I went with friends to Krakow a couple of weekends ago.
It was all booked a while before, but then the Pope died. On the Friday we awoke with hangovers, and found *everything* was shut down for a day of mourning - even in the Jewish quarter. Not being of the Christian persuasion we had to bum around hungrily until about 3pm till His Holiness was in the ground and the mourners dispersed. We went to Auschwitz the next day. We know how to have a good time.
(xyandz, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 17:10, Reply)

Car Hire
It was a lovely trip to Majorca, but when we discovered our hired car was in Las Palma in the Canaries, not Majorca Palma...

Or there was that big eclipse the day after my birthday a few years back we went on holiday to Cornwall for, and we were so lucky to have such a large amount of cloud cover..
(Pigmash, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 17:09, Reply)

What I Did On My Holidays.
Cor, this is a bit like being shown somebody else’s holiday photos, but without the accompanying tea, and biscuits, and photos.

Once missed our curfew in Poland when I was 17 and, rather than stay out in the cold, me and a mate spent all night in a lap-dancing club. It cost £5 to get in and they wouldn’t tell us how much a beer was which you paid for at the end of the night. We started off pretty cautiously, but slowly got more blasé, and drunk, until I passed out on the table. They didn’t kick us out and when we settled the tab the beers were about £2 each, expensive for Poland, but not compared to here. The night only cost us a bit more than the youth hostel. So there’s my tip – when Interrailing, don’t fork out extra on accommodation; sleep on overnight trains and in strip-clubs, and maximise your time and money!
(Scoobs, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 17:00, Reply)

Kenya, 1993
Went to Kenya on a class trip in 1993. 21 days of riding in vans, looking at animals and being treated like royalty. No roughing it for us spoiled brats!

Before leaving home, I ran down the list of all the stuff they told us to bring: laundry soap, shoes (walking, rugged hiking and formal (never needed the formal shoes or the hiking)), they even said to bring a dinner jacket and a tie, etc, but never needed those, either. But what I did need and forgot were shirts. Just regular, ordinary shirts.

So imagine my surprise on the other side of the planet with only one shirt, the one I was wearing. I figured Africa would be just like any other touristy place, with tons of souvenir shops selling shirts with "Jambo!" "Hakuna matata!" (this was pre-Lion King even). No luck. They wisked us around pretty rapidly, and none of the resorts sold shirts. Nor did the roadside curio shops we went to. After close to a week of me washing my shirt in the sink every night, and it maybe dry by morning, we got to Nairobi and I found a shop. The three women working were very upset at my presence in the store. They scrambled around to find a white woman to ring me up, and even then nobody said a word to me or even looked at me and they acted very afraid. I'm not sure which culture line I crossed, but it was a very strange experience.

Not a horror story by any means, but humans are funny critters and I'd love to know what the experience in the store was all about.
( setimret likes his metaphors mixed, not stirred, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 17:00, Reply)

2, one good one bad
Good: Being in Africa for two weeks on a Black Rhino project for EarthWatch (go if you can - look at Kenyas Black Rhinos at www.earthwatch.org) best experience of my life, walking in the bush looking for Rhinos, then finding one a shitting your pants as you run away! We Stayed in a Research Station in a Game Park, most peaceful place I've ever been.

Bad: Camping in France for a month (May) it rained solidly for 3 days until we got to a campsite near the border with a pretty lake. Then I got I'll and my wife drove for the day with me giving directions and shivering with a fever. Spent 5 days Too ill to move. Then Finally felt better in Carcasone. I remeber it clearly, we were waling around the inside of the outer wall deciding where to have lunch, My Wife's mobile rang, it was her mother calling to tell us her brother (my best friend) had been totalled in a Motorcycle accident, he was in Hospital in a coma and not expected to live.

We had daily updates for 3 days until he finally died. We heard at 8pm one evening. After crying for a while I turned to my wife and said "I think I'd like to go home now" we packed up at 7am and were back in London for 11pm the same day. Shit holiday.
( umbongo I vote for Evil Lu as Mayor of /talk, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 16:59, Reply)

Where to start...
- Suddenly realising you're in a gay bar in Montpellier when the power to the entire town goes out.

