Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

Thanks to the free wifi service offered in McDonalds it seems to be attracting an increasing number of itinerant bloggers.

Almost every time we’ve been in lately (and, yes, we’re one of that band of McD bloggers whilst we wait for our ADSL connection) we’ve seen someone whipping out the laptop in a relatively quiet part of the restaurant. Thus far, our record is four separate surfers but I’m sure that’s a record that’ll soon be broken.

It’s not really surprising that they’re attracting these folk: after all that word “free” is quite a pull. What is more surprising though is that the majority of these people are lugging around full size laptops rather than running with the likes of my trusty Aspire One. After all, at under £200 for quite a usable machine it’s not out of the question to buy one pretty much just for the holidays and these days you can even get them “free” with some broadband packages.

Is it a worthwhile marketing strategy for McD though? Well, in that the restaurants obviously need a connection of some sort for their credit card machines it’s largely a no-cost service for them so there’d appear to be no downside in offering it. Moreover, few of the itinerant surfers leave without buying something so it would appear to be all upside for McD at the moment. Whether that would continue to be the case were significant numbers of surfers to start using the stores is another matter. It certainly works fine if there are a handful of people using the service but if there were, say, 10 or more then a) the seats are going to be taken up and b) the service is going to slow down. Still, at the moment, it seems like a great idea.

When they’re booking a place for their holidays people often make assumptions about what that place will be like not so much from the description (which few seem to read) but rather from the place that they’re booking it through.

For instance, we’re in that hazy middle ground between B&B and hotel which means that we’re listed on a wider range of sites than a place that fell exclusively into either category would be. As a rule those coming to us from the hotel listings tend to expect a level of services that we simply can’t meet at busy times when we’ve found that some expect a level of staffing more appropriate to a 50 bedroom place than our own humble 10 room place. So, for example, we’ve found that some people can’t understand that we’ve only one internet terminal when “hotels” always have three or four. Well, 50 bedroom hotels might well have three or four but since we’ve only 1/5th of that number of rooms we obviously have to scale other things down too. On the other hand, those coming to us via a B&B listing sometimes have the expectation of encountering a cute country cottage which we aren’t and don’t claim to be either.

However, perhaps the most peculiar expectation we encountered came from one couple who were looking for a “country retreat”. It took us a while to work out what they were looking for but apparently it came from an Australian listing that we have which is one of many created by asking us one set of questions and producing a listing that answers an entirely different set of questions. In this case one of their questions was “is there a nudist colony nearby” to which the answer is “yes”. However, on their site our answer means that we’re listed as being a “nudist retreat” which we’re definitely not. It seems that “country retreat” is one of those ways of referring to nudist retreats, hence the confusion from that particular couple!

Thanks to the way that listing sites group properties by “resort” (usually the nearest large town) it’s quite important to check just where your holiday property actually is. For instance, we’re generally listed as being attached to Perpignan yet we’re actually 25km outside it. That’s not a problem if you’re coming in a car as it’s only 20 minutes drive but clearly more of an issue if you’re relying on public transport to get around. There’s not really a lot that holiday properties can do about that on the whole as if listings sites simply listed only the properties within a town then it would be next to impossible to find accommodation outside a town. After all, would you know the name of all the little villages within 10 miles or so of your home town? Even if you did, would you have the patience to look up each one in turn in search of accommodation?

To avoid making assumptions that don’t fit with the reality it’s best to have a good read of the description of your holiday accommodation. Most owners spend a fair bit of time to get their description as accurate as they can as it’s obviously much better to have people coming who want to stay in the type of place you have. Despite that it sometimes seems that potential guests don’t even read the first line and go purely on price then complain that, for example, a place billed as being in the country isn’t in the city (yes, we’ve had that).

One of the big surprises in many ways is just how fast formerly eastern block countries are moving into the first world.

For example, not so many years ago the thought of a  luxury golf property in Bulgaria would have been laughed at. No longer though for the likes of Tharacian Cliffs, starting from scratch, seems likely to become one of the top golf courses in the world according to Gary Player.

The reason is simple of course: they’re able to start from a blank sheet and have lots of cheap land and labour to construct the courses. For the rest of us there are increasing numbers of cheap flights available to get us to the area.

Overall, a win-win situation for everyone apparently.

The take from our recent break-in must have been quite a disappointment to the burglars and particularly those that bought from them.

Notionally the most valuable item on the list was a 28″ TV. A good result normally I suppose except that it was a British TV and won’t receive any French TV channels so it’s pretty useless to them.

Next up was a 1999 portable. British keyboard so not too useful but in 1999 it came with 4GB disk and there are a lot of web pages that it can’t open these days.

Then there was the British toolbox which is filled with imperial size spanners which aren’t too useful here in France.

Overall they seemed to have amassed a whole collection of stuff that’s little or no use to anyone in France. For instance, in addition to the above they managed to take a portable DVD player but without the charger that it needs.

So we’ve lost a bunch of things that were of some use to us and they’ve gained effectively a bunch of useless junk

By the time you read this, we should be well on the way to our place in France (scheduled posts are wonderful!) and pretty much totally exhausted.

The plan is that on Saturday morning we’ll have gone from Belfast to Rosslare to catch the LD Lines ferry to Le Havre around 5pm. That’s a relatively easy 4 hours drive though it seems to go on forever as we found out doing the route the other way in January.

It’s an overnight ferry trip which is quite relaxing in comparison to the drive from Stranraer to Dover. Cheaper too when you offset the cost of the cabin against the savings in petrol. Unfortunately, that 5pm-ish departure makes for an arrival around the same time the next day in Le Havre.

Our theory is that we’ll relax on the boat and start driving when we get off. Snag is that at this time of year most of the hotels along our route down France will be full so we probably won’t have any choice but to drive on through the night which isn’t altogether appealing to put it mildly.