Quote: (09-27-2011 03:05 AM)Deb Auchery Wrote:
Interesting report Gringo, but stop the Brit-bashing. Most Brits abroad cause no problems at all, we're Intrepid, fun-loving, and not pig-ignorant like some from other nations.
Same goes for Italy and Turkey, I have met many great people from both countries
Fair point and I agree that the bashing does little good. However, in my defense, my heaviest bashing is reserved for my country - the worst of the offenders when it comes to being boorish, ignorant and myopic. The "bashing" is also a gut reaction to a disturbing trend that I see in many of the countries that I visit in pursuit of women. It's certainly a generalization, but most stereotypes are born of some truth. Perhaps the real bashing ought to be reserved for the internet itself, and the discount airline industry - both of which have conspired to create a surge of men traveling the planet and looking for the same thing.
Given what I just wrote, why the hell am I thus writing this review on a public forum?
Any way gentlemen. This will about do it for the Chisinau report.
One final free travel tip. I travel internationally very often. I have never had this problem before, but it was an eye opener. At the airport in Munich, where I was to board my flight to Chisinau, I obviously had to pass through emigration as I was leaving the EU. The young German female officer looked through my passport looking for my EU entry stamp, which was France/CDG a week before. Not finding it, she began to question me about my length of stay in the EU. I had a copy of my transatlantic itinerary, but that wasn't near sufficient. I then had the vague recollection of a very lazy officer in Paris/CDG pressing hard on the stamp - as if it had little ink on it and it just stuck out in my mind. So, I have extra pages in my passport, its 8 years old and there are probably over 150 stamps in the fucking thing. My flight departs in an hour. The supervisor gets called and the big powwow begins. I ask them about my entry being in a data base, as they run the passports through a scanner now. Nope, system doesn't communicate (very good to know!). I then went to a little office, got out a magnifying glass and spent the next 30 minutes looking for this mystery stamp, which I finally found. It was so faint as to be almost invisible. I made my flight with a couple of minutes to spare. I was, to it mildly, incredulous.
Lesson learned. Be aware of the stamp, be sure its legible before you leave the booth and made a mental note of where it is. I would have been fined heavily as being illegal had I not found that stamp. And I would have missed my flight and a non-changeable ticket would have been lost to the tune of $400.
One more bash; Lazy Fucking French bureaucrats!