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Hey Drone! You are right, and the prices are the same. Yea that was an odd recommendation now that I think about it.
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Apr 24, 2022 17:50
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Sometimes you can find significant savings by flying from/to a different aiport, a few days ago I bought some tickets to Sri Lanka from Kraow, even though it's 500km away from me. But I can get a train ticket for like $15 and will save over $700 so... that said it's almost certainly not going to happen with a transatlantic flight to Frankfurt vs Copenhagen. Re. scammy ATMs, check out this video (and other videos on that channel about tourist scams in europe): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdYhm__yMQY
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Apr 24, 2022 19:27
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Sometimes it can work out… we took a direct flight from Newark to Düsseldorf once because it was a crazy deal at $500, and then took the two hour train to Amsterdam which was pretty painless. IIRC a direct flight to Amsterdam was $800 or $900.
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Apr 24, 2022 19:48
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smackfu posted:Sometimes it can work out… we took a direct flight from Newark to Düsseldorf once because it was a crazy deal at $500, and then took the two hour train to Amsterdam which was pretty painless. IIRC a direct flight to Amsterdam was $800 or $900. In that part of western Europe you won't have a problem, but even with a train it's still more than 7 hours from Frankfurt to Copenhagen, so the distance there isn't really comparable.
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Apr 24, 2022 19:57
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Years ago when we went to the USA, it was a bit cheaper to take a train from Amsterdam to London and fly from Heathrow than to fly from Amsterdam directly. That was okayish, but on the way back, after getting off the plane in Heathrow we had to navigate the London underground and then sit in a train for several hours with a hell of a jetlag when all you want to do is just get home and recover. It was horrible. I'll never do something like that again for any amount of savings.
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Apr 24, 2022 20:30
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mobby_6kl posted:Re. scammy ATMs, check out this video (and other videos on that channel about tourist scams in europe): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdYhm__yMQY Yeah the Honest Guide guys are fantastic and super brave, mixing it up with those street hustle gangs like they do. Highly recommended watching if you're ever thinking of going to Prague, or even Europe in general really
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Apr 25, 2022 06:39
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Cheese Thief posted:Hey Drone! You are right, and the prices are the same. Yea that was an odd recommendation now that I think about it. Yeah, and even if it was like €400 cheaper to fly round-trip Frankfurt to wherever you're coming from, the rental car, the one-way dropoff fee, the gas for a 1000 km drive, and the difficulty of doing a 10 hour drive after getting off an international flight, would make it a dubious proposition. Alternately you could maybe get a cheap Flixbus-or-similar, but then you'd likely have to overnight in Frankfurt or somewhere unless its schedule lined up nicely with your flight.
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Apr 25, 2022 11:08
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webmeister posted:Yeah the Honest Guide guys are fantastic and super brave, mixing it up with those street hustle gangs like they do. Highly recommended watching if you're ever thinking of going to Prague, or even Europe in general really There's a show called "Scam City" where the host travels around and deliberately attempts to become a victim of known scams in the area he's visiting. Also worth watching if you can find it, and that kind of subject is of interest to you.
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Apr 25, 2022 13:34
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A bit late for the pick pocketing discussion, but I have definitely seen them operating in Copenhagen (rarely) and Lisbon but Prague was the only place they were common. It’s not a big deal if you wear a money belt or even just keep your wallet and documents in your front pockets so long as the clothing is snug against your skin. Basically anything that doesn’t involve your credit cards not being on your body, like a fanny pack 
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Apr 28, 2022 10:31
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Fruits of the sea posted:A bit late for the pick pocketing discussion, but I have definitely seen them operating in Copenhagen (rarely) and Lisbon but Prague was the only place they were common. My only experience with a pickpocket in Europe is someone trying to take the wallet out of my wife's overcoat just outside a metro in Madrid, which she felt and started cussing out the guy. Outside of Europe the only time I've seen it / felt it was in a crowded market in Cusco with the trick where someone throws ash over your head to distract you and then goes to your pockets while you're messing with your hair, a trick which I was aware of. But generally, scams in Europe require some willing assistance by the person being scammed, like grocery scams or the exchange scam that the guy in Prague made a video of. Even being minimally aware that "anyone who approaches and speaks to you, especially if they say it in English, is full of poo poo and trying to take something from you" will avoid like 95% of issues in Europe.
