Sometimes the system works, but not perfectly ....

I've had an interesting e-mail exchange with hotel.de, the hotel booking site that I have been using. As noted in the post below, a hotel south of Hamburg, that we were supposed to be staying in tonight and for the next 4 nights, claimed to have no booking for us when I phoned to cancel.

A very competent woman (with excellent written English-we've had a few e-mails back and forth) at hotel.de got back to me within 24 hours, having spoken to the manager at the hotel concerned, determined that they had indeed received our reservation, but that it had been misfiled by whoever received it. No foul, no harm - we will not be charged, and hotel.de will argue it out with the hotel.

Just out of curiosity, since no one seemed to be much concerned about a reservation in a prime property being lost, or cancelled on short notice, I dug around a bit on the Internet. It seems that by about tomorrow night, Hamburg time, 70,000 international visitors will be arriving for a major trade exhibition at the Hamburger Messe. I checked the availability at the hotel we had booked, nada. Then I checked the availability for the period we would be there at any hotel.de managed hotel within 100km of Hamburg - the first one was 48km out of Hamburg. I checked availability at hotels within 50km of our original booking, and the first one would have been 40km away in a direction that would have been problematical. No wonder no one was concerned about a booking gone missing!

Which leaves me asking; Who would have cared, had we arrived this evening, and there was no room at the inn?

Memo to self: When we re-book this trip next Spring, or any other trip before then with hotels booked on hotel.de, or on any other Internet booking site, a few days after booking, give them a call, to make sure they indeed have the booking!

The system is not perfect!

Sometimes when the system doesn't work, it's a good thing!

First of all, a note on how I usually do hotel bookings when travelling; and the usual disclaimer, I have no interests, financial or otherwise, in the company through which I do these.

I use an Internet booking site http://www.hotel.de/ for my bookings. This is a German organization, but they seem to be smart enough to look at the IP address that you are connecting from, and figure out that you want the English website. If that doesn't happen, there is a language button at the top right (with a flag representing the current language of the page your looking at - for English it is a weird combination of a Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes!), and you can use that to change the page to English. You can use this site to book a hotel just about anywhere in the world, and, you can set yourself up as a user, with your contact information stored, and even your preferrred payment option (all over a SSL-Secure Sockets Layer link), so that you can simply book without having to enter this information each time.

You can search for hotels using various parameters; within a particular city, within x km/miles of a particular city, within x km/miles of an attraction or event, etc. You can set up other parameters, such as more than x stars on their rating system, and below y $/Euro/whatever currency per night. Besides a star rating system based on what the hotel provides about their facilities, you also get a user score on a 0 - 10 scale for each hotel, based on user evaluations. If you book a hotel through hotel.de, you will get an e-mail on the day you check out, asking you to evaluate the hotel, with a link to the evaluation page. The user score is derived from these evaluations, and you can also read any written comments submitted as part of the evaluation process - although these are in the language of the user, and since this is an international site, may not be understandable by you.

On about 10 bookings both in Germany and in Canada, I have found this site very reliable - in one case they got me a room in a hotel (in Canada) at a lower rate when the hotel itself had told me that only their premium (about $100 more) rooms were available. And, they guarantee that you will get the lowest Internet rate, that is, the hotel cannot sell their rooms for less than this site offers, on-line. (If they do, and you bring a print-out of the web page on which they do, the hotel has to give you the lower rate.)

Rcommended! .... but

As I noted in the post about having to cancel our German trip, there was one hotel that I had booked whose cancellation policy required cancelling at least 14 days prior to arrival, else they would charge anything-unspecified- between 0 and 100% of the total cost of the booking. We were well within that period, and thus the hotel.de website, which allowed me to cancel all my other reservations on-line, would not cancel this one. I contacted the hotel - twice. The first time I talked with a very charming young (I think) woman, late evening German time, who didn't seem to know what to do, but assured me that the hotel would call me back, after they had figured out what to do.

That didn't happen at a time that made sense, given the time difference between Ontario and Germany (they are 6 hours ahead of us), and so at about 4:30 p.m. their time I phoned again. This time I got someone (a man as it happens) who, after some explanations about what I called about, informed me that they had no booking for us (today was Wednesday, this was for Saturday next) and thus as far as they were concerned, if we didn't arrive that was no problem for them; on the other hand, they didn't care to be charged for a booking that they never received by/from hotel.de. But he also agreed that we should not be charged, certainly not the 450 Euro that our full booking was for. After an exchange of contact information - he already had my phone number from call display, but e-mail would be cheaper - we left it that I would contact hotel.de, point out their failure, ask questions, and insist that no one be charged anything for failure to cancel a reservation that never was made. I am still waiting for a reply from them. (Questions asked; how would it have worked out if we had shown up at this hotel, after an overnight flight from Toronto to Frankfurt, then a 5+ hour drive, and they had no reservation, and no room?) To be fair, digging around on the hotel.de site, looking for a hotel and looking at user comments, very occasionally (maybe 1 in 100 to 200 comments) someone complains that they arrived at a hotel that had no idea they were coming, and always the hotel either had room, or went to great lengths to place them elsewhere, at the same level of quality, and the same or lower price(which may be a hidden policy for hotels that sign up with hotel.de).

