Friday open thread: travel mishaps
Apr. 26th, 2024 05:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12I have spent most of this week exhausted out of my mind: either travelling, working in Cambridge (much more frequently and with much more teaching of much larger groups of students than is typical), or suffering the ghastly effects of food poisoning. Today is the first day I finally felt able to catch my breath; I only worked in the morning and took the afternoon off as time in lieu for working two partial Saturdays at workshops/conferences. I taught my class, wandered around Cambridge market doing my grocery shopping, and then caught the train back home at lunch time. I spent the afternoon thoroughly cleaning both bathrooms, doing an hour-and-a-half-long yoga class, and taking a very long shower, and I finally feel relaxed.
Because of all the above, I wasn't going to do any open thread prompt this week (my Dreamwidth-ing has suffered in general and there are several people's posts on which I want to offer commiserations and/or congratulations to various life events — take this as a general expression of such sentiments if you have posted about things which warrant them). But then I saw someone in my Dreamwidth circle using a great prompt in another context, and felt compelled to borrow it:
What are your most memorable or notable travel-related mishaps?
I have many, and every single one of them was caused by my mother.
There was the time we got pickpocketed while travelling in a share taxi/minibus in Bali when I was six years old, which resulted in the loss of our travel documents and travellers' cheques, and Mum had to spend an entire afternoon arguing with staff in a bank in order to sort things out; the consulate gave us emergency passports without much hassle though.
There was the time we arrived at the crack of dawn in Rome after a twenty-four-hour flight from Australia, and Mum (who hadn't been to Italy for more than twenty years) was carrying out-of-date currency which no one would accept, and we were so groggy and confused from lack of sleep that we forgot that the guy from whom we'd be renting an apartment would not be there to meet us at 7.30am, but of course at 9am as arranged. This was after about an hour attempting to use a payphone in a panic, enlisting the help of all the bemused waitstaff and elderly Italian customers in the nearby cafe.
There was the time we walked over a kilometre in the wrong direction on the wrong side of the Seine to get to the apartment we'd be renting, having arrived by train from Milan. By the time we'd rectified our mistake and arrived at the apartment block, my mum and sister were too tired to carry their bags up the requisite four flights of stairs, so I carried every single item of luggage up myself (as a fourteen-year-old gymnast, I definitely had the best upper body strength at that time). This trip was the same European holiday as the trip to Rome in the previous paragraph. (Other memorable things about this particular visit to Paris: the apartment block was a building site covered in scaffolding and we seemed to be the only people staying there; my sister fixated on a collection of plastic miniature model horses which she saw in a toyshop near the Eiffel Tower, she then bought them, and used up almost every single photo on her thirty-photo disposable camera roll of film taking photos of each individual model horse; my sister and I wrote a truly dreadful musical — complete with songs — based on the Genpei War by way of Katherine Paterson.)
There was the time when Mum spectacularly miscalculated what our flight itinerary was saying and assumed that our connecting flight from Hong Kong to Amsterdam would take place at midnight thirty-six hours after our original flight from Sydney to Hong Kong landed (as opposed to midnight twelve hours after the original flight). She therefore made a huge song and dance about booking us into a hotel, enlisted advice from the parents of my then boyfriend (who had lived in Hong Kong previously) about places to stay, visit, eat, etc — and then she woke me in a panic at 9am in the hotel saying, 'Ronni, our connecting flight left nine hours ago!'
There was the time when Mum got pickpocketed in Rome, which resulted in the loss of her driver's license and two credit cards, (although thankfully not the full envelope of cashed travellers' cheques, which she had literally just cashed in order to pay for our rented apartment and which were sitting in a separate part of her bag), and literally multiple hours spent on hold with the Visa office in Milan trying to get the card cancelled (because there was no office in Rome); someone told us later that the reason we were unable to get through whenever we called was because the staff in the call centre spent all their time using the phones there to make personal calls, although I have no idea how true that was. This was the same trip as the Hong Kong blunder above.
