discussion Worst traveling experiences?

[Gesamtkunstwerk]

Like many others, I enjoy traveling a lot, but I’m also entertained by when things doesn’t go well. So tell me, what’s your worst traveling experiences? 
 

Mine is when a guy suddenly locked himself into our room in the evening and we confronted him, he said “Sorry, wrong room” and left. We went to the front desk, they said they were going to deactivate all our key cards and give us some new ones, but all our old ones still worked

[Lyrica]

When I got sick in Vienna and had to spend the entire time in a hostel pretending i'm not sick in the room with 4 strangers koz they would kick me out otherwise

[shookspeare]

took the wrong train and ended up stuck in the middle of the woods in finland as the sun was setting  I had no cell service and my phone was dying but I have a good sense of direction so was able to walk like 2 hours back to my place 

Edited November 26, 2023 by shookspeare

[Gesamtkunstwerk]

28 minutes ago, shookspeare said:

took the wrong train and ended up stuck in the middle of the woods in finland as the sun was setting  I had no cell service and my phone was dying but I have a good sense of direction so was able to walk like 2 hours back to my place 

You’re strong for that, I would’ve cried

[Kern]

climbing mountais for a whole day in Croatia since 7 am only to end up on a empty road as the sun was setting - no cars, no buildings nearby and our place many kilometeres far

[ariananext]

Nothing crazy, I went to Budapest this summer for a quick weekend (2 nights) and my flight was 5 hours late, so we basically had to see everything in one day. And as if that wasn't enough I got sick, fever, stomach pains, chills and felt like passing out. We managed to see the main things but I have such a terrible memory of that trip.

[Pendulum]

Tbilisi, Georgia - Beautiful city, country and culture but the people were awful. Awful customer service in supermarkets, restaurants and whatnot. 

 

Somewhere Wallonia, Belgium - The train got stuck in the woods for like 2-3 hours. It was around the early evening and I had no cell service. The train conductor was only speaking French on the announcement system but when she passed through the car I was in, I asked her if she could translate it in English. So every time she had an announcement to make over the speaker, she came to me to translate it in English. Random Belgian train girl, I still remember and appreciate your professionalism. Arrived in Brussels at 11pm and well, Brussels during the night is a no-no. 

 

Vienna, Austria - An awkward AirBnb host. It was some old lady who spoke little to no English and with my rusty German we barely managed to understand each other. To make matters even worse, she was living in the same apartment. The vibe was so off, I could tell she wanted me out asap. On the day of my check-out, I had to get up early to catch a train but I didn't communicate it with her. So I leave the keys on the kitchen table and leave, closing the door behind me. But then I realised that I need the keys to open the front door.  I waited 10 minutes to see if somebody else would open the door and suddenly she comes back from her morning walk or whatever. She looks at me with disdain oh my god. Mumbles something in German, snatches my keys AND the garbage back from the room I was in which I was about to throw cause I'm a good guest!!! She goes back in her apartment while I'm waiting in the little poarch area, then she comes back after 5 minutes to open the door. No goodbye, no nothing. I guess she went back there to check if I hadn't stolen something. The audacity. Moral of the story, never book an AirBnb where the owner lives. 

[glitch]

When I bought the wrong train ticket in Vienna and got fined 130 euros. Train fines here are like £20 

[Leptine]

Several years ago in one of my first travel alone to Madrid with some friends, they lost the luggages of all of us, the company every day was promising us they were coming so that was preventing us to go buy new stuff, for like 5 days we stayed with the same clothes without washing ourselves Yes we were young and dumb, but at the end we had much fun in that situation.

The day we got tired of the company bullshits and decided to buy new stuff of course they arrived, except for 2 of our friends (ironically a couple that we didn't like much) that were so fuorious and immeditely decided to come back to italy with an expensive last minute plane ticket that with the same money they could have bought everything they needed to stay, we still laugh of what happened those days.

