European Misadventures in 6 weeks


Traveling isn't always smooth sailing. Things don't always go to plan. You usually learn this the hard way. We sure did. During our six week trip around Europe, we had more than one too many things go wrong. At times, it seemed like the end of the world and that we were doomed to be stuck in Europe forever, or that we wouldn't survive to see the day where we would make it home. Looking back though, these misfortunes just make for hilariously good stories and what's a good story if it isn't shared? Here's just a few of the catastrophes that we encountered during our travels.


BOOKING ACCOMMODATION FOR THE WRONG DATES

Before our trip had even started, we had already hit our first speed bump. The day before Jess and Liv left Melbourne for London, Liv realised that our London hostel had been booked for the wrong month. Instead of booking for June, we accidentally booked for July! We were all in full panic mode because we were due to stay at that hostel in two days but luckily, I called them straight away and got the dates changed easily. Things ended up working out even better than planned for us because we didn't have to pay for our second night's stay!

Unfortunately, the story doesn't end there. Less than a week into our trip, while we were at Glastonbury, I receive an email from HostelBookers asking me how our stay at Dubrovnik was. At first, I was a little confused until it dawned on me that we must have booked for the wrong dates again! We'd accidentally booked for June instead of July this time. Things turned out well though, we ended up booking an Airbnb which had a huge terrace with the most gorgeous views over the port.

DISCOVERING A NEW ALLERGY

To treat ourselves after a week living in tents at Glastonbury, we decided to get an Airbnb apartment in Paris. The catch was that the owner of the apartment was going to leave her cat there during our 5 day stay. I'm not sure why she trusted us to catsit for her but she did, and unluckily enough for me, it turns out that I'm pretty allergic to cats... Or that cat anyway... I woke up every morning unable to breathe, with my eyes swollen shut and rashes all over my face and body. Might explain why Paris is one of my least favourite European cities...

ALMOST MISSING OUR FLIGHT

When flying from Amsterdam to Edinburgh, we had a 40 minute stopover in London Gatwick. For those of you who have had stopovers before, you'll know well enough that 40 minutes is barely enough time to find your gate, go through passport control, clear security and trek to your gate for your flight, especially if your gate is on the other side of the airport terminal. Getting off the plane takes more than 10 minutes within itself! Luckily for us, our gate was indeed on the other side of the airport and to top that, we got given a hard time at security which took up a good fifteen of our precious minutes. We heard our names called over the loudspeaker and had to frantically run across Gatwick airport, barely making our flight on time and being the last ones on.

HAVING THE AIRLINE MISPLACE YOUR BAGS

So we managed to just make it onto our Edinburgh flight. Unfortunately, our bags did not... When our plane landed in Edinburgh, I received text messages telling me that our bag didn't make it onto the flight and that they were still in London. All three of our bags ended up being AWOL but we were told that our bags would be delivered to our hostel after the next plane at 6.10pm so we not worried at all.

Once 8pm ticked over though, we started to stress and by the time it hit midnight, we had accepted the fact that our bags weren't going to make it. We were due to leave for T in the Park the next morning and were preparing for the idea of going to a music festival with absolutely nothing. No clothes, no sleeping bag, no tent, no gumboots, nothing... With a turn of events, because what's a story without a plot twist, our bags were delivered to our hostel at 1am! Well done British Airways, you took your sweet time but we're glad that we had shelter at T in the Park.

BEING PUNCHED IN THE HEAD IN A KASABIAN MOSH PIT 

As we're not capable of attending a music festival without at least one bad thing happening, naturally, Liv was punched in the head and knocked out during the Kasabian set at T in the Park when the mosh pit turned into a circle pit. We had all lost each other right when the set started though so I was blissfully unaware for two hours that she had been knocked out and only found out after the night had ended. Sorry Liv!

ALMOST BEING ROBBED ON A NIGHT TRAIN

While I was passed out on the top bunk of a triple-bunk bed on a night train from Berlin to Vienna, a stranger tried to break into our train cabin. We had been warned by the train conductors before heading to bed that theft was a common occurrence on night trains and to be extra careful. Liv was the only one awake and managed to scare him away. What a champion!

LEAVING ONE OF THE TEAM BEHIND

We've all watched a film with a dramatic train scene, where the train pulls away with someone running after it. Now instead, imagine that happening to us. When disembarking our night train in Vienna, Jess was the first to get off. Liv and I managed to get stuck behind two older ladies who didn't seem to want to let us through and as a result, the train left with us still on it...

Jess was stranded by herself on the platform of a Vienna train station while Liv and I were stuck on a train going to who knows where. Jess was yelling at us from the platform asking us what to do while we were yelling back at her from the train, telling her to stay put while we took a cab back to her. If the train followed the pattern of stops that it had been making though, it would be at least two hours until we would get to the next stop. Luckily, Vienna has two main train stations and we only continued on for ten minutes before the train stopped again. Jumping onto another train and heading back to Jess was way easier than we were expecting. Good thing we didn't end up in Bratislava like we thought we would.

HAVING OUR HOSTEL TELL US THAT WE NEVER MADE A RESERVATION

Because we hadn't experienced enough hardship during our journey to Vienna, we were welcomed to the city with the realisation that we had nowhere to stay for the night. The hostel that we had made a reservation with informed us that we did not actually have a reservation in their system and that there was nothing that they could do to help us.

We spent the next few hours frantically trying to book a hostel and ended up settling for one near the station so we didn't have to carry our bags too far!

MISSING A NIGHT TRAIN AND BEING LEFT HOMELESS

This was most definitely our biggest mess up of the trip. We were due to take an overnight train from Budapest to Split and had even booked sleeper beds for the train. Us being us, we got the train times mixed up, thinking that our train was scheduled to leave at 8pm instead of 6pm. Not only were we stranded in Budapest that night, we were also temporarily homeless because we were supposed to spend the night on the train!

When we realised that we had missed our train, we frantically searched for other ways to get to Croatia. Missing the train threw all of our plans out of whack! It was urgent that we made it to Split within two days or else we would miss other reservations and our whole trip would be ruined. Flights were around $200 per person and definitely out of our budget. We eventually figured out that we could take a train at 5am the next morning from Budapest to Zagreb, spend the day in Zagreb and then take an overnight train from Zagreb to Split. This meant losing a day in Split, gaining a day in Zagreb and losing both our train booking and Split hostel booking.

We ended up booking a last minute apartment to stay in for the night in Budapest and majorly lucked out. The apartment was $50 between the three of us and it ended up being a three bedroom apartment! We all got our own double beds (my first non-single bed in 6 months) and fans!

LOSING TWO PHONES ON THE SAME DAY

Because losing one phone is just not enough. Liv left her phone on the train from Florence to Rome and Jess left hers in a cab after a night out when she was more than gone. Idiots...
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I hope you enjoyed laughing at our misfortunes! It is going to be a while until I start posting about this six week trip as I still have so many cities to post about beforehand. I'm more than a little behind on my blog... I promise that it will be worth the wait though! Stay tuned.

2 comments:

  1. Your blog is very informative, planning for my first euro trip, I like your blog so much, it makes me want to go back to Europe even more! Very inspiring to all would-be travelers as well as aspiring bloggers like me! :)

    Europe trips

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    1. Planning for your first euro trip must be exciting! I'm glad my blog has been of help. If you need any help or have any questions, feel free to send me an email :)

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