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Apr 28, 2022 10:49
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Saladman posted:My only experience with a pickpocket in Europe is someone trying to take the wallet out of my wife's overcoat just outside a metro in Madrid, which she felt and started cussing out the guy. Outside of Europe the only time I've seen it / felt it was in a crowded market in Cusco with the trick where someone throws ash over your head to distract you and then goes to your pockets while you're messing with your hair, a trick which I was aware of. Someone literally squirted cow poo poo onto my shoe in Delhi, though I think that was less of a pickpocket attempt than a "I'll clean this guy's shoe and charge him 100x the going rate". The thing with pickpockets is like the classic joke about putting on running shoes when confronted by lions. They won't help you out-run a lion, but you only have to out-run your friends. Pickpockets aren't exactly lions, but they're definitely looking for the softest and easiest targets, and with some minor precautions you won't qualify as such.
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Apr 28, 2022 12:12
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Saladman posted:But generally, scams in Europe require some willing assistance by the person being scammed, like grocery scams or the exchange scam that the guy in Prague made a video of. Even being minimally aware that "anyone who approaches and speaks to you, especially if they say it in English, is full of poo poo and trying to take something from you" will avoid like 95% of issues in Europe. Yeah, I know a ton of Danes who have fallen for that kind of scam. The most common ones I've heard of are variations of the bracelet scam or ludicrously expensive breadsticks/salads that are placed on restaurant tables but aren't a part of their order. Europe is generally a really safe place! Just watch out for the tourist districts. Also if you're going further south like Turkey, be prepared to pay 4 times the regular price for most things. Its an unofficial foreigner tax. It's still going to be cheap though, the Lira is turbofucked at the moment. Fruits of the sea fucked around with this message at 12:31 on Apr 28, 2022 |
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Apr 28, 2022 12:28
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Saladman posted:Yeah, and even if it was like €400 cheaper to fly round-trip Frankfurt to wherever you're coming from, the rental car, the one-way dropoff fee, the gas for a 1000 km drive, and the difficulty of doing a 10 hour drive after getting off an international flight, would make it a dubious proposition. Alternately you could maybe get a cheap Flixbus-or-similar, but then you'd likely have to overnight in Frankfurt or somewhere unless its schedule lined up nicely with your flight. Hey just for what its worth, I am free to visit the entire continent. I for sure want to spend time in Germany and visit the castles, and rent a car to drive on the autobahn. Flying into Copenhagen might be better though so I can hit up Germany on the way south on into Rome.
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Apr 28, 2022 13:14
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Please don't be the idiot tourist on the Autobahn.
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Apr 28, 2022 14:27
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The idea of average Americans going for a drive on the Autobahn scares me. When I see videos of American highways there is no lane discipline, people just drive randomly in any lane. Doing that on the Autobahn is a great way to get rear-ended by an Audi cruising by at 260 km/h. It is mandatory to keep right at all times and you can be fined if you don't. Even if you are aware of this, it can be difficult to use the fast lane properly if you are not used to estimating such high speeds of traffic coming up behind.
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Apr 28, 2022 14:32
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I would disagree, driving on the Autobahn is actually super easy. It’s much more complicated to drive in any European city with more complex intersections and a wider variety of vehicles to look out for than in most American cities. 
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Apr 28, 2022 16:02
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Honj Steak posted:I would disagree, driving on the Autobahn is actually super easy. It’s much more complicated to drive in any European city with more complex intersections and a wider variety of vehicles to look out for than in most American cities. I think OP means that Americans will drive in the left / passing lane on US highways and not budge, often driving just the speed limit. This causes other drivers who want to go faster to veer into the right lane and potentially cause accidents. Driving on interstates in say the US Midwest, you will encounter this every time. It's called "lollygagging", and the police can stop and ticket offenders for this. But since they're American cops, they won't usually move from their spot unless you're really aggressive.
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Apr 28, 2022 17:13
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Also worth noting that your rental car likely has a governor installed that'll cap you out at about 150 kph anyway. The Autobahn is really not this mystical thing that Americans always seem to have been hyped up to believe it is, at least not these days. That said, probably wise to get your unlimited-speed-limit fix out of your system sooner rather than later, since it's probable that a speed limit will be introduced before the end of this decade. Fakeedit: also one thing they never tell you about the Autobahn, the undefined speed zones are not usually very big. You can't just cruise along for more than a few minutes at whatever crazy speed you want, because there is always a slowdown zone for busy exits and interchanges, and there's often construction (especially in the summer months).
