beware of the st petersburg metro
learn when the train is about to move off, to avoid sitting on unamused russian businessmen (me being a large 19 year old at the time).

also, remember to ALWAYS give up your seat to baboushkas (little old ladies with beards) or you will find every member of your car staring at you with evil in their hearts. maybe. I decided to cut my losses, got off at the next station and walked the rest of the way home. I felt more unsafe than when getting a taxi home one night (but that's another, less interesting story).

russia is, however, lovely. mad as a balloon but lovely.
(rob_187 Ooh, Faye Dunaway!, Tue 26 Apr 2005, 21:13, Reply)

School Trips gone wrong?
Not so much a family holiday, but one with the school...
My friend and I were both sixteen at the time but had agreed to help when some twelve year olds were taken to Germany for a school trip.
As we were much older, the teachers allowed us to both have a drink with them in the evening when the youngsters had gone to sleep. Great, we thought, treated like real adults...
Well, had a few bottles of beer and I was drunk! My head was light and I was much less aware of everything. Anyway, came time for bed. My friend and I were having to share with three younger lads in their dorm room. We went to the corridor and went to open the door... but it was locked! So what did we do? Not wanting to wake anyone up, we started whispering "Let us in! Open the door!". Well, this would have been ok, except that we weren't whispering... we were saying in a very loud whisper through the door, "let us in!". So much so, that the whole floor of children and other guests opened their doors to see what was happening!
In the end, we had to spend the night in the dorm room of a couple of teachers... Male teachers too! The bad luck of it all! The one female teacher was hot...

Don't worry, Em, my love! You are much hotter! Emmathegirl, or should I say Mrs Andytheboy!!! :oD lol
(andytheboy, Tue 26 Apr 2005, 20:49, Reply)

Thunderbolts and Lightening, very very frightening
We did a practice expedition for our Gold Duke of Edinburgh award in Snowdonia. On the second day it was red hot and we arrived at our campsite sunburnt just has it started to rain. We stood around for a bit before someone mentioned that it might be best to get the tent up rather than when the rain got harder as we could hear thunder.

Despite several of us having been to cubs and scouts and knowing how to camp, we start putting up or metal framed tents in the thunder and lightning storm. Our teachers arrive race on to the field in the school van yelling for us to get undercover.

With our tents and stuff soaking wet, my friend and I watched a bolt of lighting strip a massive chunk of bark from a tree 10 yards from us. We spent a freezing cold and wet night and I thought I had hypothermia the next day when I got up.

S4C made a programme about the thunderstorm as it was one of the worst ones they've had in Snowdonia for 100 years.
(Hagis, Tue 26 Apr 2005, 20:28, Reply)

Denmark.
It was a lovely little cabin somewhere in the hills on Juttland (or something) which we drove to. I didn't much mind the car being broken, it meant nice walks to towns and places, and it was delightfully secluded. So I submerged myself in books over the picturesque view, and hardly slept from how lazy the days were. I was up until 1am every night, reading Frank Herbert books (mostly) or drawing or writing or otherwise being engaged. There was no television and no radio and no telephone and no contact with the outside world, and it was all a lovely retreat, if a bit lengthy at two weeks.

However, this was spoiled by the thin walls adjoining my bedroom which meant that I had to hear my father having a loud, heavily-breathed and vocal orgasm.

Every night.

For fourteen nights.



Sometimes more than once.
( Reid got it going on like Donkey Kong, Tue 26 Apr 2005, 20:14, Reply)

Ibiza 88
...I got German Measles just before going; the spots had disappeared to the naked eye but would vividly show up under the ultra violet lights in clubs. I certainly scared many a loved-up clubber that summer.
(DrTugnut, Tue 26 Apr 2005, 18:13, Reply)

Oh god, the year nine trip to France...
I had one too!

The first night, somebody fell onto the phone on the wall, and it fell off (the bracket as well, not just the handset - the whole lot just dangled there on its wire)

They served us such delicacies as black chicken, very dubious fish and what most of us suspected to be rat; while the teachers and hotel staff dined at their own table on champagne and chocolate cake. The (exact) same amount of salad always came back the next day as went away the last.

Also, we all bought BB guns and cheap cider from the supermarket - while we were all pissed off our heads down by the river, a gendarme popped up and told us to put the guns away, as they were illegal...


Also, in Year 7, I embarked upon an exchange trip funded by the EU, also to France.
With only the flight to pay, we were promised rides on the TGV, excellent accommodation, and probably a whole load more that I can't remember...