So, the booking system failed, but it may have saved us something between 0 and 450 Euro!

In other good news, the Salzburger Landestheater, where we had tickets for an operetta, got back to my e-mail telling them we couldn't make it with the news that they would put our tickets back into the "for sale" pool, and if they were sold, credit us with the value against a future visit, when we try this trip again next Spring. I am still waiting to hear back from the Hamburgische Staatsoper, where we had tickets next Tuesday.

All together, this is not working out too badly!

The mysterious Toronto event

If you are reading top-down, this is not mysterious, as you are getting the story from the beginning; if you are reading bottom up, in order of date and time of posings, then you have had mysterious hints about this.

We were in Toronto yesterday evening for a reception at the official (that is owned by the university) home of the President of the University of Toronto (more of a description of the home below). The occasion was a reception for the 2008 recipients of the University of Toronto's Arbor Award, a recognition of volunteers who have done work for the good of the University. (In my case, that was for work at Trinity College - actually the University of Trinity College - a federated university within U of T.) It is nice to be recognized; it is even nicer to be recognized when you thought that no one noticed!

The home of the President - well, first of all it has a back lawn big enough to hold a reception for perhaps 300-400 people, recipients, past recipients, and guests (being uncrowded enough that no one gets pushed into the very nice swimming pool), and to set up a tent with seating for all present, plus a stage for the awards ceremony. The home itself is on the north slope of the Rosedale ravine, and from the lawn all that suggests that you might be in a city is that you can see the CN Tower, and the Bay building at Yonge and Bloor above the tops of the trees.

In my lifetime in the academy or the church I have never aspired to high office - but this home might be worth having students march and occupy your office everytime they don't like some decision you have made.

Life is what happens ....

.... while you make other plans. (John Lennon)

It's been an eventful few days; late last week June began to notice some odd symptoms; dizzyness when changing position rapidly, mostly mornings, and a real lack of energy. Got out the blood-pressure device (I know it has a name, but I can't remember it, nor spell it when I do); blood pressure is low, 100/60 range, bouncing around, and pulse when resting in the 90s. Make dr. appointment for Monday morning; hoping for definite answer, and begin to think about perhaps not travelling. Symptoms continue over weekend (despite eating badly at a parish barbeque - hamburgers and hot dogs - lots of salt, should sent blood-pressure (BP) through the roof! Went to the installation of Bishop Ralph Spence as Chancellor of Renison University College (yes, the new Act was finally passed in the Legislature), with subsequent reception featuring more salty and spicy snacks -no luck in raising BP.

The visit to the dr. was helpful, but not enlightening. Measured BP every which way and in every position, agreed it was low (but not seriously so, except for a few of the extremes we measured), but also not positional, ie. the dizzyness was something else. June had a bout of this for years while flying, dr. suggested that this never goes away, just goes dormant, and can recur, mildly or seriously. Plus, inner ear fluids are adversely affected by high sodium. So, some sort of inner ear problem, that has recurred; BP may be due to a recent meds change, not initiated by him, which he reversed. All of this will probably go away, in a week, a month, or whenever, and we'll never really know just what caused it all. (This is why we like this dr.; he doesn't pretent to have answers he doesn't, but sometimes we wish he were more of a guru!) Bottom line; June is ok to travel, but probably won't enjoy it much!

We had an event (more about that later - or earlier,if you are reading top down) in Toronto in the early evening, preceded for me by a Senate meeting at Trinity College, so we had lots of time to talk about it on the way into the city. No conclusions so far, but consideration of the bottom line - my recollection (I should have looked at the documentation at home a little more) was that all our bookings - air, car, hotels, were definitely cancellable without penalty, the only thing we would have to swallow (perhaps) were opera tickets in Hamburg and Salzburg - and, who knows? (As it turns out, there was one hotel that had a two week in advance cancellation policy, after which they charge non-recoverable costs, unfortunately one at which we had booked 5 nights. But still, even had we known this at the time, it probably would not have changed the decision.)