- Getting chased by english football fans (Chelsea) through the streets of Milan for having the audacity to support an italian team (Inter) in their own city.

- Flying back from Portugal on 'Air Atlantis' and landing so hard (on the second attempt) that the plane bounced off the runway and came down so hard it buckled the cargo bay door.

- Almost getting robbed by scammers in Prague.

- Getting lost in the dodgiest red light district in Paris at 4am.

- Realising the jellyfish I'm stood next to in the sea at Albufuera really WAS a Portuguese Man of War.

- Returning to the hotel in Cyprus after a night out to be told that it was on fire.

and by far the scariest...

- Being in a full on football riot after rather foolishly deciding to attend the Slavia Prague vs Sparta Prague derby game; ripped up seats, riot rozzers cracking heads, knives, clubs, fists, the lot.

They never put any of this shit in the brochures, that's for sure...
( TooMuch2AM, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 16:52, Reply)

Wasn't even there
but this story has firmly cemented my friendship with my uni housemate.
She was on holiday with her family in Cornwall, as you do, and they'd gone to Newquay for the day. Whilst crossing the road, her dad managed to stand in the biggest pile of molten dog shit, and according to her spend the next minute "surfing USA" across the road.
Also applicable to last week's QOTW, as I literally cry with laughter every time she tells this story. Why is shit so funny?
(Lizzilla, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 16:50, Reply)

Day trip to Calais.
It was shit. It must've been in year 7... the french department thought it would be a good idea to organise a short trip across the channel to Calais. This involved waking up at 4am, and turning up at school half asleep only to find that the coach was delayed, and didn't arrive till 9:30. I had to sit next to the ill-looking kid who managed to eat a bag of quavers and promptly throw them up again all over me before we even got onto the motorway. We managed to make good time and got to Calais in the early afternoon, but no more than 100 metres past the port gates, the coach broke down. It was raining. A replacement coach was called from the UK, and meanwhile, I got to sit for 5 hours watching the puke dry on my school trousers, and try to breathe through my mouth so as not to inhale the acidic and vaugely cheesy smell given off by my clothes. In the end, when the replacement coach arrived we turned straight back around and went home. Utterly fucking pointless if you ask me.
(superficialfilter, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 16:47, Reply)

First holiday away with the lads..
On the very last day 4 of us decided to go to the local waterpark..
Cue much fun splashing and going on slides till we find this one slide with four chutes.. its a race! WOO! We all line up I was the red chute, Dave in the Blue Chute, Dan in the Yellow Chute and Mat in the Green Chute.
3..2..1.. GO!
We all launch ourselves into the chutes.. I hurtle down these twisty tubes for about 15 seconds before flying out the other end to see Dave had beat me..
Seconds later Mat arrives..
We all climb out laughing and wait for Dan..
10 seconds go by.. No Dan. How odd..
20 seconds still no Dan. Very odd I look round the area he hasn't gotten out before us..
40 seconds go by still no Dan.
1 whole minute later..
Dan is seen coming round the final bend of his chute, He is having to push himself along.
For some bizarre reason he had just come to a complete stop halfway down the slide.
That left the three of us pissing ourselves laughing as he tried to push himself out of the slide.. The mental image still makes me laugh out loud now.

Sorry for the length
(Capt_Carl, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 16:41, Reply)

Gibraltar
With an astonishing lack of foresight, Mr S and I planned our trip to Morocco to coincide with Ramadan -- so no beer. After three weeks of living out of the back of the Land Rover and sleeping in a tent on top of it, we were ready for a shower and many pints. So we stopped off at a hotel in Gibraltar on the way back to Blighty.

Dumped our bags in the room and got ready to hit the drinking holes of Gibraltar. Except we were locked in. And, as the receptionist had warned us, the room phone wasn't working. And the mobile had no signal.

I had to lean out of the hotel window and shout over the noise of a busy road til I got the attention of three teenage boys sitting opposite. They thought it was hilarious that a woman was seemingly inviting them up to her hotel room. Eventually they got the message and went in to tell the receptionist that her guests were stuck in room 415.