[creativity.]

In 2016, while in college, I traveled from the US to Crete, which was my first time traveling internationally solo. I got extremely drunk on my first flight (Boston->Paris) and navigating the rest of the trip horrifically hungover was a nightmare.  I’ll never forget getting to the AirBnB in Heraklion around midnight, not being able to get inside and unable to contact the host, and breaking down crying. To this day I refuse to drink in airports or on planes. 

[Raptus]

39 minutes ago, glitch said:

When I bought the wrong train ticket in Vienna and got fined 130 euros. Train fines here are like £20 

You don't have to pay it. Just never go back to Austria and they won't do anything about it.

 

[glitch]

4 minutes ago, Raptus said:

You don't have to pay it. Just never go back to Austria and they won't do anything about it.

 

Sis the ticket inspector whipped out the card machine in front of me and made me pay it then 

[Raptus]

4 minutes ago, glitch said:

Sis the ticket inspector whipped out the card machine in front of me and made me pay it then 

Yeah, but you can say "no" to them, they will give you ticket. Then you leave the country and  throw it away

[Yawn]

1 hour ago, Pendulum said:

Brussels during the night is a no-no

a despicable place 

 

i went once (never again) and was walking along a small narrow street at night with friends and then a car went past, but next thing we know a firework exploded very close behind us not far above head height. i can only imagine they fired it out the car window 

 

 

 

 

[dussel_06]

I got scammed in Paris, twice.  The pretty girl just snatched the 200 euros on my wallet when she saw it. I was shocked. I would never trust any person there again.

 

I was informed tap water in a certain european city is safe to drink. I drank it and had diarrhea all night. I would never drink tap water from any city ever again.

 

Edited November 26, 2023 by dussel_06

[Just a Gay on ATRL]

I woke up at 3:30 AM to fly to Chicago for work for a work assignment I felt totally under-prepared for, and had to fly back just 12 hours later at 3:30 PM, but my flight home got delayed 3 hours.  Prior to the delay, which was last minute, I thought I was going to be late for the original flight home because I barely had enough time to get my job done and then uber all the way back to the airport, get through security, etc.  It was the longest day of my life and nothing was going right; I didn't get home until like 8-9 PM EST. I was also in peak busy season at this job at the time so I had to go into work like normal the next day just 12 hours later. Looking back I should've told them this schedule was ridiculous and either flown in the Sunday before or gone into work late the next day. I also shouldn't have been forced to go do this assignment by myself because it was doing something that wasn't even typically expected of someone doing my line of work, so someone to be there with me would've been really nice, but I'm pretty sure my ex-employer was being cheap as hell and wanted to pay as little for my travel as possible.

[KFC]

5 hours ago, creativity. said:

In 2016, while in college, I traveled from the US to Crete, which was my first time traveling internationally solo. I got extremely drunk on my first flight (Boston->Paris) and navigating the rest of the trip horrifically hungover was a nightmare.  I’ll never forget getting to the AirBnB in Heraklion around midnight, not being able to get inside and unable to contact the host, and breaking down crying. To this day I refuse to drink in airports or on planes. 

This happened to me also  I was coming home from Thailand and connecting in Dubai, I got ****** up drunk on the Bangkok>Dubai flight, spent the whole of the landing throwing up in a plastic bag, stumbled through Dubai airport paranoid that I was acting too gay and the authorities would arrest me  somehow made it onto my second flight and fell asleep on the poor girl next to me her shoulder

[flower moon]

i had booked tickets for a train from bordeaux to barcelona, with the train leaving at 6am (). i made it to the station in time but the train numbers and times were all different on the board, so we ended up missing it (if it ever existed) . i then purchased new tickets (like 50 euros) for a few hours later but the same problem happened... the train numbers and times were never the same as the tickets, and there were no staff at the station to help. missed again. anyway, after this happened for a third time, staff finally arrived and helped but i was down like 300 euros and about to have a breakdown lol.

turned out there were disruptions on many lines in france that day, i think because of strikes or a public holiday idk.

