A fly in the ointment.

Thanks a lot to the people who write reviews. They morally (and not only) prepared us very well for the trip. So I decided to share my experience. Went with the "Accord" 2nd time and was going to ride a lot more! But alas! Now I look at what Boomerang and other tour operators offer.

First, I'll talk about the positive. The route is wonderful. It is impossible to radically spoil it. Wonderful program in Berlin, Dresden. Well, Paris is something that every cultured person should experience at least once in their life. City guides are amazing. Everyone writes about them - Herald in Dresden and Ivan Ivanovich in Paris. In my opinion, Svetlana (from St. Petersburg) in Berlin also spoke well, although someone was not very pleased. No complaints about the hotels - clean, soundly, intelligent in a European way, the food was quite good and tasty at breakfast.

In general, I could recommend this tour to everyone as a relatively inexpensive opportunity (I paid 286 euros for a ticket) to visit Berlin, Dresden, Paris ... If not for the "fly in the ointment" that spoiled the "barrel of honey".

Many write about this in reviews, and this, unfortunately, is a lottery. You do not know what kind of guide you will get, and a lot of the trip depends on him. Akkord has so many routes during the season that there are not enough good, experienced guides for everyone. There are "random" girls who fill up all the work - and nothing can be done about it!

Here we are unlucky. A sweet, nice girl (Olga Zemlyana) with an affectionate voice in other circumstances would only cause tenderness. But in stressful situations, the trip turned out to be inexperienced, selfish, tough, rude. What a pity! After all, we were waiting for this trip like a miracle! My roommate told me that her children gave her this trip to Paris for her anniversary ...

Probably, we, tourists, are also not sugar, we are unpredictable, capricious, we want to use the toilet when it is not supposed to ... But we are on vacation, and the guide is at work. We are the firm's customers, and "the customer is always right", isn't it?

In his review, a tourist from our bus writes that we were told almost nothing about the cities and countries that we passed, that it was like a trip on an ordinary regular bus. What was strange was the selection of films, etc. But in my opinion, these are all trifles compared to what began in Paris and was discovered at the end of the trip.

First, Olya walked along the bus and, according to the questionnaire (who wants to visit which optional excursions), collected money. People handed over amounts exceeding the cost of the ticket. Then it turns out that the "Moulin Rouge" - breaks down (for example, there were not enough tickets), Versailles - breaks down, a walking tour with Ivan Ivanovich "The Magic of Paris" - also breaks down.

I ask the question: why, after all, a sufficient number of people signed up? I get a categorical answer from Olya: because I can’t break in half, I’m taking those few people who signed up for Disneyland (at first, only 6 people signed up for Disneyland, then a few more people were added, and although there were more than half of the bus who didn’t want to go to Disneyland , anyway, we were thrown out of the bus on the outskirts of Paris, and the guide went to Disneyland, because, apparently, it was more profitable for her). That is, the interests of more than half of the bus simply did not give a damn. When asked why we ourselves, without a guide, cannot meet Ivan Ivanovich and go on a walking tour, I did not receive an answer.

Moreover, this disruption of Parisian excursions was accompanied by an unpleasant scandal.

Otherwise, how do you like this situation: they take money from you for excursions that will not take place, they promise to give it back sometime later, and at the same time they throw you out of the bus until evening on the outskirts of Paris - do what you want! I still don’t understand why they didn’t take us at least to the nearest metro station, so that we wouldn’t wander around a strange city, staring at a map, painfully finding out how to get the tram to the metro, and then guessing which metro lines you can get to center.

Nothing, we got out, figured out the huge scheme of the Paris metro, by the evening we were still happy and full of impressions. But further unpleasant situations continued. Scandals began due to the fact that first the girls from the front rows, and then the girl with her mother (we had one child on the bus) desperately asked to go to the toilet, and they were told that the stop was not allowed. Probably, according to the instructions, it really is not allowed.

But what should living people do if they are burned to the fullest? Probably those who were sitting in the back of the bus did not hear the terrible swearing that erupted at the front door. The mother of the child began to sob, the child was crying, and the drivers, along with the guide, poured curses on her like "Nascho ti їhala?! It was necessary to sit at home!". Anyway, after all, they stopped at the request of tourists once or twice - so why make a scandal and bring people to such a state?

We arrived at the Krakow hotel at 2 am. We are handed out the keys to the rooms. I ask Olya: since there is only one tourist left in Paris and there are now an even number of us, can I spend the night in a vacant place in a double room and not go to a triple room for a folding bed, because I have to queue for a shower? Olya makes an iron face and declares: go where you are sent. Why can't you take a free seat? No answer. Apparently, Ole is even too lazy to delve into this.

Further. Everyone was settled in 2-bed rooms in the main building, and only the three of us are sent to another building (take the elevator, then along the transitions to another building, and there you will find your room). Maybe I'm wrong, but I am convinced that no matter how tired the guide was, she should have made sure that we were shown to the room. Imagine that at 2 o'clock in the morning, deadly tired after a night move, in the absolutely empty labyrinths of the hotel, with suitcases in our hands, we walk and wander, looking for our building, our corridor, our room. No one to ask. Everybody sleeps. We poke here and there. We fight, but we can't do anything. Not immediately, having shouted and quarreled, by some miracle we nevertheless found him. But do you think it's okay?

Olya announces to us: breakfast at 7.30, gathering for an excursion at 8.00. Well, having slept only 3 hours, we arrive for breakfast at 7.20 (we arrived early so as not to stand in line, to be the first). And what do we see?

There is already a huge crowd in the restaurant for plates (a few more buses drove into the hotel in front of us), because breakfast started at 7.00. We stood at the end of a huge queue and see that Olya and the drivers were standing at the very beginning, which means they knew, but for some reason we were told to come later. After standing in line for half an hour, we frantically stuffed food into ourselves so as not to be late by 8.00, because we still need to pick up things in another building and hand over the room at the reception. In a wild time trouble we do all this and then another 40 minutes we wait on the bench for Olya and the guide.

In general, tourists were not allowed to be late, but Olya and the drivers could be as long as they wanted. Either the whole bus is waiting for Olya and the drivers in the parking lot, because they are still having lunch in a cafe and have forgotten about the time, then in Dresden we are standing in a crowd near the road for almost an hour, because there is no bus, although the time was set exactly, then Olya must talk to the guide parallel bus.

We are scolded for one minute, but no one apologizes to us when we wait 30-40 minutes.

At the end of the trip, when we had already filled out and submitted the questionnaires with reviews, to top it off, one of the drivers started smoking on the bus. That's horrible! The smoke goes into the salon, beats in the nose, there is nothing to breathe, and he put his hand with a cigarette out the half-open window and does not react to any remarks. He wanted to smoke - breathe all!

These are the pies. People, be prepared for such situations. In general, I put "excellent" in the questionnaire for all other parameters of the trip (except for the guide) - for the route, and for guides, and for the bus, and for hotels, and for breakfast. If not for a fly in the ointment ...

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