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Apr 28, 2022 17:18
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Drone posted:Fakeedit: also one thing they never tell you about the Autobahn, the undefined speed zones are not usually very big. You can't just cruise along for more than a few minutes at whatever crazy speed you want, because there is always a slowdown zone for busy exits and interchanges, and there's often construction (especially in the summer months). Depends on where you are. In lesser populated areas of the flat north, like near the Dutch border, there are some quite nice flat, long and quiet sections! Even there you get the frequent road works, though.
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Apr 28, 2022 18:16
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Drone posted:Also worth noting that your rental car likely has a governor installed that'll cap you out at about 150 kph anyway. I have never had a rental car that was limited like that from something like Sixt or Europcar. https://youtu.be/ucQKNkvzQ3g
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Apr 28, 2022 18:50
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Hollow Talk posted:I have never had a rental car that was limited like that from something like Sixt or Europcar. Enterprise seems to do it, at least that was my experience last time I got one from them for a weekend.
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Apr 28, 2022 18:55
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Yeah we definitely decided to see how fast our rental car could go on the empty highway in Croatia once and got it up to 204kph
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Apr 28, 2022 18:58
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Unless you get a nice car you probably shouldn't take it above 160 anyway. I'm not sure if that's true or if it was my parents scaring 18 year old me, but they said that tires on entry-level cars like a Fiat Panda or a Toyota Corolla or whatever are only rated to safely drive up to 160-ish. Googling right now tells me that apparently the top speed of a Panda is 160 and a Corolla is 180, so maybe the "safe speed for tires" is paired well with the "max speed of car on a flat road". Cheese Thief, more to your itinerary: you most likely won't want a car given what you've mentioned is big cities like Rome, Copenhagen, Berlin. A car will be a liability in those places, and if you want to get between major cities then a car is the worst way to do so in Europe. Cars are great for (a) groups of 3 or more people, and (b) doing roadtrips / spending very short amounts of time in small to mid-sized cities. For a solo trip where you're visiting huge megacities and spending several days in each location, then a car is the worst possible choice of transport. What you could do if you spend say, 10 days in Milan, is rent a car for 3-4 days once you're done with Milan so you can go out to Lake Como, Lake Garda, whatever, then either drop the car back in Milan, or drive to Rome and drop it off immediately on arriving in Rome. European cities also increasingly have restrictions on driving in the city, sometimes absolute for all cars (Italy's many ZTLs), and sometimes for cars that don't meet very strict emissions standards (Amsterdam's LEZ, France's ZCR), and other times for cars that don't meet different emissions criteria depending on the phase of the moon and the local soothsayer's interpretation of a sacrificed goat's intestines (France's ZPAs). Saladman fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Apr 28, 2022 |
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Apr 28, 2022 20:00
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And let's not forget about dropping €7.50 per hour on parking (in Amsterdam, if you can find a place). European cities are really not built for cars, and in many of them you'll spend a lot of time in traffic jams if you do try. Also, driving between countries adds more complications. Different countries require different equipment to be in the car, various countries require toll stickers/passes (Austria) or environmental stickers (Germany) which rental cars from another country won't have.
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Apr 29, 2022 00:59
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Saladman posted:European cities also increasingly have restrictions on driving in the city, sometimes absolute for all cars (Italy's many ZTLs), and sometimes for cars that don't meet very strict emissions standards (Amsterdam's LEZ, France's ZCR), and other times for cars that don't meet different emissions criteria depending on the phase of the moon and the local soothsayer's interpretation of a sacrificed goat's intestines (France's ZPAs). As for the emission permits, these often require you to either put a physical permit sticker on your windshield or to get a digital one. Either way, rental cars often come equipped with permit stickers for their own country (or in France, where each city does its own thing, probably for any cities it's close to. Thing is, while permits for other countries are allowed on a car, you usually can't get them for rentals, which means you should avoid emission zones if you want to take a rental across a country border. Oh, Entropist said something similar. Entropist posted:And let's not forget about dropping €7.50 per hour on parking (in Amsterdam, if you can find a place). European cities are really not built for cars, and in many of them you'll spend a lot of time in traffic jams if you do try. Yeah, nobody takes their car into Amsterdam unless they have cargo to drop off. There's big parking lots at the edge of the city where the parking price includes a tram ticket. But in that case, why bother? Just come in with a train from wherever you were.
