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A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

sfgate.com

211–220 of 284 posts

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#211
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a similar classic (much less expensive) mistake between New York Penn Station and Newark Penn Station, which are consecutive stops on the Amtrak line NYC.

It can be a more expensive mistake than you think... I would sometimes see Chinese tourists get off at Newark station and always wondered if a) they made a mistake b) they ended up okay. Newark isn't a fun place to be at night.

Man that sounds like something I would do. I'm born here and ride Amtrack often too.

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#212
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a lot of average Chinese people probably don't even know Seoul has another airport I'd guess most people who haven't traveled domestically in Korea don't know this, full stop.

Gimpo's fairly big for business travel among the big East Asian cities too - Tokyo, Osaka, Taipei, Shanghai and Beijing (and maybe some others?) all have direct flights. In most cases those flights are to the more convenient "city" airport in those cities too.

The real fun is when you have to go from Gimpo to Inchon on a short connection because your company’s travel agents don’t know.

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#214
There's a certain sweet irony to this article saying that Erwin Kreuz was from a village near "Augsberg" in Bavaria; if one indeed were to try to go to "Augsberg, Bavaria", they would find themselves in a) a real but tiny place, and b) quite far away from Augsburg, Bavaria, where Kreuz was _actually_ from.

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#215
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was this a very long time ago? Staples is a well known chain of office supply stores in Germany as well.

As a German, I only know Staples from American TV shows and movies. Is there Staples IN Germany? And yes, I live in a city of several hundred thousand inhabitants.

Online online I suppose

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#216

A coworker's story: Some clients are flying into Redmond for a meeting, and he's picking them up from the airport. They call. "We're here. Where are you?" "Well, I'm at the airport. Where are you?" "I told you, we're at the airport. How can you miss us? We're the only people here. This place is tiny!" They had flown into Redmond, Oregon, which has an attached municipal airport, instead of Seattle-Tacoma. The meeting…

How did that even happen? Did they not notice getting into the tiniest plane, possibly even a prop plane.

Data point: It's faster to get from Vancouver B.C. to Redmond on a prop plane (landing on Lake Washington) than going via Seatac...

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#217
post #214

There's a certain sweet irony to this article saying that Erwin Kreuz was from a village near "Augsberg" in Bavaria; if one indeed were to try to go to "Augsberg, Bavaria", they would find themselves in a) a real but tiny place, and b) quite far away from Augsburg , Bavaria, where Kreuz was _actually_ from.

I noticed this quite amusing typo as well, mostly because I live in the Augsburg Area (During tertiary school, I had a few friends in Bonstetten, the little village that Erwin Kreuz lived in during the events of the article).

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#218
post #23

I witnessed a poor chap at the ticket counter at Dulles airport desperately trying to convince someone to flag him a taxi to drive him to Dallas to make his meeting.

My wife and I learned the hard way that Dulles is NOT in Washington DC, we took the bus out to the Air and Space Museum, which we assumed was in DC... the $75 dollar taxi ride that took 1 1/2 hours to show up to pick us up was no fun. Fun Bonus Fact: We drove to DC, so we could have just driven there, but thought a cheap Bus round trip was more fun as we could both see the sights, and not stress about traffic.

Better than a 20 hour drive to Dallas!

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#219
Classic problem in Paris: you constantly find (well, out of Covid...) baffled travellers (mostly Asian) lost with their suitcases at the Charles-de-Gaulle-Étoile subway station. They're looking for the Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport, 50 km away... Unfortunately the RER (suburban train) station names aren't distinct enough.

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#220

There's also the classic of people leaving for San Jose Costa Rica and landing in San Jose California. Happened to a friend of mine, he wasn't too embarrassed by it because he shared the whole story on Facebook

I did the same mistake and only figured it out when checking in because there was a fee for checked luggage; there's no fee only for international flights, only for US/Canada flights.
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