Ahh, the decision - in the face of the uncertainty about how June was going to be feeling by this weekend and next week, and beyond, we decided we'd rather be at home, and her feeling perfectly normal, wishing that we had gone to Germany, than to be in Germany, in a hotel (probably the one that won't let us cancel withour penalty), June not feeling so hot, and both of us wishing we had stayed home!

So, I spent today (well, not all of it, some of it was delightfully spent with our younger granddaughters who we were able to have for the day, rather than finishing up packing and all that) undoing all the bookings, and writing e-mails to all concerned, plus some phoning to see just what we would end up paying for a hotel we will not see - or will see another time, depending on how reasonable they are.

We have agreed that we will not let all the trip planning I did on this go to waste; we will simply move it into another time frame - Spring 2009, late April into May, probably. That was the time that Scott and I were in Germany this year, and the weather was wonderful, all was green and blooming, and the days were getting longer. Yes, we will miss the wine harvest this Fall, and we defintely will not miss Oktoberfest in Munich (we avoid the Kitchener-Waterloo Octoberfest; why go for the real thing?), but the compensation for that will be the fresh, white asparagus available everywhere (at seemingly ridiculous prices; eg. about $1 per spear in a restaurant, until you work out just what is involved in getting that one spear to you).

We also agreed that, all going well, we would find a warm and relaxing place to visit late this year, or early next year.

So, keep on checking in here, not just for that, and for next Spring, but I will continue to post reflections on travel, life, and whatever is happening.

Among other things, see the posting above this one, about last night's event in Toronto.

(And then, above that - I still have problems with blogs working bottom-up instead of top-down [latest dates above, earliest dates below] I am planning on satisfying some requests for e-mails that I sent to a select group of people - not so select apparently that they saved them - in the Fall of 2006, from MS Zuiderdam, as we cruised down the West coast from Vancouver, through the Panama Canal, to Miami, over 21 days. [Some people have suggested I should try travel writing; this is as far as it gets!)


Now, I just have to find those e-mails!

(And, I did find them. To read them, expand the "2006" listings in the tree to the left, by clicking on the triangle.)

Communications - International Considerations

It used to be, you travelled abroad, you told your family and friends when you were leaving, when you were coming back - and in between they were lucky if they got a postcard. A few years later, after telephone long distance billing cards were invented, you might have called - if it was really important. But these days, given our "need" for instant accessibility, by cell phone, text messaging, or mobile e-mail, we get nervous (and so do our family and friends) if we travel somewhere where we are not instantly reachable, or where we cannot instantly communicate. And that "need" can get very expensive!

Disclaimer: I will be mentioning company names below; I do not have any financial interest in any of them, nor do I care if you choose to use any of the services mentioned! My cell-phone and mobile data provider happens to be Rogers, my home data provider is Bell Sympatico - so I'm working both sides of the (Canadian) street.

As we are going to Germany, the costs below are for that country, but the comparisons work for most of the world, except recently the rest of the world has gotten relatively more expensive as Rogers, responding to competition, has lowered some of their prices for European roaming. But not nearly enough!

By the way; amouts below are in Canadian dollars.

If you are a Rogers customer (and Bell is probably the same), using your cell phone and/or Blackberry in Germany looks like this:

Voice Calls
Local calls within Germany: $1/minute
Calls back to Canada or USA: $2/minute
Calls to other international destinations: $3.50/minute
Incoming calls from anywhere: $2/minute

Data
Sending a text (SMS) message: 60 cents
Any other data: 3 cents/kilobyte, in 20 kilobyte increment (so, just to turn on your Blackberry will cost you 60 cents, and, because Blackberrys continually communicate with the mother ship, to see if e-mail is waiting, or whatever, you will discover that after a week or so, you have run up a bill of $50 or so (per week), without actually having done anything - and, your mileage will vary!)


Thus, the last ime I went to Germany, I looked for alternatives!

What I found was a Canadian company, roam+simple, based in Toronto. (And, as I said above, I have no interest whatever in this company, but have found them to deliver on their promises, and when there are problems, to respond quickly.)


roam+simple delivers cellphone and text services just about anywhere in the world; with small up-front charges, and usage charges billed directly to your credit card. Interestingly, roam+simple uses one of the same German cellphone companies that Rogers uses as their primary carrier in Gemany, and my experience is that as one moves around Germany, all of the other Rogers partners come into play.