We never got the train ride, (too expensive), but I recall during our 6-hour coach journey from Lyon to Strasbourg, a railway line ran alongside much of the motorway, and every now and then I'd see an orange blur shoot past... That is what we in the business refer to a pisstake.

But the fun didn't stop there! In an incredible stint of generosity by our funders, we were allowed to stop at a 0-star motel, rather than sleeping on the coach! Three people to every two beds, (I slept on the floor, which was actually more comfortable), and in the morning breakfast in the car park, mingling pleasantly with the flies and the exhaust fumes from the adjacent motorway.

Oh, and while trekking round Strasbourg, we had to wear these stupid far-too-big or far-too-small t-shirts with the European flag emblazoned across them.


Nothing else comes immediately to mind, but I'll be sure to let you know if it does...
( Albert the Mildly Deranged purveyors of nothing much since a year or two ago, Tue 26 Apr 2005, 18:04, Reply)

holiday hilariousness
nothing major here, but on a trip to Paris in year nine we had the sixth formers next door selling us heineken (singly), almost constant fistfights, and the school perv spying on a couple having sex in the next hotel. of course none of the rest of us were interested...

first post, w00t
(rob_187 Ooh, Faye Dunaway!, Tue 26 Apr 2005, 17:25, Reply)

Mass Mongolian Sheep Death
3 terrifying days of being driven from nowhere to nowhere in Outer Mongolia in a jeep with no brakes.
The fact we had no brakes didn't seem to worry our driver who happily cruised along at 60mph veering erratically to miss pot holes and oncoming traffic. The roads all look like aerial photographs of Dresden circa 1945.
Third and final day had us flying down a road blocked by a herd of sheep. I think we managed to slow down to a reasonable 30mph with the handbrake before the horridness began. We ran straight over three of the poor buggers, god know how many others were injured. The driver just carried on and left the dead and the dying there in the middle of the road!

But on the bright side we did drink fermented horse milk and watch an old man entertain us by banging a rock off his head to produce musical notes.
(CrispyDolphin, Tue 26 Apr 2005, 17:06, Reply)

Italian bloody airports
Comming back from a ski holiday in Italy we went to the airport. Sitting on the plane we were informed that there was a technical problem and that on leaving the plane to go back to the airport we should avoid the liquid on the floor as it may damage our shoes. 15 BLOODY HOURS later we got back on the plane after no offers of food or accomidation. This was the most uncomfortable airport ive ever been in. Needless to say ever since ive used the chunnel
( SiX and his hat, Tue 26 Apr 2005, 16:31, Reply)

Lake district
Cracking school larks. We got to climb great hills and mountains, swim in mountain rock pools, use bows and arrows, absail down waterfalls and climb around in a complex network of 50ft high ropes in the trees. It began to turn a bit sour though when my mate (terrified of heights) fell off these ropes and hit his head on a rock. The instructor told him to pull himself together when he began to cry and give him a sharp kick. It worked though. The same instructor could dislocate his finger and reinsert it upside down. Also one of the lads on the trip got a massively infected thumb at the start of the trip, which he rolled over on in the night and it exploded. Whilst he was in hospital a pigeon flew into the dorm and shat on his bed. It all culminated in one of our lads getting into a massive fight with a group of school kids from Leeds over a girl.

Best pre-sex holiday ever.
(mudflaps, Tue 26 Apr 2005, 16:31, Reply)

unlucky
It was a great holiday in New York but some idiots flew a couple of planes into some towers, then in the sunshine in Bali my hotel was blown up and then off for some sun in Sri Lanka and my hotel gets washed way.
Staying in UK forever now.. in my nuclear shelter.

first post, hope you like it
(Juan Kerr, Tue 26 Apr 2005, 16:23, Reply)

Germany 1990
This is a long one - so apologies beforehand.

I was involved in a German exchange scheme back in the late 80's / early 90's.

The 1990 trip came around and I found myself at 17 years of age, on a coach with 1 other lad (a 6'6" metal-head called John) and 20+ lovelies from Queen's college in Chester.

John had disastrously hosted a German boy called Manfred the previous year, which was the worst possible pairing EVER. Manfred loved his camera, didn't like talking, didn't like girls, didn't like what we ate or our music and in the spate of a week, shit his bed twice and was found by John's mother wiping his cock on the guest room curtains.
We didn't want to stay with him! We were told by the organisers that he was not part of the exchange this year, so things looked good.

We bought lots of duty free and sat in the back of the coach getting riotously drunk with the coach load of hotties, and it was somewhere around Belgium that the exchange lists were given out. John and I were told we were staying with Manfred and family. I tried to get the coach to stop and let us out near a train station, but the organisers told us not to be so stupid and constantly made it out that we were the troublemakers to begin with.

