I used to work for the Defense Department in a position that required quite a lot of domestic and occasional international travel.
I did the majority of the driving during these trips in the United States, but none of it internationally. Wherever we were, I usually was asked to be navigator if I wasn't driving.
Autism does have its advantages.
In Germany, an automotic transmission vehicle was difficult to find at rental companies and I never learned to drive a standard, so my traveling companions did all the driving. Besides, public transportation was excellent for most of the areas we wanted to go.
In Japan, I had zero desire to drive or take anything other than public transportation. None of us did. We were in the metro-Tokyo area and the street traffic was terrifying to us all.
When I drove in the United States, we never got lost. When I navigated anywhere, we never got lost.
When I didn't...
On my second trip to Germany we stayed in the village of Ramstein-Miesenbach again—not far from the border with France—while working at Vogelweh Air Base. With our evenings and weekends free, we took a number of sightseeing trips to places like Kaiserslautern, Heidelberg, Trier and Darmstadt.
One weekend trip was to the medieval city of Rothenburg ob der Tauber—about two hours east of our temporary home in Ramstein-Miesenbach. After a great day of sightseeing, we headed back to our inn—eventually.
Over an hour into the drive back, I once again asked the driver—who 100% didn't need my help with navigation—why Czechia, Poland and Austria kept getting closer according to the road signs while Luxembourg and France continued to get further away.
About half an hour later, he figured out that France was to our west, Czechia was to our east, and we were definitely going in the wrong direction on the Autobahn. This was pre-GPS days when paper maps, road signs, and the awareness that if you first head east, then going west is the way to get back to where you started.
Two hours to get to our destination and almost four hours to get back.
Oops...
I, of course, never mentioned it again to the Air Force Tech Sergeant who repeatedly told me his sense of direction and situational awareness were far superior to anything I might see on a map or road sign.
Reddit user yankeevandal asked:
"Everyone has a travel blunder, what's yours?"
Key Drop
"I dropped my rental car keys in the return box at a rural airport."
"Then forgot that I didn't take my suitcase out of the trunk..."
"Luckily the maintenance guy had a key."
~ b6passat
Off Track
"At the end of a trip to Rome, I needed to take a train to the airport to catch my flight. So at the track where the train to Roma Fiumicino was announced, I got on the train."
"The train was fast, but it took way longer than I thought and I started to worry a bit that I would be late for my flight. Then we arrived at the next train station."
"Which was Florence! So somehow I had taken the wrong train—for which I did not have a ticket—and I had missed my flight."
"I explained the situation to the conductor, and he kindly let me stay on until the next stop, which would be Milan, without having to pay for a new ticket."
"By the time we reached the next station, I had gone online to book a hotel room in Milan and to book a new flight from Milan home the next day."
"I had never been to Milan and I had a good time there, so in the end it worked out."
~ sumpuran
Key Drop, #2
"Put my keys back through the letterbox of the AirBnB as requested."
"Few minutes later realised I needed the keys to access the garage my rental car was parked in."
"Took an hour and a half for someone to appear and let me in. Got to the airport just in time to see my plane take off."
~ RedundantSwine
Not The Cheese Place Either—Which Is In Texas
"Me and some friends wanted to go to the Panzermuseum in Munster, Germany in the early 2000's so we planned a trip by car from the Netherlands."
"After arriving and a night in a hotel, we couldn't find the museum. Finally we asked someone."
"Turned out we were in Münster—the bicycle capital of Germany—not Munster—home to the German Army's largest garrison. About 280 km off from our destination."
"We found a Kneipe—local pub—and all was good."
~ KenFromBarbie
Wrong Continent
"My dad once made reservations for a very nice hotel in Spain in a central location and was bragging how cheap he got the rooms and what a good deal it was."
"He and my mother go to check in, and they say they don’t have any records of him booking.
"He pulls up the confirmation email on his phone to show them and realized he had somehow booked a hotel with the exact same name but in Chile."
~ gentlybeepingheart
Baggage? Check!
"At Berlin's old Tegel airport, there was a security checkpoint by each gate, and you needed to pick up your checked bags at the gate before leaving."
"I knew that, but in my rush to get off the plane I forgot. As soon as I was outside I realized my mistake, but they wouldn't let me back in to get my bag."
"I needed to wait several hours at customer service to get my bag and so I just barely caught the last train to my destination and arrived around midnight."
"By that point there weren't any taxis available, so I ended up walking a few hours by phone flashlight through the German countryside."
~ FireLordIroh
All Aboard!
"Had to pick up a family member who was on a train—she lives in another country and is legally blind. So instead of having to stress over changing trains to get all the way to the destination, me and my friend drove out to the station to get her."
"The train stops, but we can't spot her getting off. Then my buddy points to a window and says 'is that her?'."
"Panicky, I walk aboard the train to check. I see it isn't her, but the train starts closing its doors as I race back towards them."
"I don't make it in time and the train starts moving."
"My friend calls to tell me he's got my relative with him and that he'll meet me at the next station."
~ messeboy
Keep On Trekkin'
"Left my driver's license in a village which was only accessible by trekking back to it. On top of that, it was left in the top most hotel."
"I had checked out of the hotel, trekked for 45 mins to reach a bus point, caught two buses to reach another town with the total duration being approx three hours total."
