Transportation errors

Kaeluku, those are great pics!

Reminds me of the time Google Maps tried to send us in a rental car down a pedestrian-only area to Villa d'Este. We were astute enough to not believe them...

It is usually due to fights with my sat nav/gps. I always know better. Ha!

Two memorable times were both in Italy, in different years.

Both times, somehow, I really don't know how, I have managed to dodge the ZTL/bus lane bullet. Maybe it was before they got so big?

One year I was trying, for the first time, to get to the Scrovegni Chapel in Padova. I'd started well away and my sat nav thought a straight line would be best. Through the centre we went, on to a tiny lane no wider than my car with mirrors in, through the market and out the other side. Surprisingly I was the only car going this way. oops. Great time at the Scrovegni Chapel. I love that place.

A different year I was trying to get from the river to the north side of Florence, north of the airport. My trusty device thought I wanted to cross the river and go south, but I disagreed. We compromised and went through the centre after disagreeing about making circles around the stadium. Thank goodness it was late at night. whew!

So I've been a lucky boy.

Thanks for the thread, Laurel.

I had a good experience a couple of weeks ago which made up for it. Here in England, we had been to a taping at Elstree Studios, north of London. We finished late so roads were closed for the teams with the road repaving equipment. I pushed the "Detour" button on the device which proceeded to take me down a lane with innumerable speed humps (I hate those, especially half a mile or more, and at night) and then down a potholed dirt farm lane (still in the dark of night!), but then paid off with sharp left turn from a service road right on to the A1, from where it was a straight shot back on the route. yay!

I've mentioned this one before but on our first trip in 2008 to Italy...(so we were extremely new at train travel)

We were trying to go from Genoa to Bologna. We took the 'slow' train which arrived late to Milan by a few minutes - our connecting train was pulling out as we were running down the station. OK, we have to wait an hour.

We went to the ticket office to get our ticket changed (which knowing what we know now, I don't think we had to do). The woman in the office wrote a train or track number on the ticket. Our hour goes by, we check the board to see which track and get on that train. Found a conductor, showed him the ticket and he says - no, you want this other train on that track. Switch trains. Find a conductor as this train was pulling out, show him the ticket, he says - this isn't the right train. We HAD been on the right train in the first place. THIS train was going to Verona.

Sigh.

OK, we can connect back in Verona to Bologna - except - the Verona train arrived late and we missed our Bologna connection. Another hour wait. We had planned on arriving in Bologna around 6pm and got there around 11pm. Hindsight we should have just stayed in Verona, but this was before the time of having a laptop or ipad and being able to book accoms last minute.

Also on the same trip - got off the wrong stop in Naples for Herculaneum, had to wait an hour give or take for a train to take us back one stop (it was a Sunday so trains were less frequent) and when going to Cinque Terre, our ticket said via Carrera, so we thought that meant we had to get off in Carrera and wait for another train. That's not what it meant. Another hour wait.

Plenty of experiences in Spain with our Garmin wanting to take us on “unnamed road” that paralleled the highway, or a farmer’s service road to get to castles. Also, when it led us to a pedestrian only bridge while driving to Cartuja de Miraflores outside of Burgos.

Google Maps has usually been good to us in Italy, but once in the hills in Molise at night it led us into what looked like a very narrow through street but turned out to be a dead-end alley. We could not back out easily again for some reason I can't remember. I thought we'd never get the car out, but we did. Another time in the hills outside of Bologna, Google Maps sent us downhill on a decent road that suddenly became a wide cow path through some fields and my husband, being the kind of person he is, decided to just keep going. It was barely even a muddy path in some places. But it did eventually turn into a regular road again, thank goodness. So, not an error?

I had a recent one of these.....

I like the convenience of the Heathrow Express, but I don't like the cost! I've found by buying my tickets far in advance that I can get a very reasonable price. I purchased my tickets and paid 7 pounds and 12 pounds respectively. It was only when my return ticket did not work at the platform gate (on my way to catch my flight) that it was pointed out to me that I had bought the ticket for the correct day, but the wrong direction. I explained that it was an error on my part, but it was clear that it was meant to be the return portion of my journey. Yes, Yes, they understood. I could step over to the ticket machine and buy a full fare ticket of 25 pounds so that I could continue my journey. I needed to get to the airport in a timely manner, so ticket machine it was.

Ouch! My mistake was a costly one, but completely my fault. I think I have had an expensive lesson in double checking the directions of trains prior to hitting that "buy" button.

