Things you learn on Interrail

I have been on a Interrail trip recently and it taught me a lot of things about what (not) to do on a train, especially when you are doing Interrail,  cultures, people, and in general a lot about how the world works. I would like to share some of my newfound wisdom with you guys!

On our first day, we went to Italy, Milano:

• People don’t understand you better in a foreign language if you talk more loudly! Some Italians talk loudly on the train (still in Austria). When the ticket inspector comes around he tells the guys in German to get off the train at the next station. They obviously don’t understand and don’t react. The inspector speaks even louder and kind of shouts at them: Get off the train at the next station!  OKAY!? When he passes them again (they are still incredibly loud), he mumbles to himself: You specialists…. (Original: Ihr Spezialisten, ihr!)
• Bologna doesn’t sound any different in Italian and English! We were on the train already when a women came up to us and asked us something like: xxx Bologna questo? We nodded and said: Si! She then replied something funny (probably) and we looked confused. When she realised that we didn’t speak Italian she got scared because she thought we didn’t understand her. In her best Italian English she asked us again: Erm… Bologna? We nodded again: Si.
• People can be very inconsiderate in youth hostels. We stayed in a room for six people in Milano and apart from us there were two more people staying there. Both tried to be very quiet in the night, which was impossible because of the hostels infrastructure. But at least they tried. In the middle of the night (around 2 am) we had a new arrival… a guy in his 30s, who clearly didn’t give a f*ck, about our sleep, continued to zip and unzip his rucksack and rustling with his plastic bags. He even turned on the main lights in the room without even thinking of the rest of us. I observed what he was doing and most of the time he was just sitting/standing and looking around with the occasional rustling and zipping. I was sooooo close to losing it and telling him to go to bed already. After about an hour of him being inconsiderate he finally went to bed. Thank god!
• A simple pasta for 17€ is too expensive!
  

  The price for pasta is too damn high!

• To reduce the unemployment rate Italians, French, and Spanish have three people work as ticket inspectors in each train carriage. Or are they just scared someone will pose a problem and they can’t handle it on their own? Also, they all looked like they had worked as bouncers before (except one in France. Seriously! No kidding.)
• It seems that southern countries take safety to a new level: the military was at the train stations and platforms at almost everywhere we went to. I will be honest here: These guns freaked me out! There were children there too! How can this be normal?
• But to end this first post of wisdom on a lighter note: We were in a French supermarket and they were playing songs from The Aristocats!!! How awesome is that? I wouldn’t leave the store until the song was over. +1 for Marseille! 😀

The Aristocats?

Stay tuned for a part two. There are so many awesome (and less awesome) things I experienced and I will try to keep it shorter next time… for your sake as well as for mine. 😉

Most amazing experience! (Part III)

Grande finale!

In the morning, we had a Lufthansa breakfast and talked about how to best spend our first and only day in Dubai. At that point we didn’t even have a full day left… it was already 11 am. We decided to do the Hop-on Hop-off bus tour which would get us to all the must-see places. Just to give you an idea of the prices:

A 24 h adult ticket for London costs 25 pounds. The same ticket for Dubai costs about 36 pounds. Which is about 44 €. But this is a lifetime experience, right? We made it to Dubai for free (not really… so far we paid ourselves) so there is no reason to not try to see everything!

At the reception desk we asked for the next ATM and the bus stop for us to hop on. And as it is common in Asia (based on my extensive experience^^) they suggested to make use of the hotel’s own driver, who would drive us around for four hours and take us to the same places as the bus for less money! Just 28 pounds each. Of course, common tourists like us take that offer. Not going to say no to that!

Our very own driver took us to… the Creek, the Dubai Museum, the Gold market, the Spice market, a palace, the beach in front of the Burj Al Arab (where we stayed for 20 minutes because he wanted to pray), the Palm Island, some place with a lot of skyscrapers around, and the Dubai Mall.

Gold market: I have never seen that much gold, silver, and jewellery in one place my whole life! The jewellery shops are right next to each other and there is no other shop in between. And this stuff is not cheap. To be honest… Fanny and I were picking the most beautiful engagement rings in our minds 😉

Spice market: Just like the West! 😛

Just kidding! There are so many dried spices, vegetables, stones (not sure if these things were actually stones, but if yes: how do you dry stones?), fish, and postcards. The postcards haven’t been dried. You could tell that a lot of Germans come here regularly… the shop owners’ second language seemed to be German: “schöne… Karte… Geschenk… komm… sehen…. gut… gut…. komm….”

The beach: As I already said, we spent 20 minutes or more on the warm, sandy, sunny beach. Imagine the two of us bare feet, rolled up sleeves and trouser legs, and without sunglasses (have I mentioned that I had speculated with Russia being our destination?).  It was amazing. The beach was in front of the well-known 7- star hotel Burj Al Arab. Tourists next to us were in their bikinis or swim trunks sunbathing. Naturally,  we not only had to feel sand between our toes but also the sea around our legs. And that’s when tragedy struck: I dropped my camera! Into the sea.  Where there is water. Which killed my camera. Why?!