Voice Calls (through roam+simple)
Incoming calls (from anywhere): no charge - German carrier are forbidden from charging for calls beyond the control of the receiving party
Calls to within Germany: 49 cents/minute
Calls to Canada and USA: 79 cents/minute
International calls (other than Canada & US): $1.99/minute

Data (through roam+simple)
Receiving a text mesage: no charge
Sending a text (SMS) message: 39 cents
Other data (Internet, etc): 30 cents/10 kilobytes


As you can see from the numbers above, given that Rogers and Roam+Simple use the same German carriers, there is a a serious discrepancy in prices in every category - some of the charges, like charging for incoming voice calls, might be described as gouging - given that in Germany itself cariers are not allowed to charge for incoming calls.


So, how do you get with roam+simple?

Google them - but here are some of the considerations :

You will need an "unlocked" GSM phone, ie. one that you own but are no longer using because you have upgraded to a new one, or, you can buy such from roam+simple, either reconditoned, or new. If you have GSM phone you are no longer using, Google "unlock + your phone manufacturer + model number" , and you will likely find a website that will offer you instructions on how to unlock your phone, in return for a fee of about $10.

Once you have such a phone, however you get it, Google roam+simple and select a SIM card for whatever country you want to travel to - you will need to give them a credit card number to which they will charge the purchase of the SIM card ($19 or so) and subsequent charges - the SIM card charge is good for one year, using it in the country you are going to will get charged at their published rates directly to your credit card with e-mail bills, and if you return the SIM card within one year, you get something like $10 back, otherwise, you will be charged for another year, except they will ask you to agree to that first.

That is my advice on staying in touch abroad, at a lower cost than just using your cell-phone or Blackberry!

But of course, your milage may vary!

And still more mechanics

1. There is the "bottom-up" nature of blogs - to read from the begining, you need to scroll down to the bottom, and then upwards, whichis sometimes awkward! But, that's how it works ...
2. You can work around that, somewhat, by using the "tree" that appears to the left of this, and any test that I post. Like any Explorer tree, some of it is collapsed; usually, a few of the most recent postings are listed, below that may be months or years with a little triangle in front of them; click the triangle to expand the tree;


3. And again, you can subsribe to a "feed" ; at the very bottom click on "Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)" and follow the instructions, to have new posts automatically sent to you computer.

More of the blogging mechanics

As I begin to learn how to work with this medium ( and perhaps as you begin to interact with it) a few things (two) immediately come to mind:

• the time at which blogs are supposedly uploaded have no relation to "my" time (where-ever I am) - they are the local time at where Google is located - the west coast (of the US); that is 3 hours behind Eastern time;


• there is the possibility of "interaction", that is commenting on postings; simply click on the "# Comments" link at the bottom of any posting (# is any number from 0 on up).

Beginnings

We are off again, on a longish (18, 19 or 20 days, depending on how you count) trip to Germany. It will be my (Gerry's) 2nd trip to Germany this year; the trip this Spring with my son Scott was so much fun that I talked June into going this Fall.

Briefly, we leave on Friday, September 19, 2008, and will return on Wednesday, October 8, 2008. While in Germany we will spend time in the greater Hamburg area, a few days around Nuernberg (my birth city), and then lots of time in the Bavarian Alps, both in the Berchtesgaden area, and the Garmisch-Partenkirchen area. Then, back to the Frankfurt area, for a day with my step-brother Karlheinz and his daughter Sylvia. Aside from the usual sightseeing, I've managed to reserve opera tickets both for the Hamburgische Staatsoper (Verdi's Simon Boccanegra) and the Salzburgisches Landestheater (Kalman's Graefin Maritza).

The last time I tried to keep a whole lot of people in touch with our travels was two years ago, from our Panama Canal cruise on "Zuiderdam." Then, I did it (or tried) by e-mail, which turned out to be a major amount of work, particularly as we got further south, and the ship internet connection was increasingly unable to connect to my mail servers.

[I have inserted these e-mails into this blog, back-dated to their original date and time (roughly); to see these click on the "triangle" next to 2006 at the left (where you see the blog "tree") to expand the postings in that year.]

This time, I am going to try using a blog; theoretically, all I will have to do is write what I want, once, no e-mail, no fuss. Of course, whether or not you see it will be up to you; you will have to connect to this blog and see if anything new has appeared. (There is also a subscription possiblility; click on the "Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)" link at the very bottom of this page, or here, and follow the instructions.)

Two years ago I also tried to post pictures on our fototime web album, which turned out to be a major mistake (for technical reasons too long to explain here), but meant I had a major clean-up job to do on both my mobile computer, and my desk-top, after returning. I won't be doing that again, although I might post the odd picture in this blog, just for illustration. However, I will be posting an album on return.

Don't let that discourage you from viewing our other pictures, at http://longworth_mueller.fototime.com/ .
And note, that "blank" space between longworth and mueller has an "underline" under it.

And check this blog regularly