Had four trains scheduled to go from Avignon to Florence. Asked several times to make sure we had the correct track for our first train to Lyon. Train shows up late, I look at the side of the train and it says "Lyon" so we get on. Train takes off before we get our seats which are already taken.... Turns out they switched tracks and the train we boarded was headed to Gare de Lyon which is a train station in Paris.
Learned the hard way that unlike here in the States, the black nozzle is NOT Diesel. Car broke down in Carcassonne and the tow truck driver gave us a ride back to Hertz but we had to sit in the car up on the flatbed. That's something you can't do here in the U.S.

Such great stories! Always nice to know others have “adventures” too! Even seasoned travelers!

In Eire our rental car GPS didn't work, naturally, and we were not exactly proficient with cell phone technology. In Galway we must have stopped at a half dozen places asking for directions to our B&B, and we drove in endless circles wondering, "Well, where the hell is it?!" A police officer kindly held up traffic while us doofuses made a u-turn somewhere, God knows where, downtown. We finally made it but man it was embarrassing. We did not represent the USA very well that day.

A few days later we finally figured out Googlemaps and it saved our behinds as we drove through many miles of back roads to our next B&B. What a relief as we listened to the Google voice guiding us along.

I won't repeat our foibles going the wrong way on the Metro and almost breaking my arm jumping onto the train as the doors were closing because my wife was on. My wife did regret not taking a picture of my face when I finally figured out we were going the wrong way on the Metro. I was looking at the map on the train, looking down at another map I had, back and forth for a few minutes.

Our family motto should be, "We will get lost."

Thanks for starting this post Laurel. Wow, it is great to hear that others have had their travel adventures. I have had many, but here are my two favorites.

• Traveling in Istanbul and the taxi decided that it was not worth driving us to our hotel and kicked my friend and I out a 1/4 mile from the destination. It luckily was an easy walk, but I couldn't believe we were just abandoned.
• Traveling in Nice and had a short ride, it took three taxis before one was willing to take us, again, not worth the time and the trip for the drivers.
• Traveling with my husband and two teenage boys 15 years ago in South France. After a long flight (with delays), we arrived at the airport in Nice, tired, hungry, and still had the drive to go to Antibes and the light was dimming. We luckily got a car with a GPS, but neglected to check it out before we got on the road and the GPS language was in German. We could not for the life of us figure out how to get it into English. Had printed directions from the hotel, but when we got into Antibes, we immediately got lost. To make matters worse, my husband stuck his glasses in the trunk and was driving with his sunglasses. We switched driving, but then he couldn't see the signs, so we switched again after trying to get into the trunk and retrieve his glasses. I don't know if it was the jet lag, but we couldn't figure it out. By now it was completely dark. Finally, I had to stop and ask for directions from a guy on a moped who said he didn't know where this was and he couldn't help. I then stopped a guy on the curb and in my college French asked him for directions. He said, you won't find it and asked us to wait a moment and he would get his car and drive us. We followed him to the B&B. The kids were just amazed at the kindness of strangers.
• Same trip as above, we were staying in Arles and parking outside the city in a lot. We were not aware that the lot was only open to residences on Sunday. After driving down a circular driveway to get to the parking garage (which was meant to go down and not back out), there was another car behind us. Again in my college French, I found out the rules. He just agreed to let us in and park. Thank goodness for the kindness of the people we met in South of France.

Sandy

Bus routes and stops were always the hardest to figure out, due to the unfamiliarity of the language, maps, and street names.

In Salzburg, missed my stop. Didn’t realize it for a while. Was irritated over the lost time. Driver said we could get off, cross the street, and wait for another bus going back or stay on the bus as it was an out and back route. Was about an hour and half through the country side and small villages. Beautiful. One of my favorite memories of the trip.

Gotta love the tram and bus drivers in Amsterdam. In 2013 we rented an apartment for a week near the Museumplein. I had read, or perhaps misread, that we could pay the driver to go down to Centraal.

So we went to the closest tram stop and tried that. Nope. But the driver gave us a free ride, told us where to go to buy tickets and we got our passes for our stay.

Fast forward a couple of days. After a very nice meal close to the center, we came out to wait for the tram back to our apartment. It was still daylight. We waited, and waited, it got dark, and we still waited. No tram.

We had little idea of exactly where we were or where to walk to find a cab, but there was a bus lane adjacent to the tram line. We went over to it and asked the driver of the next bus if he went close to where we were staying. Nope.

We showed him our passes and asked what we should do. It wasn't late, but it must've been a slow night because no one was on the bus. He told us to get in. We had the whole bus to ourselves. He deviated on his route to take us close to home.

Oh, and he told us that the reason that the tram didn't come was that there was emergency work being done on the line closer to Centraal. It was well around the corner from where we were standing, so we couldn't see it and no signs had been posted.

