CHAPTER 33: LESSONS LEARNED

As you might expect, we learned a lot during the trip about what works and what doesn't. Some of these things you'll find in travel guides. Others you'll only find out about through experience.

Money matters:

- Cash: We used ATM's to get cash all over Europe. Never once used a traveller's check. ATM's usually give the best exchange rate and you can find them everywhere. For changing money, banks were our second choice: they gave a good rate but were not as convenient as other methods. Cambios (currency traders like Thomas Cook) are in all the major cities. Their rates aren't good and they tack on surcharges, but they're usually handy when you need 'em. Most of the currency traders will not accept coins, so we occasionally wound up with handfuls of useless pocket change, which we sometimes disposed of by giving it to the gypsy beggars.
- Credit cards: We had the Big Three: American Express, Visa, and MasterCard. Visa and MasterCard are pretty much interchangeable: anyone who took Visa also took MasterCard. AMEX was another matter. Some places took AMEX exclusively, while most places don't take it at all. Some countries, like the Netherlands, just don't use credit cards at all, except in tourist areas. Those countries use a form of debit card instead, which generally aren't used outside of that particular country.
- American Express: AMEX has offices in all the major cities in Europe. We could make inquiries and pay our bills there in person. When Janis's billfold was stolen, the AMEX office in Prague gave her a new card the next day, just as they advertise. Another neat feature was that the number on her card and mine are different, so even when her card was canceled, mine was still usable. AMEX will cash a personal check for up to $2500 every 20 days, something no bank will do unless you have an account there. However, AMEX charges merchants very high rates, so not everybody will accept it. AMEX heavily advertises their purchase-protection insurance, saying that if something is lost or stolen, they'll replace it. What they DON'T tell you is that they demand all kinds of paperwork before they'll pay: they want the original purchase receipt, a police report, and all kinds of other stuff, then they'll deny the claim for some bogus reason three or four times just to see if you're serious. They didn't reckon on dealing with Janis's tenacity, though, and so we eventually got the refund.
- Visa and MasterCard: We used Visa because it was linked to our credit union account. We could access the account for inquiries and payments via phone, internet, or in person at one of the few credit union offices. MasterCard was intended to be our backup. When Janis's billfold was stolen, these cards were a real pain to get replaced. They companies will not send them to your location, they send them to your home address. When you're on the road like we were, that is a major inconvenience. We had somebody handling our mail, and she express mailed the cards to us the day she got them. The whole process took just over two weeks.
- Personal checks: We rarely used them except to pay our AMEX bills or something similar.

Recommendations: Take AMEX and both Visa and MasterCard. Keep the Visa and MasterCard separate (i.e., take Visa when you go out in town and leave the MasterCard tucked away in a safe place), so that if somebody steals one, they won't get the other.

Pickpockets and security:

If you're going to a tourist area, then you're going to a pickpocket area. DO NOT keep your billfold in your hip pocket, outside jacket pocket, or inside pocket on a sports coat. DO NOT take everything in one billfold. After our pickpocket incident, I bought a pouch that I wore around my neck that held an ID card, credit cards, and most of our money, and I kept some small bills and change in my pocket. My coat had several inside pockets, some of which were hidden and difficult to get to, and I often used those instead of the pouch. Bottom line: make it easy for the pickpockets and you WILL get hit. Make it difficult (you can never make it impossible), and the pickpockets will go hit some other patsy.

Value-Added Tax (VAT):

European countries tack on VAT to just about everything sold. It's pretty high by American standards, up to 17.5% in Britain. Europeans have to pay it no matter what, but if you're not from a European nation, you may be able to get it back. When you buy something, ask for a VAT refund form. (Many won't give it to you unless your cost is over a certain amount, say $50 or $75). Fill the form out and keep it with you. When you leave the European Community (EC) for the last time, have a Customs agent stamp the forms saying you're leaving, and mail the forms in. A few weeks later, you'll get a check in the mail, or a credit to your account. Often it's minus quite a few bucks for handling and other fees, but what the heck, money's money. Not everybody does it, but when you're traveling with an inveterate shopper like Janis, the VAT refunds can eventually amount to a tidy sum.

Mail:

Bills and letters and more bills keep coming no matter what. You need somebody smart and responsible to screen your mail to alert you to the important stuff. We had a friend of Janis's take care of this for us, and she was a real lifesaver. She kept in constant email touch with us and could immediately tell if something was important or not. In this way, we were able to keep up with our business affairs. If you have a trustworthy (and I stress “trustworthy”) friend or relative, that's great. If you don't, consider hiring somebody like a lawyer or accountant. When it comes time to send stuff home, you'll find that foreign postal systems are EXPENSIVE. We mailed a small box from London and it cost $35 ... and that via slow boat with no insurance.

