Passes have arrived/ t-Minus 8 days :D in Stuff

I don’t think I’m doing the Australian government data watchdog any justice. In fact, I think my porn watch-age has increased since they’ve started monitoring us all HAHA.

I was actually watching some when there was a knock at the door. Awkward.
Cue me throwing some shorts on and answering the door to a FEDX worker, delivering my packages. Speaking of, pretty sure mine was still noticable.
It was a female delivery person too! I had to wonder to myself if I’ve ever seen a female postie before. I can’t remember the last time I did.

“You’re Matthew?” she asked? “Yep!” I said. I was pleased she was holding two large envelopes. I signed for them and pretty much shuddered in excitement that they’d arrived!

I opened them up and read through the details. One was my Europass that allows me 15 days consecutive travel through any 28 European countries (except Turkey, Great Britain and Russia). The other was my two reservation ‘tickets’ for my high-speed train(s). I think it will only be one high-speed one though.
From what I can tell, I think I will only be on the two high-speed trains my entire trip - on the London > Amsterdam leg and the Koehn > Paris leg. My other reservation was just in case, and was only 3 Euro which they probably just charged me because I’m an ignorant tourist.

Upon reading the booklets they’ve given me with the pass, I learned that the ‘high season’ is generally July to September, so I should be relatively okay with train travel. If I need to book any other reserved seats on trains, I will have to worry about that when I’m there. I don’t think I will though.
The offline-app they recommend to download is a really good idea. It tells me what trains and routes need reservations and which ones don’t. It looks like I’ll be fine if I head back to Germany, but if I stay in France or go to Italy, those countries appear to be far more touristy and require reservations etc.

The included map even tells me that my pass covers ferries over to the Greek islands and over to Ireland, if I wanted to go there. There’s even one ferry route back over to the east(?) coast of the UK from the Netherlands, which is surprising.

What’s surprising is that my ticket is only a lame piece of paper, with a single STAPLE holding it to it’s ‘cover’ (which is only like a fold-out thing), and I have to write down details of each trip I take, on which date and what time. The ticket isn’t valid if it isn’t with the cover, and if you make a mistake writing down any details on the form inside the cover, it’s considered fraud and you’re liable for fines etc.
Considering this thing cost me like $760, I would have at least thought I’d get more than a piece of paper and a fucking staple.
It even says in the booklet to NOT laminate the ticket.
Sheesh, so this thing has to last me just over two weeks, of constant taking-in-and-out-of train stations and trains, without getting damaged or removed from it’s one staple? AND I can’t accidentally write down a wrong date or time without it being a crime? Hilarious. Well, apparently I can, but I have to write in the next column over, which means you lose a non-refundable day.

I would have thought in the year 2015, when I can order a ticket to a sporting event or a concert and just scan my phone against a barcode reader at the front gates, that a company like this would have created the technology to do something similar. Apparently not haha.

They did provide a ‘travel document holder’ to ‘protect’ my documents, so at least that is something. I guess there are still a lot of maybe elderly people who travel using this pass who aren’t up to date on technology and such, so until times move along a little, the old-school way it is!

It’s kind of cute I guess :)

My plan is to get the pass activated and stamped in Amsterdam on my 3rd day there, use it for my first short trip to Utreche and back, and that will cover me until the end of my trip. After Paris is still completely up in the air, but I’m kind of excited about the spontaneity of it. I want to be back in London with two days to spare.

I’m now worried about the dimensions of luggage I can bring aboard the trains. the Eurostar says no bags bigger than 85cm long, so that’s interesting. I would have thought a normal-sized suitcase was way bigger than that? Or maybe it’s not?
So now when I find my old suitcase, I’ll be measuring the damn thing haha.
I am taking way too many precautions with this trip.

I was looking at the best exchange-rate companies and realized that there’s only going to be like $5 difference per $1000 between what I have now and if I went with the best option. It’s not really worth it over that. The Travellex site has a cool graph showing what the exchange rates were up to the past 12 months compared to your local currency. It’s a bit of a kick in the teeth looking past six months ago though haha. I could have definitely got a lot more bang for my buck then. But hey, no-one can predict these things. Everyone thought the Aussie dollar would fluctuate wildly when the new Prime Minister came into power, but it didn’t budge at all. Go figure. I think China pretty much decides how good or fucked up our dollar remains.

Anyway, the point of this is that I don’t have to worry about my passes not arriving on time now. Woohoo. As soon as I find my suitcase, I’ll be all set to go I think. :D
I told my mum I’m going. She thinks I’m crazy going mostly alone.
My housemate’s know. I told Nick he’ll have to feed Alex’s cat because I won’t be home, since the stupid thing doesn’t know how to ration it’s food to last the entire weekend and then sits there meowing at me for ages cos it’s hungry.
it even tried meowing at me this morning, and Alex was home! I went up there and saw he was still asleep so went back downstairs again. The damn cat can wait.

Last updated October 26, 2015