There were the multiple attempts Mum and I made to walk the 18km hike between Cambridge and Ely. Each time we got lost; the first time we ended up in Soham, the second time we ended up lost in a 'vole sanctuary' and then trying to ask for help from a very dubious-looking local farmer who a) tried to sell us eggs and b) had his fly open the whole time he was talking to us. I refused to try the walk again, although she and my sister did it when they both visited for my PhD graduation. On that hike, Mum fell backwards off a footbridge and hurt her hand, the pair of them ended up thigh-high in a bog, they were constantly stung by stinging nettles, and chased by a bull. I think the fact that my sister (who doesn't drink alcohol) showed up to meet me and Matthias for dinner after they got back and immediately ordered a pint of apple cider sums up her thoughts on the matter.
But the absolute peak travel-related debacle involving me and my mum happened last (northern) summer. We have a project in which we try to walk every leg of the Thames Path, and last year were were going to do another two sections: Teddington to Putney, and Putney to Tower Bridge. We caught the train to Teddington, got out, read the route description, noted that this stretch of the walk could be done on either side of the river, crossed over the Thames ... and immediately turned in the wrong direction. We passed through Kingston (if you're looking at a map, you will already be able to spot the error), and it was only when we got to an incredibly ugly stretch of road in a place called Seething Wells that we realised our mistake. We had Google Maps! We were looking at our location and still couldn't figure out what we were doing wrong! We confused a guy immensely who saw us peering at our phones and offered help: 'We're trying to walk towards London,' we said, while walking in the opposite direction to London.
This was on a named, constantly signposted track that literally follows alongside a major river for its entire duration.
The whole thing is hilarious in hindsight, as are all the other mishaps. My mother is generally a very organised, detail-oriented person, but her supreme self-confidence is what lets her down in all these situations: she looks at a map briefly (or doesn't look at a map at all), assumes she knows exactly where she needs to go or that her memory of a city she last visited twenty years ago is flawless, and blithely strides off in the wrong direction, taking a very long time to notice any massive errors. After thirty-plus years of this, I've learnt when travelling with her to take control of all navigation choices, so I only have myself to blame for the spectacular catastrophe that was our Thames Path walk last year!
I'd love to hear your answers!
Because of all the above, I wasn't going to do any open thread prompt this week (my Dreamwidth-ing has suffered in general and there are several people's posts on which I want to offer commiserations and/or congratulations to various life events — take this as a general expression of such sentiments if you have posted about things which warrant them). But then I saw someone in my Dreamwidth circle using a great prompt in another context, and felt compelled to borrow it:
What are your most memorable or notable travel-related mishaps?
I have many, and every single one of them was caused by my mother.
There was the time we got pickpocketed while travelling in a share taxi/minibus in Bali when I was six years old, which resulted in the loss of our travel documents and travellers' cheques, and Mum had to spend an entire afternoon arguing with staff in a bank in order to sort things out; the consulate gave us emergency passports without much hassle though.
There was the time we arrived at the crack of dawn in Rome after a twenty-four-hour flight from Australia, and Mum (who hadn't been to Italy for more than twenty years) was carrying out-of-date currency which no one would accept, and we were so groggy and confused from lack of sleep that we forgot that the guy from whom we'd be renting an apartment would not be there to meet us at 7.30am, but of course at 9am as arranged. This was after about an hour attempting to use a payphone in a panic, enlisting the help of all the bemused waitstaff and elderly Italian customers in the nearby cafe.
There was the time we walked over a kilometre in the wrong direction on the wrong side of the Seine to get to the apartment we'd be renting, having arrived by train from Milan. By the time we'd rectified our mistake and arrived at the apartment block, my mum and sister were too tired to carry their bags up the requisite four flights of stairs, so I carried every single item of luggage up myself (as a fourteen-year-old gymnast, I definitely had the best upper body strength at that time). This trip was the same European holiday as the trip to Rome in the previous paragraph. (Other memorable things about this particular visit to Paris: the apartment block was a building site covered in scaffolding and we seemed to be the only people staying there; my sister fixated on a collection of plastic miniature model horses which she saw in a toyshop near the Eiffel Tower, she then bought them, and used up almost every single photo on her thirty-photo disposable camera roll of film taking photos of each individual model horse; my sister and I wrote a truly dreadful musical — complete with songs — based on the Genpei War by way of Katherine Paterson.)
