I just came back from my tour of Central & Eastern Europe today, and I have a few things to say about the whole experience.
If I have to summarize the experience in just one word, I would choose the word ’ irritating’. I’ll explain why below.
There were plenty of points to complain about.
Let’s start with my experience with the Borivali office staff.
No call backs, no responses and no proper conveying of important information. For example we were never told that Vienna was cancelled from our itinerary and that the Warsaw city tour was rescheduled on the day of our arrival. We were just sent the itinerary, but no one actually called and explained.
So they basically sold us one tour, but then didn’t bother explaining the changes in the tour plan and simply sent us the revised itinerary without telling us that it was revised. Smart.
Yes, in the night, when everyone was dead tired and we could barely see anything out of the window. That’s when they gave us a ’city tour’ of Warsaw. We left for Krakow the next day so missed Warsaw completely. These things need to be explained properly by the office staff and I’m sorry to say that the employees failed miserably at doing that.
Then we come to the actual planning part of the tour. I have to be quite blunt here and say that it was abysmal. Again, the people who plan these horrible itineraries need to be retrained. Because the whole tour felt like a military camp and not a vacation.
Yes, seeing a lot of countries is an objective but that should not come at the cost of mental peace and comfort. We go on a vacation to relax and enjoy new experiences. Not to run from one country to the next. I’ll give you a short example. We travelled for around 5 hours, to do a city tour that lasted for about an hour and 15 mins. Does that seem like a good idea to you? And we did this twice. Once for Bosnia and once for Montenegro. Especially when the city tour was of a city that was in no way beautiful or even that special as was the case with Bosnia. We just saw a bridge. Yay. And then again had to go through border immigration for 2 hours.
Tell me one thing. Has any restaurant ever, anywhere, served you cold food? Does anyone do that? Except for the dishes that are meant to be served cold or at room temp, most food is served hot. Chefs are trained that way. We were served cold food multiple times on this trip.
Both the Indian as well as ’local’ food that we were served was cold. Again, why? Were had paid for our trip. We didn’t go there on someone’s charity. So why were we served food as if we never get to eat good food? I have travelled extensively in Europe before this trip. I have also travelled across South Eastern Asia and the Middle East. NO ONE has EVER served me cold food, whether I was last or on time.
While travelling from Bosnia to Dubrovnik, the driver broke the speed limit. We were stopped by the cops and the whole situation took around an hour to resolve. Then we had to go through immigration. Because of this, we were late for lunch. So the restaurant had already laid out the tables with the food when we arrived. Yes. And we were said we had to eat that. The chicken, which was roasted was rock solid and cold. So was everything else. So the restaurant will serve you cold food because you’re late? Can’t they at least reheat it? Also, since it was the driver’s fault, why should we eat cold food? How is that our problem? Isn’t this the tour manager’s job to sort this out? Because of your bad planning, we should eat cold food in 15 degrees weather? Seriously?
Here’s the funny part. The tour manager said that the driver did everything for us and his job was to get us there on time. As if we should bow down to the driver. It’s the driver’s job to drive and he’s paid for it. He’s not doing it for us. So if he makes a mistake then it’s his mistake. Fair and square. No need to sugar coat it.
If you want to travel, do it with some other company or plan it yourself. You’ll save a lot of headaches. Trust me, they’re not worth it.