My not so glorious travel moments – Part 2

Traveling is a mind-blowing experience. It’s very freeing and helps a lot of us to find ourselves while getting to know other people, cultures, countries and traditions. Throughout my last couple of years of traveling I’ve collected thousands of amazing stories and experiences that I love to share with others. But sometimes you are in a situation where you just stop thinking for a moment, or you’ve had one to many drinks or you just don’t know what else to do and it turns out to be an awkward or delicate situation. In this series called “My not so glorious travel moments”, I want to tell you about a couple of experiences I’ve made that I could or maybe even should have avoided. So here is Part number two.

That one time I lost 500GB of travel pictures and videos
Throughout our travels we all collect a huge amount of memories. Luckily we carry most of them with us in our mind, but usually have one, two or three other places to store our pictures, videos and documents. I usually have two hard drives for my pictures and have them safely stored in my room back home. Since I didn’t have much free space on my laptop I decided to bring along my hard drive on my last trip and carefully watch out for it throughout the whole trip. When I landed at the airport in Munich after two months of traveling, I stuffed it back into my backpack and was so glad it made it home savely. Well, I shouldn’t have let the guards down that early, because between the airport, my friends house and my house, my hard drive got lost or stolen somewhere. I spent hours looking for it, called every lost and found office I could think of and caused a lot of chaos in all the places I was searching. Luckily I can get a lot of my pictures back from friends and family, but I am still hoping that some nice fella will find it and send it back to me. I already bought a cloud account and two new hard drives to back everything up twice next time. Lesson learned!

One of the beautiful pictures I was able to save before the hard drive was lost.

That one time I almost crawled into somebody else’s bed
You know those awesome nights out in a foreign country with lots of new hostel friends, drinking games and incredible cultural experiences. Well, I was having exactly one of those nights. I was staying at a hostel in Barcelona, where a friend was working for the summer, so I could spend my holidays there for free. Since it was low season, there were always a couple of free beds that I could sleep in. But while we were out a group of Maltese girls were desperately trying to find accommodation and booked the last free beds in the hostel I was staying in. Since I wasn’t paying I wasn’t in the system either, so they kind of forgot I was actually staying in one of the bunk beds. Long story short: A couple of beers, shots and sangrias later I arrived back in the hostel around five in the morning. We went up on the roof to enjoy the clear night before I went back down to my room to go to sleep. Maybe I should have gotten the hint, when I found my clothes and chargers in a bucket by the door, but I wasn’t anything close to sober, so I just threw on my pyjama and crawled up the ladder to the top bunk. It struck me as odd that somebody was already in my bed, but it could have been my friend who works at the hostel so I leaned over to check it out. In that moment the girl turned around, looked at me as if I was an alien and shouted: What the hell are you doing? Get the fuck out of my bed!”. Yup, I got the message. So I walked back down and it turned out they just forgot to tell me that those girls checked in late at night and booked the room I was staying in, so I had to sleep in the staff room.

Strolling around Park Güell above Barcelona.

That one time I had to pee in the streets
Most of us have been to big events, fairs or festivals. And especially women know how bad the toilet situation often is at those events. Well, let’s go back to my unforgettable carnival experience in Rio de Janeiro. Brazils carnival is by far the best thing I have ever experienced. It was a nonstop party and I loved dressing up, dancing in the streets and meeting new people for six consecutive days. So, on the last official day of carnival I went to a gay bloco in the city center. I knew there are not enough toilets around that area, but I usually found a bar or restaurant that would let me use their restroom. Unfortunately that area isn’t particularly known as a bar scene and those we could found had huge lines to wait in or wouldn’t let anybody who wasn’t a customer use their toilets. I was about five minutes away from a major accident that hasn’t happened since I was around fours years old, when this Brazilian girl we just met suggested we would just go pee in the back of an alley. I wasn’t really fond of the idea, especially because you could get fined around $50,- for publicly urinating, but at that point I just didn’t have any other choice. So we went back in that dark alley and finished our business. Not my proudest moment in the books, but a girl gotta do what a girl gotta do, right?

At the best show on earth, right before the incident.

That one time I got screwed over by a car rental company
Mallorca is one of those destinations where you just have to rent a car to see the most beautiful places on the island. Since I was there with some friends during low season renting a car was incredibly cheap. We got a Audi A1 for seven days with an all-round insurance for around €60,-. Awesome right? So the day before we picked up our car, we looked at the contract, downloaded the voucher and screenshotted the mail, just to be sure everything would turn out right. When we arrived at the rental office our white and shiny baby was already waiting for us to hit the road, but apparently there was a little problem with our booking. The office clerk was trying to get us to book additional insurance because apparently we weren’t insured. I argued with her, knowing we booked the insurance and asked her to connect to their offices internet to show her the whole contract. She didn’t only refuse to help us out, but made up some weird story about how other companies charge commissions and if we weren’t going to buy their insurance we would have to pay for every little damage on the car. After almost half an hour arguing she had us convinced that the other company screwed us over, so we bought their extra-special-covering all-insurance. Needless to say that just 20 minutes into our road trip we realized that was a stupid idea and a phone call to the rental agency confirmed my suspicion. I immediately sent a mail to get out of the contract because they knowingly provided false information, but I didn’t get far with their customer service. I’ve called and even dropped by the office, but there was just nothing I could do. After a couple of hours we just accepted that we paid way to much for the insurance, enjoyed out road trip and we will most definitely be more careful when renting a car next time.

The beautiful beach of Sa Calobra, only accessible by car or bike.

Merken