually...". Unbelievable. I apologized to our guide afterwards. Of course, I tipped her as did the other people in my group but that couple did not (probably too ignorant to know that tipping is a custom). My grandma spoke Polish and I picked up some from her, so the guide and I talked poo poo about those people. Good times. I spent some time living in Munich as well, and the most annoying tourists there are by far the Russians. Their children are very rude, play with their phones or handheld video game doodads at nice restaurants, with the parents only screaming at the child to stop that behavior, if they act at all.
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May 27, 2021 06:22
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I'm an American who lived in Berlin for two years before moving to a smaller German city (where I've now been for 7). Berlin has a poo poo ton of tourists pretty much always and tends to attract a very specific type of tourist, but I can only really recall one negative instance. I was taking a regional train back to Berlin after being out of town for a couple days, and there was a group of maybe four to five 18/19 year old sorority girls from the States who were talking EXTREMELY LOUDLY and EXTREMELY CASUALLY about how one of them hosed some dude and was very much looking forward to getting an abortion in the near future (in graphic detail). Absolutely no filter whatsoever and no concern at all about making other people around them uncomfortable on a crowded train. Eventually a conductor had to step in and tell them to shut the gently caress up. That being said, in my travels around it's much more often the case that you get Ugly English instead of Ugly Americans.
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May 27, 2021 08:52
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I went on a small guided tour in Dublin with four Americans and we all had a lovely time and got along v v
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May 27, 2021 09:03
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My Lovely Horse posted:I went on a small guided tour in Dublin with four Americans and we all had a lovely time and got along v But were they super loud and saying "OMIGOD!!!" all the time?
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May 27, 2021 09:58
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Drone posted:I'm an American who lived in Berlin for two years before moving to a smaller German city (where I've now been for 7). Berlin has a poo poo ton of tourists pretty much always and tends to attract a very specific type of tourist, but I can only really recall one negative instance. I was taking a regional train back to Berlin after being out of town for a couple days, and there was a group of maybe four to five 18/19 year old sorority girls from the States who were talking EXTREMELY LOUDLY and EXTREMELY CASUALLY about how one of them hosed some dude and was very much looking forward to getting an abortion in the near future (in graphic detail). Absolutely no filter whatsoever and no concern at all about making other people around them uncomfortable on a crowded train. Am English, this is definitely true. It's embarrassing the way some of our folk act. When I renew my passport I'm getting an Irish one.
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May 27, 2021 10:07
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Saladman posted:But were they super loud and saying "OMIGOD!!!" all the time? They were all named Becky, even the guys
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May 27, 2021 10:07
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Saladman posted:campsites (Dutch) What... happened? The Dutch migrating southwards with caravans full of potatoes and staying at the same campsite year after year is something I'm well aware of, but I've never heard of them having such a bad reputation.
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May 27, 2021 10:36
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Knitting Beetles posted:What... happened? The Dutch migrating southwards with caravans full of potatoes and staying at the same campsite year after year is something I'm well aware of, but I've never heard of them having such a bad reputation. It might just be that they make up the majority of every campsite, so when you get someone playing loud music and drinking at midnight, it's inevitably Dutch people just because of probability. I only went camping twice last year at large campsites so that's all my memory specifically has in store, but one time there were two Dutch girls who spent literally 45 minutes occupying the only two working women's showers (at a campsite of like 50 places to pitch?? so weird, worst campsite ever) so I was about to file a police report to see what happened to my missing wife. The other time there was a group of Dutch people on a roadtrip who thought that having a party and grilling outside their until midnight was totally cool with everyone. The latter is super common, maybe 30-50% of nights I've spent at campsites, and it is a large part of why I dislike going to campsites in continental Europe. Nordic campsites have always been awesome IME. My wife loves the idea of campsites but then she always complains the next day that she slept badly. If you have a camper van I'm sure it's fine, but if you're in a tent it's disruptive. Normally when out hiking I'd like to go to sleep at like 10:30 so that I can get up just after sunrise and get going, but that's impossible to do at a campsite as you're almost guaranteed to have people out being loud until at least 11. I normally try to pitch a tent as far from groups of people as possible (couples and single families are usually fine) but sometimes you pitch your tent, are tired, someone else pitches next to you, and you're too lazy to move or don't want to appear rude, as it's not like every group of people is disrespectful. I'm all fine for people having a good time and I don't like call the cops on my neighbors when they have a party until 2am twice a year, but when there are like 50 other people within earshot sleeping with thin tents, then it's a pretty dick move. I think there's just a big and fundamentally incompatible difference between people who use a campsite one night and move on, and people who spend a week at a specific campsite and party with their friends.