Internet access:

In this day and age, internet access is a necessity. Email was especially vital for day-to-day functions. We were able to access our American Express, savings/checking, and Visa accounts online. This was really handy for keeping track of our expenditures, particularly when they're charged in funny foreign currency. We were rarely able to actually get on the net from our rooms. Some places had no phones, while others had some old funky phone system designed in the Dark Ages (this included most military facilities, surprisingly). We used AOL, with whom I'm not particularly happy. AOL has dial-up access across Europe, but slap on a $6/hour surcharge (minimum, sometimes more) to use it, and then you have to pay the exorbitant phone tolls (sometimes long-distance) on top of that. Accessing AOL from a cybercafe was easy and only cost the computer rental fee, which was usually lower than AOL's surcharge. Speaking of cybercafes, they're in all the major cities and many minor ones. Libraries on military bases also have computers available.

One serious concern is computer security at the cybercafes. Right after Janis got her new American Express card, somebody got her brand-new number and racked up several thousand dollars in charges in South Africa, of all places. Fortunately, we discovered this in time and tipped off AMEX, so we didn't have to pay a dime. However, there were only a couple of places where somebody could have gotten that new number, and one of them was a cyber café in Prague, when we accessed our account online.

So whether or not to bring a laptop is a big question. On the plus side, you have your own computer for use whenever you want it. On the negative side, it's a hassle to lug around, and you constantly worry about it getting stolen. Our recommendations: for a short trip, don't bring one, just use cybercafes. If you're taking a longer trip, having your own computer is a luxury but not a requirement.

Telephones:

When is standardization going to hit the European telephone industry? Every country has a very different system. The best was in the Netherlands: their pay phones accept credit cards and their rates are low. (Note: most of their stores don't accept credit cards, but their pay phones do. Go figure.) All other countries use a different proprietary phone card system and/or charge you out the wazoo. American companies heavily advertise their "toll-free" 800 numbers; however, these numbers are not toll-free from outside the country, and phone cards will not let you dial them anyway. At one point, I had a Deutsche Telekom card, plus an MCI card and a SPRINT card, and an AT&T account, and I still couldn't call an American 800 number! I was mad, I tell you.

Transportation:

We used them all: bus, taxi, train, subway, plane, rentacar, and our own car.
- Trains and subways. Trains are relatively inexpensive, ubiquitous, and run on time. All the subway systems we used were excellent. If you're going to use the trains to travel extensively, TRAVEL LIGHT. Otherwise, you'll kill yourself lugging you and your bags up and down stairs (elevators are rare) and through large, crowded stations to catch your train.
- Taxis. Taxis vary a tremendous amount from country to country. They are highly recommended in Britain and Germany. They are not recommended at all in places like Spain, Italy, and the Czech Republic.
- Your Own Car. Since we were originally planning on a long stay, we bought a car (the mighty "QE3", our Range Rover). It was very thirsty but held all our stuff and we never had to worry about weather or mud or anything else. I thought that almost all the countries we were going to were in one European Community, so it ought to be easy to sell the car when we were done, right? Wrong. It's not at all like buying a car in New York and selling it in Arizona. Buying it in London was quick and easy, but it took the British bureaucracy six weeks to process the new title and by that time we were long gone. Every country has its own paperwork system and outrageous tax structure. Spain required at least a week of paperwork and $500+ in fees just to put it on the market. (I sold it to a British used car guy, who took care of all that for me). Gibraltar, where I tried to sell it, would have processed the import paperwork in a few minutes, but they levy a 33% import tax, which I would have had to pay! Ouch! All in all, buying a car was still much cheaper than renting one for two months, and much easier than lugging all our stuff on and off trains.

Places to stay:

We stayed in Bed & Breakfasts, hotels, penziones, military bases, and vacation houses. Each has its pluses and minuses. B&B's and penziones are inexpensive and homey and you certainly get a personalized touch, but they're very limited in their services and meals. Hotels generally have a bit more in the way of services and varieties of food, but they're more expensive. Military bases offered really crappy accommodations (Camp Darby, Italy), or really nice ones (Ederle Inn, Vicenza, Italy). We found some places from guidebooks and other places from the various country's tourist boards. If you're going to go traveling in Europe, I highly recommend contacting the tourist boards. You'll be amazed at how much information they can provide.

Food:

I wrote a lot about the fabulous meals we were eating, but the fact is that we both actually lost weight during the trip. The reason is that our biorhythms were a bit out of synch with everybody else's. We liked to eat two meals a day: a late breakfast and an early dinner, with some kind of a very light snack somewhere in between. B&B's and hotels had their own set-in-stone breakfast times and menus which we usually didn't care for. At lunch, restaurants were usually trying to push bigger meals than we really wanted to eat. In the evenings, we were often too pooped to get dressed up and go back out to eat. Nowhere do they have 24-hour restaurants like here in the States where you know you can get something to eat at any time of the day. We feel that we were able to keep a balance: we often fixed up some sort of breakfast in the room, then had one big meal for the day, either lunch or dinner. We were usually happy with the major meal of the day, but we were never sure that what we thought we ordered was what we were going to get!

Clothes:

It's guaranteed that you're not going to be happy with what you take. You'll leave things at home that you'll need, and you'll take some things that you'll never wear. That's life. Our recommendations: go basic. Pick a simple color combination and build your whole wardrobe around it. If in doubt, leave it home. If you really need it, you can get it there. In fact, you can probably get better ones there than you can ever find here, so take advantage of it.

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