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Apr 29, 2022 07:32
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Entropist posted:And let's not forget about dropping €7.50 per hour on parking (in Amsterdam, if you can find a place). European cities are really not built for cars, and in many of them you'll spend a lot of time in traffic jams if you do try. I drove to Amsterdam a couple weeks ago for Easter, I was surprised to find parking in Jordaan for €4/hr, in the "ParkBee" parking lots. I was bringing a bunch of stuff to a friend's place from Switzerland, but I absolutely wouldn't recommend driving in Amsterdam. IMHO it's is the most hazardous city to drive I've ever been in, and I've driven in a lot of places, Beirut, Marrakech, Tunis, Addis Ababa, Palermo, Amman, Istanbul, Milan, etc. Mostly because there are a billion bikers, of whom a sizable fraction have no concept of self-preservation or what are the rules of the road and will run lights, and the driver is always at fault in a collision with a bike, even if it's verifiably the biker's fault. (There might be some carve-outs, like if a biker smashes into a car that's in a valid parking spot, I don't know the specifics.)
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Apr 29, 2022 09:11
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It's because we can sniff out your tourist rear end from a mile away and actively want to gently caress with you and make your day worse so you'll stay away from the center with your car next time.
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Apr 29, 2022 10:44
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Saladman posted:I drove to Amsterdam a couple weeks ago for Easter, I was surprised to find parking in Jordaan for €4/hr, in the "ParkBee" parking lots. I was bringing a bunch of stuff to a friend's place from Switzerland, but I absolutely wouldn't recommend driving in Amsterdam. IMHO it's is the most hazardous city to drive I've ever been in, and I've driven in a lot of places, Beirut, Marrakech, Tunis, Addis Ababa, Palermo, Amman, Istanbul, Milan, etc. Mostly because there are a billion bikers, of whom a sizable fraction have no concept of self-preservation or what are the rules of the road and will run lights, and the driver is always at fault in a collision with a bike, even if it's verifiably the biker's fault. (There might be some carve-outs, like if a biker smashes into a car that's in a valid parking spot, I don't know the specifics.) yeah, Amsterdam rocks
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Apr 29, 2022 11:45
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Just a general note that the cost of renting a car pretty much anywhere in Europe has increased a hell of a lot in the last couple of years. My brother came back from the US to Ireland last month, and they were planning to rent a car, but it was just impossibly expensive 
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Apr 29, 2022 11:57
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Pookah posted:Just a general note that the cost of renting a car pretty much anywhere in Europe has increased a hell of a lot in the last couple of years. My brother came back from the US to Ireland last month, and they were planning to rent a car, but it was just impossibly expensive What kind of prices are we talking about? Those car sharing companies, that scatter cars among parking lots in the Netherlands, and that you can rent through an app that then lets you unlock them, such as Greenwheels, used to be a decent deal, at least for a day trip. But I haven't had a need for them in years so I don't know now. I also don't know if they rent to tourists.
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Apr 29, 2022 12:05
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Pookah posted:Just a general note that the cost of renting a car pretty much anywhere in Europe has increased a hell of a lot in the last couple of years. My brother came back from the US to Ireland last month, and they were planning to rent a car, but it was just impossibly expensive Amsterdam sounds like a nightmare but overall I think having a car on vacation is very handy even in Europe. Sure you can get almost anywhere with public transport but a car gives you a lot more flexibility outside of urban areas.
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Apr 29, 2022 12:11
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mobby_6kl posted:but overall I think having a car on vacation is very handy even in Europe. Sure you can get almost anywhere with public transport but a car gives you a lot more flexibility outside of urban areas. Yeah, it also depends on what you like doing. If you like major museums, going out to bar districts, and eating in restaurants situated on town squares, then a car is a liability. If you like countryside gardens and chateaux and small villages, then having a car can be nice even in countries like Switzerland or Netherlands where the public transport is great and efficient. Whenever I have a car in a big city it just completely changes what I do, like since I was in Amsterdam for the holiday weekend with a car, and I've collectively probably spent like 30 days in Amsterdam over the past decade, I spent a day where I had no social plans to go to Keukenhof for the first time (touristy but still amazing), check out the flower farms nearby, check out the Vinkeveense Plassen (tons of rich people but basically zero public access), and hung out at Noordwijk ("okay") - which would have been an impossible itinerary by bike or public transport. But, if I'd just had public transport I guess I would have just gone to Keukenhof and then gone around the Lisse flower farms, which also would have been a nice daytrip. For someone's first Eurotrip, when generally they're planning on hitting the main cities across a huge swath of the continent, then renting a car for the full time is exclusively a liability in addition to being less convenient imho. Getting a car locally for 2-3 days can be great. I was in Rome last month and was surprised at how lovely the public transport was as soon as you want to go outside of the city, even to major cites like Villa Hadrian ("take the 60-loving-minute train to 30 km-distant Tivoli, then walk 5 km") and Lago di Nemi ("take the train for 35 minutes to Cancelliera, then walk for 5 km") Saladman fucked around with this message at 12:27 on Apr 29, 2022 |
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Apr 29, 2022 12:24
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I don't own a car but when I rent one I use leclerc. 5 euros a day plus some more for the km (a little more than the petrol costs normally).
