The Eurofurence Forum
Eurofurence Community => General Discussion => Topic started by: Wawik on 01.09.2009, 12:53:46
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I'd like to pose a question here, instead of the usual praise du jour. ;)
What I'm curious about, apart from the fact that Suhl is literally at the end of the world, is whether anyone has had issues with their travel to/from EF. The reason behind this is that over the past years I have compiled some sort of travel FAQ that aims at getting the basic things covered (and saving me time by pointing all the clueless foreign peoples to it :D) but that's kind of hard to do when you're a) domestic and b) know everything inside out, like me. ::)
So, I value your input from an outsider's perspective. Were you standing at the platform and thinking "Aaaah, this makes no sense at all!!" or driving the wrong way into a one way street *cough* because nobody told you the difference between the blue sign with the asterisk and the yellow sign with a scrambled egg on weekdays? Did EF give you misinformation and you ended up on a bus to Helsinki instead? Just post here so that in future years people might not fall into the same traps. Thanks! :)
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Well there were several furs who seemed to have forgotten that there are 31 days in August, not 30...and booked tickets for the wrong days. Not sure what can be done about that though. ;-)
Things that could be mentioned for those travelling by train are DB's group discounts (both Gruppe&Spar and the discount for groups of 2 to 5 people), the Departure posters at stations, and the posters on platforms to show where a given carriage SHOULD be.
The biggest problem that people seemed to have was DB's optimistic connections between trains. In both directions, we had a 7 minute connection at Würzburg. Due to Engineering Work at Fürth, this became 2 minutes on the way out...to get from Platform 6 to Platform 11. We made it by the skin of our teeth, and even managed to board the right part of the train.
Admittedly that can be fixed by choosing the "Duration of transfer at least <x> minutes" option in the journey planner, but it's also worth pointing out. Though again, with there being direct trains from Hanover and Leipzig to Magdeburg, that shouldn't be an issue next year.
That's about all I can think of for now...
Cheers,
Southie
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I made it okay, with a few pinch points exacerbated by the language barrier.
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Aachen and Cologne seem to be the only railway stations in whole Germany with a sufficient amount of baggage carts (i.e., >1).
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Moved this, since it's not really EF feedback :)
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I must say that driving from the UK to EF was a pleasant and fortuitously uneventful affair. Maybe a page/FAQ on some of the more commonly seen Road Signs could be helpful though to those of us not used to them (and who probably won't see them again until next year). The only thing I found confusing were the part time traffic lights (especially at the crossroads at the top of the hill in Suhl before you hit the mountain road to the hotel), and the instructions for the car wash :P
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I must say that driving from the UK to EF was a pleasant and fortuitously uneventful affair. Maybe a page/FAQ on some of the more commonly seen Road Signs could be helpful though to those of us not used to them (and who probably won't see them again until next year). The only thing I found confusing were the part time traffic lights (especially at the crossroads at the top of the hill in Suhl before you hit the mountain road to the hotel), and the instructions for the car wash :P
I wouldn't suggest that "car wash"-part but there where definately issues reading street-signs before the fursuit-walk in Suhl.
So this MAY be an issue that COULD be addressed. Then again, it's the responsibility of the driver, not the convention.
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I must say that driving from the UK to EF was a pleasant and fortuitously uneventful affair. Maybe a page/FAQ on some of the more commonly seen Road Signs could be helpful though to those of us not used to them (and who probably won't see them again until next year). The only thing I found confusing were the part time traffic lights (especially at the crossroads at the top of the hill in Suhl before you hit the mountain road to the hotel), and the instructions for the car wash :P
FWIW, I've had a little panel back at EF13 called "Germany in 90 minutes" that dealt with that issue among other things - the (poor) presentation from that talk can still be found on the web here (http://doco.yiff.me/guides/ef13/90minutegerman/). Maybe one day I'll get to update that thing when I have too much spare time on my hands.
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I must say that driving from the UK to EF was a pleasant and fortuitously uneventful affair. Maybe a page/FAQ on some of the more commonly seen Road Signs could be helpful though to those of us not used to them
Something like "Getting Around in Germany (http://www.gettingaroundgermany.info/regeln.htm)", perhaps?
It won't help you with the instructions for a car wash, though.
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A lot of road signs could be found on various "Driving in Germany/Europe" websites before the trip, but there were still some that weren't shown, and hence caused some confusion.
(Obviously the car wash comment is a light-hearted, non-serious one, I wouldn't expect "How to use car washes" to be part of travel info :P though it was fun using trial and error working it out XD )