Because Fanny’s camera battery had died, we had to resort to our old crappy phones to take pictures. The upside is that I was able to save my SD card. On the downside, I lost some pictures and videos nonetheless.

Palm Island: Even though it looks quite nice from the bird’s eye perspective, I felt it was kind of disappointing. The island is full

of houses (all with private beaches!), hotels, and flats and they are all heavily guarded, so that only the house owners have access to the palm tree leaves. The tree trunk consists of a few hotels and a huge road. At the top of the palm tree is the Atlantis hotel, judging by the looks probably the second most expensive hotel in Dubai.

The place with the skyscrapers around: Our driver showed us an area, where the people who live in Dubai can hang out. Unfortunately, I have no idea where that place is or what is around that place, because I nearly fell asleep in the car.  But this was the first time we “observed” people in their free time, with their kids. Completely normal… doing the same things we would do. Eating pizza at a restaurant for example.

In general, just to fight/reinforce some stereotypes:

1. The local people do not all wear burkas or their male counterpart. Some of the people wear shorter skirts than I ever would and no one has a problem with it.
2. A burka is a fashion statement. They are not all black and simple, as many of them have embroidery on them or a black-blue pattern. Sometimes, women wear a long, black robe where you can see their beautiful, expensive clothes underneath.
3. The people there are extremely rich. Of course I don’t mean every single one, but I feel that it is easier to spot more rich people there than anywhere else I have been.  Sometimes it is unnoticeable: a Prada handbag or shoes with red soles.
4. Not really a stereotype but a highly interesting fact:  Local people (and you only count as local, when you were born there) live in an enclosed area. This area is near the beach and seems less stressful compared to the big city. The goods are probably cheaper too.

The Dubai Mall: Our very last stop. Dubai is famous for its shopping malls. A common Austrian might not understand how a city can be famous for malls. I certainly didn’t. Let me tell you: This mall is gigantic: 1.124,000 m²  including 1200 shops on four floors, an aquarium, an underwater zoo, an ice rink, cinemas and a waterfall. Maybe even more, but it was impossible to see it all. I didn’t know that Louboutin, Manolo Blahnik, Stella McCartney, and Victoria’s Secret have stores! How awesome! Less awesome was the fact that I lost my sense of directions completely, and those of you who know me, know that this hardly ever happens.

But the best part was definitely outside the Dubai Mall: a choreographed water fountain! This fountain taught me that water can do the moonwalk and dance the original choreography of Michael Jackson’s Thriller! Hmmm…you don’t seem convinced…. But I saw it with my own eyes! If you know the moves you can see the water imitating it. And if you don’t know the moves, you can also see the fountain dancing to Thriller, you just don’t know that it is the original choreography. I will try to upload a video.

Right behind the Dubai Fountain was (hopefully still is) the highest building in the world: Burj Khalifa. We only got to see it in the night but that was good enough for me. Fanny saw a small plane or helicopter taking off the tower.

Was it a helicopter? A plane?

No… Superman!

Well, maybe not. But it was dark so who knows?

After that one long exhausting day, we found our way to the metro and then walked down a random street and surprisingly found our hotel straight away. We could not use the Internet anymore to keep everyone at home updated, because we had already used our 10 minutes of free WiFi (4 star hotel…by the way. Thank god our charm could buy us 10 minutes), so we went straight to bed. Fanny that lucky bastard fell asleep immediately. I couldn’t. I think I might have been too tired to fall asleep. And the cars outside the window didn’t help either.

The next morning was great. Not that we were awake and ready for any and all mischief, but at least functioning.

At noon the hotel driver took us back to the airport and we boarded our flight back to Frankfurt at around….2 pm? Yay! More time to waste on movies! As a linguist I have to point out that the working capacities of our brains’ language centres were slowly but steadily decreasing. It was simply impossible to communicate with each other anymore, because we were neither able to form coherent and grammatical sentences not comprehend and process the other’s words.  See what sleep deprivation does to you! (The reason this post is halting and awkward at times is because I usually write in the evenings or during lectures. Shhh… It is more difficult to stay concentrated. Sorry.)

We arrived at around 8 pm in Frankfurt where we still had to get two tickets to Heathrow. I won’t go into detail here. Let’s just say it was a lot of running around, swearing, and negotiating. In the very last minute, we managed to get two Lufthansa tickets. The nice lady at the counter even gave us a small reduction, which we were so thankful for (this time we had to pay for ourselves, so every penny saved is worth a lot^^)

From Heathrow -with the tube to King’s X-with the train to Cambridge-with the Taxi home- 2am Tuesday morning!

It was necessary for us to arrive before or on Tuesday, as poor Fanny had a presentation that day which she still had to arrange and organise (in her defence: they told us on Friday who had to present next Tuesday, so there was no other way as to work on the presentation an hour before holding it)

That is the whole story and I cannot tell you how glad I am it is over (I mean telling the story with all its twist and turns) I want to thank all of our helpers and donators again: Jeff, Ian, the two Lufthansa ladies, Yassar everyone who helped us out on the streets of Cambridge, and last but not least all of you who donated money to RAG!

I hope you enjoyed it and that you got at least a little kick of adrenaline from time to time.