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May 27, 2021 10:48
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WaryWarren posted:I'm an American who lived in Italy for close to five years. I lived mostly in Bolzano and Trento, where the former has mostly German and Austrian tourists and the latter had none that I can think of. I have visited Trento so I guess you get American tourists. I love both those cities btw
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May 27, 2021 16:11
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Re: campsite chat - I've never noticed Dutch people being particularly noisy, it's been a fairly even spread of nationalities. I'd notice english noisemakers more but that's probably because I can understand everything they are saying so it's harder to tune out. The oddest thing I ever saw in a campsite was when this teeny tiny little camper pulled into the next bay, and the first thing the occupants did after arriving was put out a little portable picket fence all around their area. They didn't put out chairs and table within the space, which would have made some kind of sense, in fact, I don't think I ever saw them sit out at all. At night they drew the curtains and played popular hits of the 1950s, performed entirely on the hammond organ. It was quite surreal.
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May 27, 2021 16:35
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kiimo posted:I have visited Trento so I guess you get American tourists. I love both those cities btw Me too, I has a sad. My aforementioned friend met an American girl in Rovereto of all places. He ended up visiting her when he came to the US. She was a student and cheerleader at Oklahoma State at the time. He told me, "Don't ever go to Oklahoma". Thanks, I agree!
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May 27, 2021 17:30
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I thought when I was in Trento as a lifelong skier/snowboarder that it would have been a great place to live in my college years. then I went to Innsbruck and was like oh poo poo wait nevermind I meant this place. This is the place.
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May 27, 2021 17:57
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I think I might take a chance on a discount flight to Spain or France at the end of June. What are the rules about crossing borders within Schengen by train or car? I'm fully vaccinated and have my CDC card, are there border checkpoints if I want to go to the Netherlands or Germany?
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Jun 8, 2021 16:03
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The X-man cometh posted:I think I might take a chance on a discount flight to Spain or France at the end of June. You can run into spot checks from cops, maybe not at the border but some distance from it. At any one time, any single country can decide to make the rules more strict. This can include: - Refusing people who travel or originate from certain countries or forcing them into a 2 week quarantine - Closing the border altogether except for people with a special permit showing they need to cross the border for work - And who knows what else. No matter what, you are supposed to bring the official EU proof of vaccination (or recent negative test) with you, however this will be app based and the app prob won't be ready before July 1st, and I'm hearing rumours that as a result they will accept other forms of proof as well. I have no idea how they plan to deal with non-EU citizens' proofs of vaccination, I have heard nothing about it. Shortly before crossing any border you should check the site of the ministry of foreign affairs or similar of the country you're entering, to find out if you're allowed to enter and if so what rules apply to you.
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Jun 8, 2021 16:31
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There are no details about how non-EU non-EEA vaccines will be accepted, although there is a mechanism for that since e.g. Switzerland will need to be involved. It will not be ready by the end of June, earliest possible date is July 1, but I doubt that will include any non-EU/EEA countries except for Switzerland, Croatia, and presumably the microstates. How it works with Spain is going to really be the question, since while Iceland and Greece opened up to foreigners before, they don't have any land borders with other Schengen countries, and plane controls are strict. How France and Portugal will keep out tourists is anyone's guess, as there won't be any easy way to enforce that, and it's not even clear to me that it's illegal to cross from Spain into France as an American tourist. E: Do not take a discount flight into France, unless you're an EU citizen!! France is not open to non-EU tourism and you will be denied boarding and the next rule change at the earliest is 30 June. Spain is totally AOK. I've crossed French and German borders several times in the past few months and haven't seen a single control since March, but I wouldn't want to risk deportation over it (if it is indeed illegal and if there is any penalty, which is not clear to me). Saladman fucked around with this message at 11:58 on Jun 9, 2021 |
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Jun 9, 2021 11:55
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Saladman posted:E: Do not take a discount flight into France, unless you're an EU citizen!! France is not open to non-EU tourism and you will be denied boarding and the next rule change at the earliest is 30 June. Spain is totally AOK. They just opened up.
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Jun 9, 2021 13:45
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The X-man cometh posted:They just opened up. Whoa, wow. That was not highlighted in the news here about their June 9th changes, all I'd been hearing about was Spain, Greece, and Iceland. Then yeah you're totally good to go. I guess you should make sure you're in the country (e.g. NL) legally if you are driving, in case you get in an accident, but I don't see what the issue would be. You can contact the embassy if you are really worried; I contacted a handful of embassies and consulates this year when travelling around and always got a response. The actual response from the embassy or from federal police offices was often very different from what people online said. A lot of info online is either bullshit or out of date, including apparently part of my previous post.
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Jun 9, 2021 14:01
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The EU has maps and data available here as country policies change: https://reopen.europa.eu/en/ Other languages available for those that need them.