More their errors than mine but..
Bussing it through Turkey on my way to Georgia in 2016, firstly the bus company threw everyone heading for Batumi (Georgian town just across the border) off a few hours down the road from Istanbul. We waited about 4 hours. With no Turkish or Georgian, I had to just hope! Same company then just stopped at the border and waved towards some minibuses - despite the fact we'd paid for the entire journey! Coming back-and yes the same company-the bus was apparently full despite the fact I had a ticket. I ended up waiting two days at Batumi bus station, sat at a coffee table, watching buses leave for Baghdad and Iran while an old lady fed me nuts. Surreal!
Another time, back when I was 16,I was offered a fruit picking job in rural Portugal. Got there and was told they couldn't accept me until I was 18 and basically to go away or they'd get into trouble. I walked back into the village with my remaining €20-and watched the one bus every three days arriving early and spluttering off into the distance..

I'd been living in Germany about 5 months and was coming back from a trip to Berlin with my mom and grandma. I'd taken the train on the route once before. Since it's a long journey, we were quite relaxed, them with books, me with a podcast reading on my phone, snacks out, etc. I'm vaguely aware that we're pulling into Frankfurt but that's still more than an hour to go. And it's not unusual so many people are getting off the train, it's a big city. They're saying something over the intercom, but it's German so I can't understand it anyway.

I don't realize something is wrong until we start to back out of Frankfurt HBF. It's a through station - we should be going forward. Then I realize that we are literally the only people in our car of what was a crowded train. I start running through the train - we are the ONLY people. I finally find a DeutscheBahn employee, the single one in the world who doesn't speak any English (and at this time my German was very limited.) But he manages to convey that the train will not being to Stuttgart, it's been rerouted, and he writes down on a piece of paper which station we should transfer at to catch a train to Stuttgart.

Unfortunately his handwriting is quite bad, so I thought he'd written "Augsburg". So I wasn't rushing when the train stops at Ansbach, only to see the conductor running through towards us shouting "Schnell! Schnell!!" I didn't even have my shoes on! (Hey, we were the only ones on the train). We managed to get off in time and waited a couple hours for the verrrrrry slow regional train back to Stuttgart.

Since then I always listen to announcements and if I don't understand, I ask somebody. Would've missed a flight out of Amsterdam if I hadn't.

I've made countless trips in the wrong direction in just about every subway/metro I've ever encountered. Sleep deprivation usually accounts for most of the judgement errors, but thankfully easily remedied by getting off at the next stop and going back the right way. My biggest/most expensive mistake was on the Copenhagen train. I was visiting a friend and was using her electronic transit pass. I thought I beeped in, but I had not. I boarded the train directly into the arms of the transit officer. He couldn't have been kinder issuing me a ticket, which cost the equivalent of a night in a nice hotel. He also got off the train with me and gave me a lesson in transit pass usage. A "doh!" moment for sure (I still fret about it).

Sarah - that reminds me a bit of when we were taking a train from Nice to Avignon in 2012. The train was delayed because of a bad thunderstorm and of course they were making announcements in French, and we couldn't understand. They were switching the arrival track, and they'd make an announcement, there would be a bit of a groan then people were all moving to another track. So we just moved with them and hoped for the best. This happened 3 times! (I was just reading my entry on my blog for that day and it said 60-70 min delay).

Oh my gosh, I was just getting my head wrapped around the idea of renting a car in Prague to drive to Seiffen on an upcoming solo trip. I'm sure I still will but will also bookmark this thread as a reminder that recovery is possible when a mistake turns the day trip into an adventure! Thank you All for the stories.

Many years ago I flew to the wrong airport then waited a couple of hours for a connecting flight that never came. I departed Mobile with a connection in Houston for a flight to Omaha where I was to be met at the airport by a team of people who were going to interview me for a job that I REALLY wanted. After two hours in "Houston," I started to panic as my connecting Omaha flight never showed up on the boards. When I asked an agent, she informed me that I was in Dallas! Turns out that in Mobile, I had walked down the hallway to Gate 8A - not Gate 8B! This was in an era before cell phones and gate agents scanning boarding passes into a computer, and even (in Mobile) gate agents at every boarding gate! It took several hours, including a series of pay phone calls, but I finally got to Omaha - mortified! But I got the job!!

Dumb luck saved us on this blooper last week.