So the rest of the trip to Germany went downhill from there, and the coach pulled up to be met with excited girly squealing of old friends reunited. After about 20 mins and people drifting off to their hosts houses, John and I saw Manfred, his Brother and parents stood in a line behind their BMW on the other side of the car-park. We were gestured to go to them and carried our cases to the car where we loaded them in the boot as everyone else had got in without saying a word. We drove in silence to their house and were told to get our cases out, leave them by the front door and follow the Father to the lounge.

The Father pulled the armchair in front of the patio doors to one side revealing a large brown stain on the cream carpet; "YOU SEE THIS!? THIS IS THE BLOOD FROM THE HEAD OF A BURGLAR! I HIT HIM WITH MY GUN BUTT!"

I nearly shat.

The Mother then came in from the opposite side of the room carrying things out of our suitcases, brandishing John's boom box at us; "WE WILL NOT HAVE ANY MUSIC AT ANY TIME IN THIS HOUSE!"

I shat.

The two weeks following had us pleading with the organisers that we just couldn't stay there, we weren’t allowed out in the evenings to meet with the other people on the exchange. John and I were fed separately from the family (one night we got a pound of butter, two fried eggs each and a half loaf of bread for dinner) and the family (apart from the younger brother Autur) didn't want anything to do with us.

So complained and complained. And the organisers (unbeknownst to us) did three visits to the Family in the daytime to see if there was a problem - they were treated like royalty and were told that John and I were the trouble makers but nothing that they couldn't handle. And so we were branded.

So we started causing trouble, as no-one would believe us and enjoyed ourselves immensely on the coach journeys. We stocked up with lots and lots of drink, which Dave the Clayhead coach driver hid for us, and which we started drinking like idiots as soon as we got on the coach.

It was a fucking mess. Trips around stately homes, the Wasserkuppe in Bavaria and the Buchenwald concentration camp in Weimar punctuated by offensive outbursts by two drunken monkeys who couldn't find their arses with both hands. I tried drunkenly copping off with about 4 of the girls, so unsuccessfully that that the entire girl population stopped talking to me for the final week (he he!).

We even started escaping from the house at night, and to our surprise the 8km walk down to Fulda town centre one night was rewarded with their yearly beer festival. We somehow managed to drink our body weights in beer and stagger back up to Aschenberg pissing in people's gardens right back to near the place we were staying - to be picked up by the Police which the Father had called saying we had gone missing.

I could go on and on with the fine details of this disastrous (yet fun) holiday, but will finish the tale by telling you the results:

1. On the day we left both parents couldn't even be bothered to be there, so we were being picked up by taxi from the house to go to the coach. John distracted Manfred, and I spread an half litre jar of jam over his bottom sheet and replaced the duvet. We also managed to steal every single kettle and power lead to everything we could find in the house, and they're all sitting on the bottom of the channel somewhere.

2. I lost my job with the BBC. I was a junior reporter for BBC Stoke and was given an unofficial assignment to get 'something' while I was away and especially going to (the just about to end) East Germany. I was contacted by Roy Hill from Radio Stoke the hour I got home asking for the tapes of 'interviews with East German Kids'. What he got was hours of drunken ramblings and swearing from random people on the coach.
(Catchag "You know!....For Kids!", Tue 26 Apr 2005, 16:18, Reply)

When I was about 7 Mum and her best friend took me and my big sister to Lesbos
We visited the same beach everyday. Once my sister decided it would be fun to bury herself in the muddy sand she found and chuck it at me also. I wasnt pleased, especially when i found that this mud was infact freash donkey poo so I cleaned myself in the sea and took up snorkling instead of sandcastle bulding, watching my big sister playfully wallowing in Ass Poop.

Same holiday one evening, we we walking to our apartment when we saw there was a row of loads of beached jellyfish of all shapes sizes. My mum said to my big sister "look theres mummy jelly, daddy jelly and all her baby jellies dying together on the sand" Dont think she ment to put my sister in hysteric tears for the many hours that followed but she did.....HAHAHAHAHA!

That was the best holiday! Ate Swordfish which I rememebr being great! (at the horseshoe resturant *im the only one to rememebers that!*), saw loads of mangled and deforemed cats, started my passion for snorkling and my sister caught and was robbed of an octopus in a valuble shell.
( Blobcat Less Jaffacakes this year, Tue 26 Apr 2005, 16:14, Reply)

Put a cork in it!!!
Went to Tenerife about 2-3years ago and ended up being stuck in the hotel lift for over 40mins with my claustro boyf and a crazy pissed up She-Manc.