"Upon reaching the new town, the new hotel asked me for my license."
"I—realizing my blunder—had to go back the whole route again, trek up and down again, just to get my driver's license, wasting an additional 6-7 hours."
~ PunisherX20
Jumping The Gun
"The airline lost a case full of firearms."
"When I explained that it was filled with firearms, they magically found it 15 minutes later."
"I fly with firearms a lot. It’s a huge ordeal if an airline loses a pelican case full of rifles and ammunition."
"They would have to notify ATF if they were not found in a reasonable amount of time."
~ OsintOtter69
"Apparently it is is HUGE deal if a U.S. airline loses firearms."
"Like, the ATF gets involved and airlines get in deep sh*t.
"Some people use the seriousness around firearms and use gun cases to transport high value items like cameras or musical instrumentsoor medical devices so they will definitely not get lost or damaged."
~ CheeseSandwich
Locked Out
"I'm on vacation as we speak. Loaded our bikes the day before we left and put a bike padlock on them to make sure nobody could take them off the carrier overnight."
"Arrived at our destination only to find out I forgot the padlock key."
"Luckily, park maintenance had an angle grinder and cut the lock."
"But yeah, that was pretty dumb and now I need to buy a new lock."
~ JorMath
Have You Ever Seen The Inside Of A Turkish Prison?
"In my early 20s, I went to a bar/nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey with my girlfriend. Throughout the night, stupidly ordered several of these half-bottles of champagne that were on the menu with no price listed."
"Of course, when the bill came it turned out they had either brought out the most expensive thing they had or simply claimed it was that expensive. It was way more money than I could pay even if I wanted to."
"They then threatened us, saying we don't understand how the police work there, it's not like America, we don't want them to call the police, etc... The line from Airplane, 'have you ever seen the inside of a Turkish prison?' is running through my head the entire time."
"After a long standoff with them insisting I needed to draw all my money out of the ATM and me insisting I didn't have any money other than what was on me, eventually they either believed me or gave up and settled the bill for a reasonable amount that I actually had on me."
"Obviously they were trying to take advantage of me, but it was also very stupid of me to give them that chance by ordering unpriced items from the menu and not asking about the price."
~ Orange_Kid
Honesty Isn't The Best Policy
"I guess not having luggage is a bit of a red flag because I got stopped for extra questioning by Douanes et Droits Indirects (DDI, aka French Customs).
"I also maybe should have been less honest/literal than I was."
"DDI: 'What do you do in America?'."
"Me: 'I'm a University student'."
"DDI: 'What do you study?'."
"Me: 'Biology and Psychology'."
"DDI: 'Biology? Did you bring any microbes into the country?'."
"Me: '...yes?'."
"In retrospect, it was kinda neat to see the 'extra questioning' room in the Charles de Gaulle airport. Explaining that all humans carry about 39 trillion microbial cells in and on our bodies at all times was less fun."
~ ConneryFTW
Close Call
"I once read the flight arrival time as the departure time. My girlfriend had to get back for a class by the next morning, so the only option for us was to rent a car and drive the six hours home. She wasn’t stoked with me."
"It actually got a little worse. I was pushing this rental car probably 80ish MPH on the backroads of Texas. We get pulled over in the middle of nowhere."
"The state trooper spots our suitcases in the back seat—which have airline tags clearly visible for flights from today because we had already checked them in when we realized we missed the flight and had to get them back."
"So here we are—a couple college kids, in a rental car, with luggage that should've currently been on an airplane, going real fast on a Texas back road."
"He asks us if we're cool with him searching the bags. I don't care and I'm not going to sound off against a trooper in the middle of nowhere."
"As he's opening them on the side of the road, he asks if I have anything illegal. I say just my unfashionable clothes followed by a nervous laugh."
"Anyway, we get back on our way and it's at that point my girlfriend lets of a sigh of relief due to the large amount of pot she had in her backpack that I didn't know about."
~ twankyfive
Keep It Simple
"Passport control officer at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Netherlands: 'What is the purpose of your visit?'.”
"My SO: 'Well, first we’re planning to celebrate—'."
"Me, quickly interrupting: 'Leisure'."
"Passports promptly got stamped & handed back to us and we entered the EU before she finished her paragraph."
"They just want to know if it's business or pleasure or immigration/longterm residency. They don't care about your full travel itinerary."
~ Any_Move
Adults Will Be Adults
"A friend of mine and I were playing 'the floor is lava' in our hotel room."
"Turns out the bench in the entrance of the room couldn't take someone jumping onto it from the bed."
"We paid for the bench, obviously, but it was hard coming up with a story less stupid than the truth because we're both adults."
"We told them I tripped on a suitcase and landed on the bench."
~ outtastudy
I'm a nervous, autistic traveler so everything is quadruple checked and all contingencies planned for. Even now in the age of Smartphones with GPS, I still study maps before heading anywhere beyond my home.
So most of my travel blunders involve my complete lack of coordination or fascination with animals that can kill me.
Like the time I fell—fully clothed—into the ocean because I was watching the sharks and not where my feet were going. Or the time I crawled under a bush to get a better look at a juvenile rattlesnake.
But those are stories for another time.
What's your travel blunder story?