We waited and waited some more. No-one came to let us out. It was like something out of Tales of the Unexpected. We'd be dessicated skeletons on the floor of that hotel room if the mobile hadn't, after about two hours, picked up a signal.

The story does have a happy ending though, cos we went out and got very very pissed and the next day went to look at the apes.
( Safetyfox, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 16:37, Reply)

Great Holiday take 2
Mexico last July (seems to pop up every QotW). The majority of the time there was fantastic, but the first night was a little wierd. We had to get up in Edinburgh at 4am, fly to Heathrow at 7, then fly to Washington Dulles, then on to Mexico. With the timelines we crossed, it was a 29 hour day, and we had been up for 13 hours by midday. This seriously screwed with my head, and by the time we reached the hostel in Mexico city at midnight local time i was shattered.

For some reason the hostel then put the 4 guys on the trip and the male leader in a 6 person room with 2 American girls, who were sharing a lower bunk in a bed, dunno why. Eventually got to sleep. I then remember dreaming i was trying to get to an airport gate (probably all the flying). I then woke up finding i was sleepwalking, trying to get to the window on the far side of the now rather terifyed girls bed with my mates luaghing at me. It was horrible coming up to breakfast and having all 16 girls on the trip cheer as they see me coming. *shudders*. Anywho, it was a fun filled night as later on one of my mates was scratching his leg when the American girls whispered just loud enough "whats he doing?" "I think hes masterbating" then being subjected to the annoyance of my mate, the aptly named "big G". Was quite entertaining. The girls ended up running away at about 4 in the morning, so never really saw them, which is probably a good thing. Oh well.
(Graz Da Frog, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 16:30, Reply)

It was a great holiday but...
#1...the Irish fella next door seemed a little strange. At 2PM he'd topped of a bottle of whiskey while sitting chatting on the patio. His family sat around him.

That night he started yelling at the daughter for coming home late and before long had given his wife a couple of smacks.

We phoned down to the reception and called the police who tried to break into our room to find out what was going on.

#2...I lost my passport on the first day and had to be careful with my money for the rest of the week.

#3...the car started to veer off the coastal road on the Great Ocean Road and left me needing new underwear.

#4...they forgot to put my luggage back on the plane at Dubai and I had nothing to wear when I got home but the shorts and t-shirt I was in... In January.

#5...we flew home in a lighting storm and had to make two attempts at landing. Trying to convince my mum that it was only the light at the end of the wing wasn't easy when it really was lighting flashing.

#6...I drank so much I was throwing up black at 2pm the following afternoon

(only 4 and 5 were the same holiday... I always have fun)
( beefandcheese, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 16:29, Reply)

Bognor Regis holiday camp
Went there as a 9 year old and fell blissfully in love with an 8 year old from Luton - daughter of an ex-workmate of my dad.
Held hands and...well, held hands again.
Was bleedin' heartbroken when I saw her kissing a bigger kid on the cheek. I must have cried for about 20 minutes.
Then I had a ride on donkey wearing a straw hat and felt much better.

Got chatting to a honey of a girl about 12 years later at a niteclub in Dunstable (Didoz) and turns out to be same girl.
Thinking I could finish what as a 9 year old I had never really started, until she says "You were a right sad little bastard the way you kept following me around."
She then got off with some bigger kid again.
Fucksocks.
(emadex thinks the world will end on, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 16:27, Reply)

It was a great holiday, but...
Paris, October 2003, me and a friend, both 15 at the time, go away for the week to see a friend in Paris. Good week that, except for the 5th day or so, when we met up with a couple of girls from home who were also there at the time and went out drinking. Straight vodka. I had 1 shot and nearly threw up it was so bad, so my two mates and one of the girls shared pretty much all the vodka. Walking down the street holding up now rather drunk girl as french friend sings and swaggers. And falls over. Just as a car passes. Car stops and two guys get out. Fold down little badges that say Police. Fucksocks. Get carted of down the nick with one of the girls in tears. Waiting to speak to an english speaking policeman when very drunk french friend collapses and vomits all over the floor. Eventually get picked up by friends dad shortly after the ambulance arrived. Needless to say my friend looked a little worse for wear after that. Went back the next year too, but left the vodka alone after that.