[John Slayne]

i always struggle to think of these off the top of my head, but the amount of times i've had to spend a night at airports because the flights were at awkward hours in the morning... it happens to me wayyyy more often than it should. why can't i get a cute little 4pm flight just once? 

[Maroonx]

Probably when I went to Porto, Portugal a few years ago... The weather was super shitty all throughout my stay there and when I was leaving the city centre for the airport, I was waiting at a light to cross a street and a car sped by and splashed me with muddy water... Then to make matters worse, my flight got delayed a couple of times until getting cancelled due to a storm... After staying in the airport for 6hrs, bloody Ryanair thought it would be awesome to put everyone into a bus at 2AM from Porto to Madrid... Mind you, it's a 9hr bus ride. I arrived in Spain, ran home, showered and went to work (bless my boss for being super understanding of the situation)

 

A ******* nightmare of a weekend, but **** happens right x

[poki]

Some odd job at a mall back when I was 19. Had to take a train to get there because I had no car. Station only had some benches. One day it was so incredibly cold and there was so much wind. I had a coat, a sweater, and a hoodie. And I was still shivering. Train took forever to arrive. At one point it started to hail and because of the wind, I got a few small cuts on my face because of the hail. After a few minutes the hail stopped thank God. But, I started to get frostbites on my eyes from the cold. At one point my hands started to hurt and then I realized my knuckles were bleeding from the cold. When the train finally arrived, by miracle one of the workers saw me, and rushed to help me get in. A woman gave me her coffee to heat up because of how beaten I looked. 

[Alldeezy]

New York In 2012! Our Plane got cancelled so we were on stan by .. and because we were just dumb Australians everyone kept taking our seats (OUR SUITCASES WERE ON THE PLANE) so I had to spend the entire night at New York Airport with the homeless people waiting for them to fly our stuff back to NY.. was supposed to meet my bf in LA 2 days later and after the mix up I missed him and was waiting at the wrong Section after A horriable 2 day and missed him .. I really just wanted to go back to Australia .. luckly the rest of the trip was good .. but omg.

 

2 weeks later we were in SF and our plane mix up from 2 weeks ago got in the way YET again .. almost missed my flight because of that bullcrap and that was the first time I ever had balls and skipped the entire line luckily just got my plane

 

[Bears01]

Driving through Pennsylvania to get to NYC. 
 

State was pretty but holy FUC_K did it take forever to get through it 

[Edit0rz]

London- No fault of the city, I had it booked nearly a year in advance and it just so happened that Harry and Meghan got married that weekend. It was overrun by tourists and took forever to get anywhere also crazy hot and didn’t pack appropriately.
 

Ireland- again no fault of the city. Flight was cancelled 2 hours after scheduled departure time because of technical issues with the plane (Aer Lingus). By that time the staff at check-in had gone home so had to wait 3 hours to get rebooked. It was 1am and our flight left at 6am, so no point trying to get a comped room, slept on the airport floor. Once there people were great as well as the experience but driving was wild. Besides driving on the opposite side of the road for the first time the Navigation took us back country roads. The roads are very narrow with no pull out lane and people drive crazy fast, plus lots of tractors that almost ran me off the road.

 

Costa Rica- Beautiful country, great food. My bag was stolen with all my clothes and passport. My BF swore he locked it and someone must of used a key fob to get in. Had to spend a day traveling to San Jose to get a new passport. Luckily I had my wallet on me and my dirty clothes in a separate bag.

 

Plan to go to Seoul next year - wish me luck!

Edited November 27, 2023 by Edit0rz

[Sabrina Carpenter]

Tokyo 2017, my family went to Disney Sea the night before our flight home, my brother and I woke up late, missed our flights and had to buy new tickets for thousands of dollars. I felt so bad .