The She-Manc managed to go to the toilet three times in the lift within 30mins. The walls of the 4ftx4ft lift where mirrored and I was wearing very open shoes.

The lovely Spanish people on the other side of the lifts where nice enough to pass some towels in through a very small gap in the door, so we could clean-up up the piss.

No Oxygen and swimming around in urine!

Helpful
(DirtyChurch, Tue 26 Apr 2005, 14:06, Reply)

Southern Spain
Arrived intending to hitchhike across looking at places of historic and architectural interest.

Got as far as Benidorm, got involved with local drug dealer expats from Manchester.

Classy.
(kunti lala if we can't be free can we at least be cheap., Tue 26 Apr 2005, 13:24, Reply)

1st Post...
It was a great holiday, four days in Moscow with beautiful girl, the Bolshoi Ballet, Kremlin, and a five day train journey across Russia and in to Mongolia...

A week in to Mongolia, I break my foot, get flown back to the UK a week early with her...

And then she gets flown back to the US.

But she is my wife now and lives in the UK. Yay!

We both want to go back to Mongolia and do things I couldn't do, like ride horses...That and walk.
(beatpig understands subliminalesbianmessagaying., Tue 26 Apr 2005, 12:17, Reply)

It was a great holiday and I still count it as a great holiday but...
it turns out marching down the street naked but your Eb Bass strapped round you playing to the best of your none too sober ability "Stand by me" whilst a drummer and another bassist march with you, also naked singing and throwing in the odd notes, doesn't go down too well with the Italian police.

spending a night in a cell with two of your then naked friends also doesn't count as a great holiday, HOWEVER, being given the uniforms people are given if they're spending a longer while in the cells than anticipated to walk back to the place you were staying is a lot of fun.

I still remember the people trying to stop us in the street for "escaping prison" in Italian obviously.
( GrandmaOfShoes, Tue 26 Apr 2005, 11:57, Reply)

It was a great Holiday but
I went to China when there was the SARS outbreak and had to invest in gas masks, hide in my hotel room and watch the news flashes :(
(jaybax, Tue 26 Apr 2005, 11:47, Reply)

It was a great Holiday but,
The last time I travelled, I flew with BA.
It was terrible.
He kept saying: "I ain't getting on no plane fool!"
( -:Coop:-, Tue 26 Apr 2005, 11:21, Reply)

It was a great holiday, but...
...it would have been better if we hadn't broken down on the side of the highway and had to wait seven hours for roadside assistance. With only three kilos of Minties to keep us occupied.
(belen, Tue 26 Apr 2005, 10:40, Reply)

A lovely idyllic boat trip...
... along the Shannon in Eire, visiting the family's ancestral home, boating along lochs and down the river with my parents and brother. I was about 8, I think.

We moored up near the Dublin Canal one night in June, as the caddis flies started to emerge from their pupating stage. Funny little brown moth-like things, they got everywhere, but they're not nasty, not really.

Except for me. Never been allergic to anything before this, but some partical in the air that these caddis flies gave off didn't like my lungs. Slowly, over the course of the evening, I found it harder and harder to breathe. Some time around midnight my parents were telling my brother off for not sleeping and fidgeting when he said "I can't sleep because *he's* doing Darth Vader impressions" and mum and Dad came to see what was going on.

By this point I couldn't breathe in more than a gasp, and that was with some effort. No-one knew what to do. We were in the middle of nowhere on the river. Dad ran off to find a phone, and I went red then pale grey (apparently).
A doctor arrived (there was a permanently moored house-boat with a phone down the river) and gave me an injection of adrenaline, which sorted me out a treat I can tell you.
Ever since then, I've had all the allegies you could imagine: moulds, hayfever, asthma, glue, nickel, etc, etc...

So aside from nearly killing me and making the rest of my life difficult and beginning my hatred of summer and the counrtyside - it was a great holiday.
( no cake for the impuritay Patrick Stewart hasn't aged since, Tue 26 Apr 2005, 10:24, Reply)

At the tender age of seven (or quite possibly eight),
my parents went on a typical Yorkshire family holiday (ie. within England, and about twenty people came.)

Until that day I had thought it was perfectly normal to wear nappies because I 'wasn't watertight'.

Every member of my family found out I wore them when my parents put a box of Pampers on the coach. They teased me for two weeks.

Everyone at school teased me. And college.

And University.

:(

Edit: I stopped wearing Pampers at nine, I'm not a bloody freak you know....
(b3tasux, Tue 26 Apr 2005, 6:35, Reply)

Raspberry Fields
When I was four or five, my parents took me to a pick-your-own raspberry farm. It was a case of "one for the basket, one for me" and I was well filled by the time we paid and left.

