I want to travel to Berlin several times in the next few months. I want to avoid the busiest times, when there are big events like IFA or Berlin Marathon because hotels get more expensive then.  Is there a reliable and comprehensive list of (only) big events that influence hotel availability and prices considerably?    Sure I can find lists of all events, but then I don`t know which are the dangerous ones...
123961
Is there a resource that warns me for (almost) any city / destination when my travel dates coincide with some big event there?  Illustrative example: Say I want to travel to Frankfurt and I'm fairly flexible in my dates. Once a year Frankfurt hosts the international automobile trade fair IAA and during that time most hotels in the city are booked up, even hostel bed prices triple well beyond EUR60 a night and you can figure 1-2 hours to wait for a dinner table if you did not book days in advance. Since I am flexible I would like to avoid this hassle and travel another time, so I want to know, what are the times to avoid?     Now for Frankfurt I do know this and could look up the dates of the IAA and avoid those, but then there are thousands of other small or big conferences or trade fairs in Frankfurt every year and I don't know how for every single event how big of an impact it has. And in fact I am looking for a resource that could tell me for any city which are the dates to avoid, i.e. not only trade fairs in Frankfurt but also say Oktoberfest time in Munich. These are all examples I know to avoid, but I seek similar information for places I am not familiar with.   Some ideas:    One could  One could contact the local tourist info, but that means asking and waiting for a reply and I would prefer to look it up right on a website.  A good guidebook might have that info but I was more looking for an online-resource.
99604
I am planning to visit London for 6 days from the US. I have given my biometrics and when I was preparing to mail my documents to the UK visa processing center in the US, I used this link from the UK government website to cross-check the documents to be sent to the processing center.     (Guide to supporting documents).  Something that really surprised me was in Section 4 (documents that should NOT be sent along with the package) was hotel bookings and flights bookings.     Section 4: documents you should not send unless specifically requested      This page provides guidance on the types of documents that are not required to consider your application.         hotel bookings   flight bookings      Typically I have always been asked to provide my travel plans, accommodation plans and proof of them. This is the first time that travel plans and accommodation plans are not asked to be sent. What might be the reason behind it? This really confuses me. Any help in clearing my confusion would be greatly welcome.
76332
I am planning on traveling to Europe in two months. However, I could not find any appointments for Schengen C visa for the next two and a half months.  Is there any way around this? What's the probability of me getting this visa? It would be a shame if I have to call off my vacation because of visa appointments not being available, or if I have to change my itinerary to include a country where there is a visa slot.
48639
Some destinations have a "90/180 rule" which says you can come and go but you must not spend over 90 days out of any 180 days in the area.  concerns this rule.  At least Schengen and Turkey have this rule, probably depending on where the traveller is from and what kind of visa they apply for.  Maybe I'm a dummy but I've always had a lot of trouble trying to add up how many days I've spent in such places when I've entered and left several times over recent months.  Is there an easy way to do this I'm missing or is it difficult for everybody? I'm guessing something based on counting backwards from the end date might be the trick?  Maybe you know of an app or website that can do this for you.
2509
Based on the question , I got curious. Is there a guide or resource that describes how the price of a ticket is determined?  When you search you often see curious effects like cheaper tickets for a flight from A to B with a layover compared to a direct flight. This seems counter-intuitive from an outsider's perspective since you fly twice. Also one way tickets more expensive than 2 ways.  It can be a short set of rules. Something that helps someone to get started with finding good prices. I know these can be very complex and they probably change over time and over airline interests but there is probably a simplified set of rules that can be enunciated.
122998
I'm a writer and theater/film director who has been traveling nearly all my life without incident. In February, I decided to pull up stakes in NYC and move to London. I am a freelancer and I'm working with three different organizations in NYC so I wasn't working illegally in the UK. I was, however, seeing if there might be some opportunities in London, ie. meeting with Artistic Directors of various theatre companies to see if they might be interested in producing my work.   In April, I was invited to a conference in San Diego and then a film festival in Switzerland. I didn't think it would be a problem if I went and then bummed around in France for a few days since I hadn't broken any laws and had left the UK well under my six month leave to stay. Well, when I tried to return to London, I was denied entry at Luton. The border control officer said I didn't have enough funds for a two month stay and put a black cross over a stamp in my passport. They put me in a detention room until the next flight back to Lyon, which was the following morning. I don't know anyone in Lyon so I ended up going to a friend's place in Paris.   After a few days of not knowing what to do, a friend suggested that perhaps I should try going back to London on the Eurostar since border control is in Paris. I wondered if I ought to go to the British Embassy but was deterred by something on their website that says that a visitors visa could take up to three weeks (I can't sit around here in Paris for three weeks) and anyway, the decision ultimately is with the border control, so I decided to take a chance on the Eurostar. I bought myself a return ticket in two weeks to Paris just so I had something to show.   Well, the UK border control denied me entry after giving me a third degree. They accused me of lying and seeking work in the UK. They also insisted that the amount of money I had was not enough to live on for two weeks. So I'm back at my friend's place in Paris, wondering what to do.   Is it possible for me to ever get back to the UK? I had to cancel one meeting and I'm wondering if I have to cancel going to the Sheffield DocFest. (Two of my projects were accepted to programs there.)   Should I apply for a visa from the British Embassy? Will this really take three weeks? When I started to say something about obtaining a visa, the border control officer cut me off and said, "Why are you going to the Embassy? This has nothing to do with the Embassy. We make the decisions."