No apologies for anything.
(Graz Da Frog, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 16:18, Reply)

Near-death. yay.
When I was a toddler, we had a family holiday in Butlins.

I was playing outside with some randoms, and we were jumping on the metal covers that lead to the sewers.

I went on one and it fell through. I couldn't swim, so I was drowning in filth. Thankfully my parents heard the commotion outside, and dragged me out.

So, after all that... (and a much needed bath) I wasn't bothered.

I was most annoyed about my Thomas the Tank Engine trainers being thrown away. I was too young to realise what had happened.
( ThunderThrust, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 16:01, Reply)

and while i'm thinking about it...
family holiday in dorset, hot summer of 1976 ... camping ... grandfather back home (dad's dad) has massive heart attack ... auntie tells dorset police where we are (pre mobiles, no number for campsite etc) and a police car spots the car registration, passes on the information ... cue panic drive home for family of four in an old fiat 127 (think "fiat panda" young people) ... from dorset to aberdeen. in one go. being 13 at the time, the gravity of the situation didn't really sink in properly, but i sometimes wonder how my dad managed ...
( writerblock ... embedding disabled by request on, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 15:53, Reply)

Any time I get
Away from this shit hole is a fucking bonus.

I hate my boss and, if you're reading this Parker, You're a cunt for ever getting me involved in this shite.

Oh and I had a lovely time in Crantock once.
( Lord Manley of Ven www.justgiving.com/manley - please?, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 15:53, Reply)

albatross
butlins holiday camp, ayr, scotland, around 1970
as a feisty 7-yr-old i thought i would show off to a girl by picking up a large plank. why there was a large plank lying around a holiday camp i have no idea. it's a bit heavy. drop it. fail to notice very large and rusty nail in plank which goes through my light canvas shoe and also through my foot. off to hospital then where the doc decides i need a few stitches but not that many - so a general anaesthetic isn't needed, only a local. which would have been fine, had it worked. doc applies stitches (only 3 i think), i scream loud and often, my father - only in his late 30s at the time - has to be restrained from entering the doctor's room and punching him in the head for traumatising his son. all ended happily though without anti-doc violence and healed foot ... still got the scar though ...

ps: albatross by (the original) fleetwood mac was all the rage at the time ...
pps" the girl was not impressed
( writerblock ... embedding disabled by request on, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 15:47, Reply)

Ah, germany
A school trip to Germany was possibly the best ever. We stopped off for a night in Hamburg on our way to Berlin.

"Turn to Channel 5!" is issued from my lips.

Cue many, many 15 year olds watching porn.

My friend had smuggled rum in his bag via the cunning trick of putting it in water bottles. Getting drunk. Putting the hotel matches to good use - fiery eau de toilet on my hand not so good. People mistaking the rum for water and getting shocked. People mistaking the water for rum and being disappointed.

Finally get to Berlin. The first night four of us are locked out of our room due to some incredibly dodgy locks, and we're given two other rooms, with no clothes or overnight things to speak of. I'm sharing with a guy I don't particularly like but can live with. I come out of the shower to hear some giggling and what sounds like a deodorant being emptied.

I open the shower door moments later, and am confronted with my big, fat roomsharer with a receding hairline crying his eyes out wearing nothing but red Y-fronts. I was going to sleep in my clothes, it appeared he had different ideas!

The giggling/deodorant thing turned out to be my other mates, who had found a cannister of pepper spray and emptied it on my roommate.

The top floor of the hotel was impossible to go on. Floor below that you were crying. Floor below that you were coughing. Floor below that you could smell it. Only reason the floor below that was unaffected was because it was the lobby and they'd opened the window.

Surprisingly we weren't thrown out.

But some of our number did get stuck in the lift on the last day. Because they jumped up and down a lot. With heavy bags.

In hindsight the holiday was great but being attacked with pepper spray is not fun at the time.

Apologies for length. Again.
( Detrius521, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 15:44, Reply)

Czech Republic
I was passed out in my room in a town called Olomouc after a heavy drinking session lasting most of the day.