On the way home I started to have the feeling that maybe I shouldn't have eaten quite that many raspberries. We pulled into our driveway, and I opened the car door and projectile vomited a load of dayglo-pink puke all over my dad's shoes.

It's 30 years later, and I still don't like raspberries anymore.
(arvana, Tue 26 Apr 2005, 6:12, Reply)

Beach Boys
On drunken Cornwall holiday in about 1985 with 2 mates. Last day of the holiday decided to hit the Newquay clubs and see if we could pull. After 1 week of 3 of us in a 2-man tent, and with clothes that had forgotten what an iron felt like, we looked like scruffy escapees from Dartmoor. Launched into the club and found that our night coincided with the world surfing championships so the clubs were full of healthy, tanned, sun-bleached surfer 'dudes'. Oddly, the girls seemed to find them more attractive (and considerably more hygienic) than us. Got pissed instead, couldn't find the campsite, slept in a bush near a beach, but looked no worse in the morning.

Apologies for boring myself...
(Toooldforallthis, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 22:22, Reply)

You know its not camping weather when
The tree you put your tent up next to isn't there in the morning. How the fuck I managed to get asleep that night is beyond me.
(as1232004, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 22:10, Reply)

Actually a nice trip to New Orleans...
...but a bad flight back to Chicago. The hot, humid summer day was tossing up severe thunderstorms all along the Mississippi, so I spent the flight strapped down while we bumped along through choppy air amid flashes of lightening. Never nervous about flying, I found it to be a different story when the sudden drops and lurches were elicting screams from my fellow passengers. I kept exchanging nervous smiles with the woman next to me, who was grimly working through all the prayers on her rosary beads. When at some point I heard myself moaning involuntarily with fear, I knew this was officially a bad flight. The final straw for me was when the flight attendants were asked to sit down and strap themselves in, but one was left arguing in the aisle with a woman who wouldn't or couldn't get her todddler buckled in. The attendant totally lost all control and screamed in her face, "Do you want to peel that child off the ceiling of this plane? I've seen it happen! I'VE SEEN IT HAPPEN!!" When we got to Chicago airspace, the weather was still too bad to attempt a landing so we circled the airport for almost an hour. Of course, bumping and lurching the whole while. Finally, the captain let us know that we were now very short on fuel and we would be heading for Milwaukee where we would refuel and then return to Chicago. After an armrest-gripping descent to Milwaukee airport, I disembarked and did not return. Got a motel for the night and the next day rented a car and drove the two hours to Chicago.
( Artamnesia, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 22:04, Reply)

Tv production class
We go on a class trip to Las Vegas. Our Tv Pro. teacher, his wife, and about 10 of us techy geeks. Well, doesn't take long for our teacher to get slonkered and his wife trying to hold the beast down.
We all meet up at the Excalibur for the "Dinner Dual" thingy..much like the medieval resteraunt scene from Cable Guy. Any who.. so this midget dressed in jester garb comes out into the arena.. and this sends our sloshed teacher into a frenzy of obnoxious laughter..Pointing and screaming, "Hey guys.. hey look.. its a water melon with legs. har har.." And other just as silly remarks.. which he thought was a hoot.. goon.
(blahism, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 21:42, Reply)

Tunisia
Again another story about the famous Tunisia. My first ever holiday abroad as a kid. I had diahoerra, it was full of mosquitoes, my Dad was threatened with a knife because he wouldn't buy something of some guys market stall and my dad probably did get offers for me and my Mum. Also camel shit floated in the sea and it was too hot.
(purplefairy, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 20:56, Reply)

havent been back since
this was around about 1988-1990 i was 5 at the time but me and my family flew out to northen ireland because my old man wanted to see an old school friend . now norhtern ireland as you all most know has had a bit of trouble with the IRA back then (it still does now)
but never the less we when to see dads friend ann . i was left with ann's teenage son while mum , dad and ann when to the local pub . The pub was quite packed but had a great athmospher so iam told and ever one was haveing a laugh that is until ann , who was siting next to my dad both faceing the front door let out an god almighty scream .At the same time 4 big burly men burst in the door shouting , at that moment my dad shouted "oh my god its the fucking IRA get down " and then jumped under the table cowering.The whole pub when quite ant just stared at dad , the reason why ann let out a scream? ... a spider fell off an over head lamp shade and landed in anns cleveage , the four blokes were just comeing in for a pint. Arfter dad realised him , mum and ann werent going to get machine gunned the three made their exucsses and fled the pub.sorry for the length
(iam shalashaska, Mon 25 Apr 2005, 20:28, Reply)