Today I went from Europe to Asia to Europe and then back to Asia. Istanbul is the only city in the world that spans two different continents. There isn’t a whole lot to do or see on the Asian side of Istanbul as it is mostly just residential. I took some nice photos, but thought I would share some valuable advice regarding the EURail pass instead.
See this ticket. Its called the Global EUrail Rail Pass. It is supposed to make traveling in Europe simple, affordable, easier, better, cover you trip in fucking gold sprinkles. Well it doesn’t. DO NOT BUY THIS PIECE OF SHIT.
I have mentioned it before but I thought this thing would give me the freedom to move around Europe freely and without hassle for a fraction of the cost, when in fact all it has done is forced me to speed through places I would have liked to stay longer, and take routes just because there is a rial line and still fork out extra money for reservation costs.
Pretty much all of the rail lines that you can use this pass on in Eastern Europe are useless as they leave at retarded times, take several times longer than the bus, go to obscure destinations and do not connect to other trains. All of these are things that they neglect to tell you when buying it.
Here in Turkey for example there are major rail works happening at the moment which means there are no trains to/from Istanbul. Also in Greece there are no trains that cross the border. To use the train to get to Greece it is now such a huge mess around that it isn’t worth the time and money to use the rail.
Those 3 empty slots have essentially cost me $55 AUD each. Then on top of that I am having to use busses instead which might be another $50 each or so.
My choices at this point were to get out of turkey and go somewhere that I could use my 3 extra days (shit knows where exactly around here?), but instead I am biting the bullet and going to Cappadocia and saying FUCK YOU RAIL PASS.