8 at night I came round and decided that somewhere warmer would be a nice alternative, off I toddled to the station and got on the first train heading South.

11 I had a serious hangover forming and the impending dread that I had no idea where the train I was on was going,

12 I got kicked off the train in what can only be described as an industrial estate which luckily had a late night bowling alley

12-3.30 To combat the hangover I got drunk again at the bowling alley.

3.30-6.30 Sat on a railway platform with my hangover returning, scared shitless that if I went to sleep I'd get robbed, this was a good decision as the guy at the other end of the platform got robbed in his sleep, I watched the whole thing.

6.30 My train turned up, I spent the next 24 hours getting to Southern Croatia which I thought was crap so went back up North again a day later.

Alcohol will make you do the craziest things
(Inglorious_Other, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 15:42, Reply)

Moped
I went on holiday a couple of years back to Ipsos in Corfu with my best mate.

We hired out some mopeds (I had never been on one before) and decided to go for a tour of the island.

Halfway up one of the mountain roads a huge bug type thing twatted me on the head and landed on my lap. It had red legs and a black body and started crawling up my front.

Looking at me you wouldnt think I would be scared of something like that (6ft5, well built), but alas I screamed like a girl and fell off the side of the road onto the bottom of an olive grove.

I have never been on a moped, or eaten an olive since. I have been emotionally damaged from my experience.
(mrdiddle, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 15:25, Reply)

Caca poopoo
Had a fantastic holiday in a beautiful villa in Lanzarote, with our own pool. Me and 3 other girls. Spent the whole first day sunning ourselves and had a great first night out. Woke up the next morning to find some bastard had lobbed catshit and toilet roll all over our garden, swimming pool, and worst of all, LILOS. Spent an hour running around squealing, then called for help. We locked ourselves in the villa (as if the cat poo could run and catch us) whilst the handyman cleaned up. Then we came out and bleached the lilos a few more times just to be sure. Never did find out who / why / WTF.
(Mad McMad, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 15:24, Reply)

floofy and other
unfluffy first - i was living in NY when everything fell over. oh dear.
I must say, New Yorkers are amazing people, and were busy making bad taste jokes a week after, whilst CNN continued its 'America Under Attack' gumph.

Fluffier time!

In Cuba, a few years ago, it was a bit hairy in general. The day before this happened the US embassy had just opened to riots and that Elian kid was in the news. In fact, we'd been watching a CNN Larry King show interviewing Gloria Estefan in our hotel room when the Elian subject came up and then the signal scarmbled. Hm.

Nice evening, we got into an illegal taxi (read:chevy), and promptly found our car surrounded by large Cuban police officers with AK-47s pointing at us. They grabbed the driver and his tout, pulled them out of the car, frisked them and then started screaming at them.

Meanwhile, four poncy art students sit in the back trying not to laugh out of hysteria or talk in case they think we're American.

After a couple of bribes they let up a bit and tell them to drop us round the corner.

Brown pants all round. Joy
(niceandwarmandhot vive la résistance, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 15:16, Reply)

Mountain fun
I had a fantastic mountain holiday in February.

I've skiied for about 10 years but thought it would be nice to give something new a try, and so I started snowboarding. I managed on the first two days, but by the third day I was so hungover I gave up.

Spending every night at the bar with the friendliest bar staff and making some fantastic Swedish friends - fantsatic.

Anyone heard of snus? It's oral snuff. Contains 12 times more nicotine than a cigarette, and is illegal everywhere in Europe apart from Sweden. Love it.

Being given free shots and toasties pretty much on demand - yumilicious.

Getting off with a 26 year old rep (I'm 18) called Amy on the first night - great.

Going back to her apartment on two separate occasions in the week - bloody fantastic.

Being chatted up by a 40 year old gay guy - interesting, but not my scene.

Saying goodbye to all the friends I'd made - sucky.

Realising I'd never see Amy again - seriously sucky. (She had much norkage)

Getting a bollocking from a girl I was technically with when I told her about having a holiday romance - not fun.

Sigh.

Amy really did have big tits.