62586
I have applied for a Schengen visa in the Consulate of Italy. I will be visiting for a 2 month period to attend a dance workshop. However, I plan to visit my boyfriend twice. He is studying in Germany currently and we made plans to meet up while I'm there. I will be visiting for a week or so both times. I did not put this in my itinerary. Will I still be able to visit?   Also, I just made some random hotel booking on booking.com in order to apply. Can I cancel those bookings and book an accommodation elsewhere if I want, once I get the visa?
103353
There are several ways of getting from Brussels to Paris. The fastest is probably the train, but it gets more expensive when you buy the ticket on the last minute.  My question can be really split into two:  Is there an alternative way, maybe through a different ticket operator, of buying a cheap train ticket from Brussels to Paris in short notice?  The alternative is going by Bus. What alternatives are there? Are there other operators besides Eurolines? maybe cheaper and/or faster?  Are there other options?
111644
I just spent a week in Italy, and found that the tourist crowds are more annoying than I had anticipated. I found I was simply unable to enjoy myself due to the crowds, so I ended up skipping some of the common highlights, such as entering the Roman Colosseum, and many of the exhibits at the Vatican Museum.  If I want to return to Rome at a later date, when can I enjoy these sites, and specifically the Roman Colosseum, with the smallest crowds?  What is low season? And if there is a difference, which is the lowest volume day of the week during this season? Weather, travel prices, hotel availability, etc, don't matter. I just want to enjoy the sites with few other people.  Also, if it matters, I'm only interested in entering the sites as a normal member of the public (special group reservations, exclusive invitations by the Pope, etc, are not of interest to me).
3090
I want to go to Berlin to Gottingen by train. I found that to avail myself of the &ldquo;savings fare&rdquo;, I have to book a ticket at least one day in advance. And I saw a requirement on the Bahn website to have a identification card for online tickets.  I am a foreigner in Germany, so does my passport count as valid identification in German trains?
64149
I have a project that is requiring me to travel to seven different locations and I need to find a travel site that will allow me to book more than six multi-flights in order to accommodate for this need. does anyone know of any sites that will allow me to do this?
115729
What happens if you cannot pay for your hotel stay because you accidentally run out of money (can happen) or your credit card was blocked (much more likely)? I assume you cannot arrange the money on your own in different of ways (like e.g. money transfer).  Are they allowed to hold your passport until you come back and pay? What happens if they call the police? Are you going to be fined? Can the police or other authorities lend you money in this or other more critical situations?  I know this can be a general question about what happens if you run out of money while being abroad, but a hotel is the most common travel-related post-paid service.
12119
I came to know about , it's a website that allow search for flights by country. I mean you just enter from like "Germany" and to like "Belgium" and you get best offers from all airports between the two countries. That is great. And I was able to arrange a good-price trip to Brussels.   Now I want to arrange another trip to Turkey, but Whichbudget is not helping much this time. And I can't find any other websites that allow "search by country".   Update: Not duplicate to  as his question is broad to the extent of a state. But my question is broad to the extent of a whole country + less price + "Any Time". If anyone checks , he'll understand what I'm saying. Especially that whichbudget allows "Any Time" option, not just +/-3 days.  Does anyone know more similar websites?
114662
As far as I can tell from the , there are three main kinds approvals for non-Canadians making a short trip:  (for visa-waiver nationals coming by air), Visitor Visas and Business Visas  For someone who isn't from a visa-waiver country (eg an Indian citizen living in India), who wants to attend a Conference (in this case a few day event on a specific open source project), what kind of visa do you need?  Some bits of the  talks about Visitor Visas or Business Visas, other parts talk about Tourist Visas and Business Visas, which is proving confusing (at least for me and my Indian friend...). The  does mention conferences as being something you can do on a business visa, but also they look harder to get. The  that you confusingly turn up on after clicking many of the Visitor Visa links doesn't seem to say anything about what you can and can't do on a tourist visa. The  links to a Visitor Visa application form, again leading me to be confused.  (A quick google with likely keywords only found me information on what Canadians going to the USA for conferences should / shouldn't say to US immigration about their trip...)  So, hopefully simple question - Someone from a visa country (eg India) travelling to Canada to attend a conference, but who isn't doing it as a work trip (they're paying personally), what kind of visa do they need to apply for? Visitor? Tourist? Business? Other?
80600
I think some body here would help me out of this first-time-travelling-blues.  I have applied for Schengen Visa to travel to Greece for four days; I applied to VFS Mumbai, on 13th April, 2016. I have tickets to Greece on 30th April, 2016 and return on 6th May, 2016. I have booked hotels there and am going to attend a scientific conference scheduled for the first week of May, 2016. I was informed during biometric process that as I am travelling abroad for the first time, I may need to attend an interview, scheduled at 22nd April. Now, I am worried, because the date is just 8 days ahead of my departure.   Will I get the visa in time?
20242
I'm planning a winter vacation somewhere in Central Europe and would like to find a hotel with a fireplace somewhere in the mountains. Surprisingly though I haven't been able to find a search engine which lets me filter the search results by a specific keyword ("fireplace" in this example)  Is there a convenient way to find a list of hotels filtered by a custom keyword? Websites like Booking.com only let you choose from a limited set of amenity filters.
28488
I have purchased an AB zone Berlin 7 day transport ticket and validated it on Sunday 17th April so hopefully it will be valid until Sunday 24th.  I validated the ticket at about 10:00am so I guess 1000 is the time I validated? But what are the numbers 15 and 6 and letters 'So' correspond to? How (if checked by a guard) can they tell if the ticket is valid? And how can I as a customer tell when it is validated to?