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Jun 9, 2021 15:33
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We're going to Rome soon and the prices for group tours that I see on Tripadvisor et al weird me the gently caress out. They just seem bizarrely high. I'm not expecting to pay for poverty level wages, but $400+ to talk to a group for three hours seems like a lot, and some of them are even more, like $800. It's different if there's special equipment or training required from the guide of course, which is why I had no problem signing up for a class about teaching you to fight like a Roman gladiator at some school. It's just charging $100+/hour for talking that seems like a huge ripoff. Also, I wish I could find much shorter tours; even if I personally was okay with tours that long, my kid definitely would not be. I'd much rather learn from a guide for 30-40 minutes and then just wander around. I don't even like having to remain focused on movies for two hours, let alone staring at old buildings. edit: and I realize that it's not like the individual tour guides are themselves actually making 100$+/hour, as most of that money is undoubtedly being sucked up by the Tripadvisor and whatever tour guide company they're employed by, which just makes it worse Cicero fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Jun 14, 2021 |
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Jun 14, 2021 01:12
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Just buy a Rick Steves audio tour or something
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Jun 14, 2021 01:39
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That looks like a good option, thanks. Now to see if there's some way to sync up listening to audio files with other people, like Watch 2Gether or Netflix Watch Party does for video streams.
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Jun 14, 2021 01:54
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There's a Rick Steve's android app with loads of audio tours which is free I think (or at least the one I listened to was, i didn't even realize you could pay). They're really good, much better than audio guides you get in museums and on par with a good tour guide. When he has a female co-guide some of the jokes play on stereotypes a bit but nothing too offensive.
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Jun 14, 2021 08:11
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Cicero posted:We're going to Rome soon and the prices for group tours that I see on Tripadvisor et al weird me the gently caress out. They just seem bizarrely high. I'm not expecting to pay for poverty level wages, but $400+ to talk to a group for three hours seems like a lot, and some of them are even more, like $800. For any specific site like the Roman Forum, Vatican Museum, etc there is always an audioguide so you can just press a number and hear as much or as little as you want. For more generic walking around Rome type things, you can just flip through the Wikipedia page of whatever site you're going to or looking at. Guides can be cool and all and show you details and context that you would have otherwise missed, but OTOH a lot of the time you just hear a bunch of dates and names that go in one ear and out the other, and for general walking tours of an open public area, at least for me, they're a distinct negative as it means you can't walk into that cool shop you saw, or go to that interesting church you walked by, or go up to that cool-looking vantage point, because you're stuck on rails unless you're paying for a private guide. I guess it also depends on how much you already know about Roman history, and if you care or will remember whether it's Hadrian or Nero that built that arch over there, whether that cave you're looking at is a Mithraic temple or a wine cellar, whether that carving of Zeus's face is modelled after Augustus or if it's just a generic facial stereotype of an old powerful man, and whether that space you're looking at beneath the Colosseum floor is used for trap doors for ostriches to pop out of or whether it was for plumbing for naval battles. If you answered "yes, that distinction interests me" to any of those questions then a real guide is probably better than an audioguide or Wikipedia but you can also just arrange it on the spot for 1/10th the price of what you're seeing quoted online. E: Based on your SA forum user name, you might have answered "yes" to several of those questions.
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Jun 14, 2021 10:53
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If you don’t mind doing group tours there are usually free walking tours taking place most days, though I’m not sure how COVID has affected those. The catch is you tip the guide at the end based on what you think it was worth, usually in the range of 20 euros per adult kinda thing. Also, consider checking out Airbnb Experiences in addition to TripAdvisor. TA’s rankings are pretty easy to game, and their reviews are usually packed with the worst type of American tourists
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Jun 14, 2021 11:21
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I was gonna say I just walked up to the Vatican, found a tour guide company right outside and paid like, I'm gonna say something around a hundred bucks and got a fantastic tour. That was just a couple years ago but I guess prices could have skyrocketed after Covid edit: also it didn't hurt that the guide was a hot girl from Savannah, Georgia getting her PHD in Art History. I'm sure they tend to stick Americans with American guides but as an Art History major from the US with eyeballs I wasn't complaining. kiimo fucked around with this message at 15:10 on Jun 14, 2021 |
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Jun 14, 2021 15:05
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Whoa, even Norway opens up in two weeks for most EEA countries + random others, probably including the US but not Canada (though maybe Canada will follow shortly). https://www.visitnorway.com/plan-your-trip/coronavirus-and-travelling-to-norway/ That reopens most of Europe now except for the UK and Ireland, and Ireland is supposed to reopen for foreign tourism something like July 19th. All of the other strict countries have either already opened up (France) or are just about to (Finland reopens tomorrow). Ticket prices are going through the roof, as you might imagine. I checked tickets to Algiers at the end of May and it was like €240 for a roundtrip from Paris or Basel, and now it's like €600 for the same dates. I had flagged some flights from the US too and they also jumped from like €750 to €1000 within the past 10 days.
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Jun 20, 2021 20:27
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