Leaving Venice for Marco Polo airport on 8:20 bus, 10:35 flight to Frankfurt with tight connection (due to their change) to Philadelphia). Bought the bus tickets when we arrived in town. Came marching into bus station with 10 minutes to spare. Saw the ATVO bus pull up, saw "Aeroporto" on the banner, and walked on, driver even having to validate our tickets by hand as machine was not working. Thought it was odd that bus left bridge and wound its way through Mestre to the te Mestre train station, the Marco Polo bus is non-stop, right? And then heard someone say "Treviso" when the door opened. Huh? Get off, ask, we had never looked at the side of the bus, where it cel;arly says it is ATVO-Treviso. We are on the Treviso bus.!Dumb luck, there is an ATVO bus from Mestre local to Marco Polo, we get there only 20, minutes later, and everything is calm in the airport so we are fine. But don't ask about the zoo scene we ran into in Frankfurt with our plane late and going to the tarmac, passport control backed up like mad, and time running out. Made that flight only because all their operations were running late.

For that matter, we also got lucky earlier in that trip when went into the bus station on arrival in Siena to buy tickets for the Rapido to Florence later in the week for our train to Ravenna. Good thing ti wasn't a Tabak or such, because the bus station attendant patiently told me that the bus we planned on did not exist, almost none did, as we were traveling on April 25. We did not know! We would have simply shown up as we had planned and then missed our high-speed train.

Sarah's post reminded me of the time we were going from Gubbio to Urbino (Italy) on the bus. Countryside was beautiful. Out in the middle of nowhere, the driver pulled over to the side of the road, stopped, stood up, looked back at where we were sitting and yelled: "Cambia! Cambia!" We knew what it meant, but had had no idea we needed to change buses on that trip. Sure enough, the other bus was pulled up and stopped on the other side of the road. I had my (lace-up) shoes off but got them on in a hurry!

One morning we were in Ventimiglia, Italy, trying to get to Genoa. When we got to the train station, we found out the trains were on strike. So we went to the bus station. We missed the pullman by just a few minutes so went by short bus trips all the way, changing often. Thank goodness we had a bit of Italian, but we took 7 different buses and spent 10 hours to go 120 miles.

We also had the Cinque Terre train experience where we were chatting with a couple from Australia and not paying much attention. The train stopped in a tunnel and we chatted on. We were staying in Riomaggiore but we ended up in La Spezia! Had dinner and caught the train back.

Not an error, but one thing I remember: In Montepulciano, we asked a woman where to find the nearest bus stop. She replied, "Sopra, al quinto albero." (Above [up the hill], at the fifth tree.)

And our biggest scare was when we lived in Colorado, driving from our western slope home town to Denver for our international flight. This was in late May. We left home with a nice cushion of time, but Vail pass was closed for snow and we sat there, and sat there, and sat there. Finally, they opened the pass and we hightailed it to Denver but arrived so close to the time for our flight that we had to park in the close-in garage rather than shuttle parking. When we arrived back in Denver at the end of our trip, our parking bill was $227 ($370 today). This was the last time we flew from anywhere other than our small-town airport on a European trip!

Going back across the mountains on the same trip, and after getting over Vail pass, we saw a sign that the road was closed because of a wildfire. We jumped off the interstate and got the last room at a hotel. The next morning, we had to backtrack and take another route across the state.

Sarah’s post reminded me of our late night ride on a DB train in the Harz area one rainy night. We were taking a train back from our vacation within a vacation in Prague. I’d asked a couple of taxi drivers at our home station (Quedlinburg) if there would be taxis waiting at midnight to meet the last train of the day and they all said yes so I wasn’t too worried. But in a small village about 30 minutes outside of Quedlinburg the HEX train came to a halt and stayed there. A DB employee eventually came through the cars and asked the scattered passengers a few questions and wrote things down in a notebook. Many people got off the train. Eventually only the 4 of us remained. The DB employee spoke no English and we spoke only a smattering of German. Eventually he motioned with his hand in a downward zigzag motion, said zzzzzzz and kaput! We finally figured out that a power source had been hit by lightning and the regional trains were all stopped. He told us to sitzen sie hier. He eventually came back to us and motioned for us to follow him off the train. He called a cab, gave the driver a DB paper and we gave the cab driver our address which was 40km away. The cab driver took us all the way to our front door which was on the outskirts of Quedlinburg. We didn’t have to pay him anything but we gave him a nice tip as I wasn't sure any taxis would have been waiting if he’d just dropped us off at the train station that night, in the rain and well after midnight.

All of our best plans had fallen apart but thank you to the animated train attendant and kind taxi driver for getting us home.