Apologies for length/girth/duration etc.
( Detrius521, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 15:08, Reply)

It was great holiday but...
Afew years ago I went to Alanya in Turkey, great resort. The town is overlooked by an old castle at the top of this mountain, which is next to a cliff. Anyway, we went on this trip up to the castle, me and my family. The view from the top was fantastic, could see for miles, and looking down over the sheer drop into the ocean was equally impressive. However, getting up there in a large coach was troublesome. The road was very winding. On the journey back down, the bus couldn't take a corner so it needed to ack into it. Looking out of the back window, all the passengers could see the impending doom as the coach driver was quite casually driving the coach to the the edge of a 400 ft cliff. as the edge grew closer, I looked around in panic. A german woman was shouting "Schnell!!! Schnell!!" but the driver couldn't understand a bloody word. As the back end was hovering over the edge she got up and bellowed "SCHTOP!!!!". Quite a terrifying experience.
(Gen Graie Wherever you are, whatever you do,LOOK AROUND YOU, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 15:01, Reply)

Good ones:
~ surviving driving around rural new hampshire on the bonnet of a cadillac by night, locked off my head. And of course driving said caddy (I can't drive) with 2 people on the front...
~ arriving in Lima on my own, with mates a few kms up the andes somewhere 100s of miles away, at 3am, and then thinking... "Wait. I don't speak spanish..."
~ not being thrown out of the vatican - Pope 0, Me 1...
~ surviving the taxi ride to the airport in Istanbul. He didn't even gave all his windows left. I have never seen such reckless abandon. Never tell them you're in a hurry - it's too much of an adrenalin trip.

Bad Ones:
~ a good friend dying suddenly of a heart attack after being ill for a few days, following a botched diagnosis the year before.
~ Ryanair. Any further attempt to describe the litany will just mean a rant.
~ Realizing how stupid i was only after I'd smuggled dope through istanbul.
~ realizing the recent shark attack in Hermanus (outside of cape town) that sank the dive cage WAS the same boat we'd used shortly before! :)
~ turns out when a Grand Prix ends, the carpark grand prix slow race begins, and the gendarmes don't care

And great ones:
all the drunken run-ins that are too tedious to tell if you don't know the people involved. Huzzah for holidays!
( WhoElse I'm what Willis was talking about, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 14:53, Reply)

About four years ago...
...some friends and I were on a school trip to Spain. Despite a late start, we were actually making good time. We had sat up top of the double decker bus to generally keep out the way, not only of the teachers but also of the gaggle of giggling girls who seemed determined to punish everyone who had showed up with a hangover with their incessant squawking. About halfway along the M4 we heard a scream from the lower level.

"What could it be?" we wondered, "A spider? Did someone sneeze? Did someone bring along their pet stoat?"

Our answer soon came drifting up the stairwell.

"A wheel's fallen off the bus!"

Shit.

Sure enough, the bus having pulled over and us having gotten off, it was plain to see that one of the rear wheels was indeed missing. I offered to get the spare from the boot, but the angry faces told me that this wasnt time for playing games. I believe there is a children's nursery rhyme based on this little foible:

"The wheels on the bus come off at speed,
Off at speed,
Off at speed,
The wheels on the bus come off at speed,
And roll down the chuffing M4"

Ah, good times...
( shovelboy This is bad - Two minutes to Belgium, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 14:51, Reply)

Scout camp somewhere in a field
I'd bought the cheapest tent I could find. "What a bargain!", I thought.

Three days in it's pissing it down at 3am when the seam across the middle of the tent fails, both ends collapse and I'm deluged with water.

Sewing a tent back together by the fading light of a torch in the pouring rain is, well, 'character building'.

I think I woke most people up with the swearing to be honest.
( chthonic, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 14:51, Reply)

Explorer Scout summer camp last year.
Beer, fires, everything you need for a good laugh. Scorched all the hair off my right arm at one point and nearly blew myself up with a dodgy gas-powered tea urn thing, but that was all part of the fun. Great up until the last day when Darren packed up his tent and found the cause of the odd lump under his tent was the sweet little hedgehog that had been wandering around the previous day. Yes, he'd squashed it flat by sleeping on it.
( Labmonkey last thought about having another coffee on, Thu 21 Apr 2005, 14:44, Reply)