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Apr 29, 2022 12:32
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Carbon dioxide posted:What kind of prices are we talking about? Just did a quick Google, and this what I got for a tiny car for 7 days - at least 700 euros https://www.budget.ie/booking/#/vehicleSelection/ I knew Ireland was crazy pricy, but it seems prices increased pretty much everywhere in Europe by over 100%. Having said that, if the base price was, like 5 quid a day, a 100% increase isn't THAT bad.
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Apr 29, 2022 13:03
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Pookah posted:Just did a quick Google, and this what I got for a tiny car for 7 days - at least 700 euros That's nuts. I just looked at my rental from Cork Airport to Dublin Airport in May 2019, a 10 day rental, and it was €250 for an intermediate class "ix35 or similar" from Keddy/Europcar. Right now I'm seeing like €1100 for an intermediate model for the exact same itinerary selected. I rented cars last month in Valencia and Palermo; Valencia was like €12/day for a 5 day rental and Palermo was like €30/day for a 1 day rental, both times I got the cheapest Fiat available, so I don't think it's necessarily an all of Europe thing, like with the US.
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Apr 29, 2022 14:47
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Saladman posted:I drove to Amsterdam a couple weeks ago for Easter, I was surprised to find parking in Jordaan for €4/hr, in the "ParkBee" parking lots. I was bringing a bunch of stuff to a friend's place from Switzerland, but I absolutely wouldn't recommend driving in Amsterdam. IMHO it's is the most hazardous city to drive I've ever been in, and I've driven in a lot of places, Beirut, Marrakech, Tunis, Addis Ababa, Palermo, Amman, Istanbul, Milan, etc. Mostly because there are a billion bikers, of whom a sizable fraction have no concept of self-preservation or what are the rules of the road and will run lights, and the driver is always at fault in a collision with a bike, even if it's verifiably the biker's fault. (There might be some carve-outs, like if a biker smashes into a car that's in a valid parking spot, I don't know the specifics.) The driver is not always at fault if they hit someone on a bike, but by law the presumption is that they're liable for at least half of the damages unless they can prove force majeure, even if they did nothing wrong.
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Apr 29, 2022 15:03
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I think the thing with car rentals at the moment is that because the pandemic shut down travel for essentially two years, most of the rental companies had to sell off their fleets to stay afloat. I know that's certainly the case down here in Oz, where the majors have probably 30% of the stock they had in March 2020. So it's kind of a supply and demand issue - very limited supply means the prices skyrocket. So hopefully as things return to normal and more tourists start moving around again, rental companies will build up their inventories again and prices will stabilise. Probably never to the same level as before, but hopefully not what they are now.
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Apr 30, 2022 01:54
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webmeister posted:I think the thing with car rentals at the moment is that because the pandemic shut down travel for essentially two years, most of the rental companies had to sell off their fleets to stay afloat. I know that's certainly the case down here in Oz, where the majors have probably 30% of the stock they had in March 2020. So it's kind of a supply and demand issue - very limited supply means the prices skyrocket. Yeah, we saw this in Hawaii where rental car prices went batshit nuts. It's bad everywhere but any place that is touristy is batshit nuts. I paid almost $600 to rent a car for a few days in Portland. Looking over my expense reports, the last few times I rented the same class of car from the same provider, it was between $400 to $475 pre-pandemic.
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Apr 30, 2022 02:19
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 Even if you're going on a road trip it's competitive with normal rentals. For just pottering around it blows them away. Only drawback is getting to a leclerc if you're traveling via air or similar.
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Apr 30, 2022 07:19
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Any tips for Ljubljana? Bars, restaurants, hidden gems?
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Apr 30, 2022 14:30
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