Our worst travel error was in Paris. We were leaving to go to the Orly airport and took the wrong train. Naturally, my husband was disagreeing with me. He is usually spot on with directions. While on the train with our luggage a drunk decided to entertain us and we had trouble getting off the train due to his antics. (Not pleasant at all). We left the train and called Uber. Someone picked us up and we saw the countryside on our way to the airport. It was beautiful but all I could think of was the ticking of the clock... We made it and can now look back and laugh.

I didn't have much luck on the metro in Copenhagen (Kongens Nytorv). The signage wasn't great and half the time, I only figured out I was going the wrong way because of the first stop.

Brad considering that the Copenhagen metro only has 3 possible end destinations, you must be seriously unlucky. Thats a 33,3% chance of getting the right train.

I've told my biggie here before, but here goes:

I moved to Hungary in 1993 to teach English. I was posted to a “smaller” town — still more than 100,000 people and way bigger than my Oklahoma hometown! The beautiful city of Kecskemét.

I went on a program that had sent teachers all over the country, and we had all flown together on the same JFK-Budapest flight. During that time, we made arrangements to meet up our first full weekend in Budapest.

So I somehow research the train times and found my target train to leave Kecskemét for Budapest on a Saturday morning. Say the train was to depart at 11:27 am from K to Bp on platform 1.

Of course I was at the train station early, so I went out to the platforms to await my train. It was maybe 11:10 or 11:15. There was a train sitting there on platform 1.

Like a dummy, I didn't know that the Budapest trains originated in Szeged, and only stopped in Kecskemét to drop off and pick up passengers (I guess I thought Kecskemét was the center of the world and trains would just originate there). So I figured this was my train, which would leave in a while, so I went ahead and got on it.

So the train departed at say 11:20. I thought it was odd that trains wouldn't follow the published schedule, but what did I know?!

This, of course, was not the Budapest-bound train, but some local milk run train. I still don't remember how, I must have asked somebody, and a fellow passenger helped me figure out I wasn’t on the right train.

Of course now I had no idea how I was actually going to get to Budapest!

At the next stop that was common both to the local train I was on, and the next Budapest-bound train, this man helping me got off the train with me and took me to the ticket hall to buy a ticket for the next Budapest train. In other words, he completely diverted himself from his planned travel to help me out. I will never forget that kindness.

So the next time the train came, I waited until the actual time for the train before getting on any train sitting around, and eventually learned my way around the Hungarian rail system and the menetrend (timetable), and that weekend I had a wonderful weekend of discovery in Budapest, a city that has remained dear to my heart in the 26 ensuing years. I spent many many a weekend taking the train between Kecskemét and Budapest and the Nyugati station, designed by Mr Eiffel's company.

Recently on Arte (a joint French-German cultural TV channel), they had a documentary on grand train stations, and sure enough Nyugati in Budapest was one they featured. The last time I was in Budapest and took the train to go see Kecskemét, I had a wonderful sentiment of being “bathed” in the Hungarian language from all the chatter around me, and settled in to my seat with a big smile on my face. Right now I am so opposed to the Hungarian government that i don't feel like I can go spent my tourist euros there, which is a bit heartbreaking. I hope they will find their way again.

So many great stories but Kim I have to vote for yours as most heartwarming and best positive outcome from a personal error.

The one time I actually got on a train in Germany or, any where else in Europe for that matter, going in the wrong direction was in 2001. By 2001 I had done 10 trips, all of them solo but this time, solo again, it was totally confusing.

I was supposed to go from Mönchengladbach to Aachen, then transfer to Paris. I couldn't find any indication on this train in Mönchengladbach Hbf with the departure time I wanted. All that I knew of how the German train system works didn't help, looked for signs on the train, platform signs, nothing, no one was around. It was a station that had not been refurbished, still had the black/white DB signs, etc like in the 1970s.

So, against my better judgement, I boarded thinking it was going to Aachen, ie north, sat in a general seating area, no compartments, among a group of some pretty chatty women all chatting away in German. .

I eavesdropped on their conversation all in their Lower Rhine dialect, trying to pick up parts of the dialect, I got the feeling the train was not headed north by what they saying in their conversation.

Before the train stopped at its first stop (after Mönchengladbach), I asked them in German if it was going to Aachen, "Der Zug fährt nach Aachen, oder?." They said no. No matter what, I got off at the first, the next stop, Viersen. Although I knew the name of Viersen, I didn't know what the proximity was to Aachen until I pulled out my map, ie, I was going west from Mönchengladbach instead of north...wrong direction, pal.

I took the first train ca. one later, Viersen Hbf to Aachen, got on the train to Paris, once we got to border the Belgians Thalys staff got on and wanted to see the transit ticket and reservation, just as the DB woman in Viersen Hbf had said would happen.