It’s a Good Thing to take along a tour guide and in this group that will be Bob-most probably because he has the greatest need to know where he is located at all times. On the train yesterday leaving Paris he is standing looking out the window for an interminably long time. Fnally he turned around to sit down and said “I guess they know where they are going!”
High speed (TVG) trains travel over 200,mph. In 1965 when a college friend and I traveled through Europe; it took all night to get from Dover to Ostergard on a roller coaster boat! But then in 1965 the Captain invited us up to the steerage! In 1965 we also hitchhiked…which I wouldn’t recommend doing now either. Can you imagine just having to get from one city to the next in the rain having to stick your head in the window of a stopped car or truck to get a “hit” about how safe it was!
In Bayonne France; having breakfast in a small hotel built in the 1700’s we talked to an English woman at the next table who is now living in Spain and who also traveled through Europe and South America by hitching rides-but she quickly added that it was no longer safe for anyone to hitch (or “autostop” as it was called in Europe.
Incidentally, in the summer of 1965 John Kennedy called up the first group of “advisors” to go to Viet Nam: The rumor spread like wildfire that there was going to be a draft call up before the summer was over! Young hitchhiking American males were abandoning their travel and enrolling in any summer school program they could find in Europe by the hundreds to avoid the draft. That summer that I turned 21 jerked me into one of my most early formative experiences.
When Bob went to the train station in London to buy a train ticket through the chunnel to France, they did not bother to tell him that if he had a Eurostar ticket for travel through Europe his chunnel ticket would be 60 dollars less per ticket. (Special saver packages are not available to Europeans which may have something to do with it).
When we went back to the Waterloo station to take the chunnel; Bob tried to get a refund and they rudely refused to give it to him. So he felt gouged. On the other hand, he felt fortunate that he had the foresight to step into a travel agency on the way to Waterloo (you can’t buy train tickets in travel agencies in Europe) to ask a few questions. The very helpful agent on duty told him that when he bought the chunnel ticket, to buy a round trip ticket which was less than half the price of a one way ticket-that he wouldn’t be informed at the point of sale about the difference in price. Apparently it’s a way of making back some of the money lost when a tourist does not return to the country.
In the same way, the Eurail tickets for unlimited travel stops around Europe are very expensive and are not available to Europeans. If however; an American buys one in the states before leaving, there is a substantial savings. The same is true of the Eurostar Saver packages that allow, for example, two people who are traveling together to travel at a reduced rate. The only way we have found to deal with this is to temporarily become a Zen Buddhist.
In September of 1995 we flew into Tashkent, Uzbekistan from New York City on Uzbekistan Airways on our way to join an REI trek into the mountains in Kyrgyzstan. The night before we left home, we ran into a friend who told us that a couple of his friends from Salem, Oregon were in Tashkent working for USAid. He emailed his friends ahead of our arrival and they welcomed us at our hotel.
On our return from the trek we met up with them again when they took us to a U.S. Embassy party where upon walking in we see a guy from Roseburg Oregon (two hours from our home) barbequing hamburgers….and baked beans and potato salad on the table….a most welcome sight after two weeks in the mountains eating lamb and cabbage!
This cosmopolitan city of 2.3 million people is Central Asia’s hub and the fourth biggest in the Commonwealth of Independent States after Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kiev. It is situated in the middle of the Eurasian landmass and is better connected by international flights than any other city in the region. Rebuilt after the 1966 earthquake, Tashkent is the very model of a modern Soviet city..concrete apartment blocks including great parade grounds around solemn monuments. The older part of the city is a sprawling Uzbek country town with fruit trees and in every courtyard hidden behind secure walls where in one our tour group enjoyed an open air Uzbek meal under meandering grape vines.
Tashkent is half Russian-speaking and as in the rest of the country includes Slavs, Koreans, Caucasians and Tatars. Traditions of the old Silk Road still linger as Uzbeks consider themselves good traders, hospitable hosts and tied to the land. 85% of the people claim they are Sunni Islamic but only about 3% are practicing.
A shabby hotel was home for the week in Tashkent. A Russian babushka was stationed on each floor…a hold-over from Soviet days…to miserly dispense toilet paper, see to laundering your clothes and direct desiring gentlemen to local brothels.
The Russian-built underground metro in Tashkent, filled with striking artwork, is the most beautiful we have seen anywhere in the world. The metro was designed as a nuclear shelter and photos are strictly forbidden. We used these smooth fast trains to visit some of the many colorful open air farmers markets or bazaars around the city.
Laughingnomad 