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Publishing your phone number (2)

2008-11-12

old telephone Seems people think that I’m not just a spiritual healing teacher, but also a travel organization… anyway, there was a phone call this morning – since I couldn’t take it at that time, I wanted the answering machine to take it; however that didn’t record it so I only was able to hear parts of it (thanks to speakerphone) – in which a lady referred to my comment on a free vacation from a TV magazine (where only 3 out of 255 dates were actually free).

Actually, she didn’t refer to my comment, but simply to the fact that it’s got the headline “Free VIP vacation”, since she was asking something like whether I were in charge of that, etc., she’d like to travel from the Köln-Bonn airport…

…then the connection was cut – though probably not because the lady noticed she’s at the wrong address; I rather think the answering machins’s to blame (gotta look into that), since she then wrote a mail stating that she’d won a free VIP vacation and wanted to know the total costs with all extra fees for a specific date. And after I had answered that mail, she called again and explained everything (and also apologized).

The fact that she, being (probably) Italian, don’t speak perfect German is, however, in my opinion no reason to assume that, given my post headline, I were such a travel organization – no, exactly that organization from which she won the vacation, from which she actually got a phone number, but that was such an expensive one, she said –, and directly clicks her way to my contact page without reading any of the text beneath the headline. I hope she understands it now, but I’m not completely sure…

I’m really wondering how people like her even manage to learn about such a vacation if they obviously don’t read what they got in front of them.
:shake:

Projekt 52 week 37: A walk in the night

2008-09-11

The topic of week 37 in Sari’s photo Projekt 52:

A walk in the night

“Of course” also a photo – well, actually two – from Montreux (the one from last week about “light and shadow” was from my hotel room, by the way):

37: A walk in the night

Week 37: A walk in the night

In the night, even the architectural eyesore called Eurotel Riviera in Montreux (on the right, with the glowing “HOTEL” letters) doesn’t disturb that much…

By the way, this is not the only architectural misdeed, especially in the east part there are several more that have been built since the 1960s.


We all came out to Montreux…

2008-09-09

Freddie-Statue bei Sonnenuntergang

On the Lake Geneva shoreline
To commemorate Freddie
We didn’t have much time
Rock4 and Queenie
Were at the best pl—

Um, no, gotta stop here, because the school auditorium of the CESSEV was, although quite suitable for the acapella concert by Rock4, certainly not the best place around. The Ned, though, a music club in an old factory basement or something like that, wasn’t a a bad place for a Queen cover band rock concert (and even for the shorter quasi-classical before that).

(And nothing burned to the ground, hence no smoke on the water.)

Aaaalright, now that I’m back home, I can admit that I was on holiday for the past few days (don’t want to tell the dear burglars where an apartment is unguarded); at the Freddie Mercury Montreux Memorial Day in, guessed it?, Montreux. Thanks to free Internet access included in the hotel price and occasionally some time, I wasn’t completely cut off from the blogosphere, though not as active as usually.

So in the next days, there’s a little flood of photos, thematically sorted. ;) But I rather held back with photographing things, actually.1

Well, that’s it for today…

  1. Only about 1200 photos. [↩]

Free VIP vacation!*

2008-07-18

* No, not for you, sorry if you got that impression. ;)

Hörzu vacation: All free** The Hörzu, one of Germany’s biggest TV magazines, invites its subscribers (including myself – but for how long?1) to a VIP gala – with entertainment, live music, dance and midnight buffet –, combined with a one-week “exclusive VIP vacation” to the Turkish Riviera.

“And to this, we invite you at selected dates exclusively and for free!”

(My translation of a highlighted sentence.) In addition, there’s this printed note sheet in the top right corner, saying: “All free**: return flight, transfers, 5***** hotel, excursion program, breakfast buffet – **valid for seleced airports of departure and dates” (which actually is better readable in print than on this scan – cf. large view).

Now which dates are these, and how much are the others? What does the large table in the flyer tell? At least, the additional costs are given clearly enough, I think…

There are 22 available airports – among these only 2 minor ones in Rostock and Saarbrücken are free, the others require a 19-26€ surcharge. There’s a total of 255 dates in six different season categories from November 2008 to April 2009, only one of which – vacation start 8-19 Dec and 31 Dec–14 Jan – without surcharge, 40-145€ for the others. And during school holidays (depending on location), there’s another 50€ surcharge.

So the trip can cost between 0 and 221€, depending on the date.2 I quickly compared that to offers from some larger travel companies, and the cheapest ones I found were around 350€ for that region – so even in the most expensive case, this doesn’t seem to be a bad offer. (If someone disagrees and knows cheaper prices, please comment.)

In detail:
17 dates from Rostock or Saarbrücken outside of school holidays;
33 dates in the surcharge-free seasons;
Intersection: 3 all-free dates.
But also just 6 dates for more than 200€.

In the end, I think that only 3 dates that are really free – that’s 1.2% – are still a little poor to be pointed out that prominently – but, well, that’s advertising…

  1. I’m using it less and less (thanks to electronic program guides), and the occasional mysticism friendliness (in May the afterlife pseudophysics article, currently a too uncritical miracle healing series, more on that in the upcoming days) rankles me too. [↩]
  2. Plus optional costs for single rooms (98€) and half-board instead of only breakfast (99€), but these always cost extra, of course. [↩]

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