There was the time when Mum spectacularly miscalculated what our flight itinerary was saying and assumed that our connecting flight from Hong Kong to Amsterdam would take place at midnight thirty-six hours after our original flight from Sydney to Hong Kong landed (as opposed to midnight twelve hours after the original flight). She therefore made a huge song and dance about booking us into a hotel, enlisted advice from the parents of my then boyfriend (who had lived in Hong Kong previously) about places to stay, visit, eat, etc — and then she woke me in a panic at 9am in the hotel saying, 'Ronni, our connecting flight left nine hours ago!'
There was the time when Mum got pickpocketed in Rome, which resulted in the loss of her driver's license and two credit cards, (although thankfully not the full envelope of cashed travellers' cheques, which she had literally just cashed in order to pay for our rented apartment and which were sitting in a separate part of her bag), and literally multiple hours spent on hold with the Visa office in Milan trying to get the card cancelled (because there was no office in Rome); someone told us later that the reason we were unable to get through whenever we called was because the staff in the call centre spent all their time using the phones there to make personal calls, although I have no idea how true that was. This was the same trip as the Hong Kong blunder above.
There were the multiple attempts Mum and I made to walk the 18km hike between Cambridge and Ely. Each time we got lost; the first time we ended up in Soham, the second time we ended up lost in a 'vole sanctuary' and then trying to ask for help from a very dubious-looking local farmer who a) tried to sell us eggs and b) had his fly open the whole time he was talking to us. I refused to try the walk again, although she and my sister did it when they both visited for my PhD graduation. On that hike, Mum fell backwards off a footbridge and hurt her hand, the pair of them ended up thigh-high in a bog, they were constantly stung by stinging nettles, and chased by a bull. I think the fact that my sister (who doesn't drink alcohol) showed up to meet me and Matthias for dinner after they got back and immediately ordered a pint of apple cider sums up her thoughts on the matter.
But the absolute peak travel-related debacle involving me and my mum happened last (northern) summer. We have a project in which we try to walk every leg of the Thames Path, and last year were were going to do another two sections: Teddington to Putney, and Putney to Tower Bridge. We caught the train to Teddington, got out, read the route description, noted that this stretch of the walk could be done on either side of the river, crossed over the Thames ... and immediately turned in the wrong direction. We passed through Kingston (if you're looking at a map, you will already be able to spot the error), and it was only when we got to an incredibly ugly stretch of road in a place called Seething Wells that we realised our mistake. We had Google Maps! We were looking at our location and still couldn't figure out what we were doing wrong! We confused a guy immensely who saw us peering at our phones and offered help: 'We're trying to walk towards London,' we said, while walking in the opposite direction to London.
This was on a named, constantly signposted track that literally follows alongside a major river for its entire duration.
The whole thing is hilarious in hindsight, as are all the other mishaps. My mother is generally a very organised, detail-oriented person, but her supreme self-confidence is what lets her down in all these situations: she looks at a map briefly (or doesn't look at a map at all), assumes she knows exactly where she needs to go or that her memory of a city she last visited twenty years ago is flawless, and blithely strides off in the wrong direction, taking a very long time to notice any massive errors. After thirty-plus years of this, I've learnt when travelling with her to take control of all navigation choices, so I only have myself to blame for the spectacular catastrophe that was our Thames Path walk last year!
I'd love to hear your answers!
no subject
Date: 2024-04-27 01:17 am (UTC)I also nearly missed a flight in 2019 because I stupidly booked a trip into the US as two one-way flights, and in combination with my history of multiple US student visas, that came up as a red flag and sent me straight to a lengthy visit to second-step US customs!
no subject
Date: 2024-04-28 10:16 am (UTC)My student visa when I was an MPhil student was printed inside my passport, but the year after that the UK transitioned to little physical plastic biometric cards (the same size as a bank/credit card), which is what I had for my PhD. You were meant to carry them in your wallet all the time, but I never did in case I lost it, which meant having to remember to add it to the wallet every time I travelled out of the UK. I only forgot it once, and, thankfully, this was on a trip to Ireland. The UK and Ireland have a common travel area which means that the UK treats people entering the country from Ireland as if they've just been travelling domestically within the UK, so there is no passport control and no document checks at the airport (although Ireland does make UK passengers go through passport control, and theoretically the UK authorities can come in and do random checks, but they never do). I spent the whole trip in an absolute panic that border guards would be there at the airport, and only relaxed once I finally got out of the airport.
I never forgot that student visa card again!