I made it.
Thursday morning at 3:30 my flight touched down and I sped right through immigration and customs into the (relatively) cool night air of Yerevan.
The trip to Yerevan was marred with two separate, but stupid, incidents; since arrival, everything’s been swell!
First, at the Weimar train station, I stopped into the bakery, hoping to buy a sandwich for breakfast—the sign in front of the sandwich said 2.05, but the cash register said 2.25. Now in America the cashier would have apologized and then charged me 2.05, but in Germany the clerk told me the sign was wrong and that I would have to cough up the extra twenty cents. I begged to differ and departed without a sandwich—a foolish error on the clerk’s part since I won’t be buying bread at the shop again.
Secondly, the woman checking me in to fly to Armenia pulled the wrong flight coupons and insisted that she had pulled the correct ones, until I made her double check. Suddenly she was full of apologies—as she pulled the correct two flight coupons and then taped in the ones for my return trip. That could have been a pretty horrible mistake.
Ah, the drama of travel. How I miss it. 🙂 Seriously, though, the chick at the bread place would have pissed me off too.
I recently had a restaraunt chage my card an extra dollar over what I said they could have as cost of meal and tip. The place I went is $60 for two people and that extra dollar they padded the bill has cost them my ever returning to their establishment.
Most people in the US would never see that single dollar, but I keep better track of my finances than most. It was a discrepancy from my receipt from the restaraunt and what actually showed up on my credit card bill.
And yes, I could dispute it but it’s $1.
Nothing like German customer service to make you appreciate another country more.
@disenchanted: i think the chick at the bread place gave me typical east german service. I suspect, I gave an atypical response.
@cq: I would still complain to the restaurant. Maybe the waiter was being unethical and needs to be fired.
@J: Travel makes you fond of things at home too, like running water.