My favorite travel planning websites

I’ve been booking most of my travel online for a good 10 years now. Lots of wonderful innovations have come out in that time, but for the past several years my approach has remained mostly the same: a few reliable go-to websites that get me what I want in a relatively efficient manner. They keep me from losing my mind when I feel myself being pulled into travel-planning-related information overload.

With the launch of several new travel sites this year, it looks like my standard approach might be about to change. While I’m excited to move on to the new and the better, I’m also pretty pleased with my current travel-planning routine. So before I review the new sites, I thought I’d write about my standard plan of attack up until now. » Read the full post

Tags: travel, websites

Dopplr keeps trying to send me to Canada

As a frequent traveler, I’m always on the lookout for ways to make travel easier. There are several websites out there that claim to do just that, but my patience for trying out every new thing to hit the interwebs is low. But this year I’ve been trying out two sites which claim to help out with travel planning and organization, and there’s a clear winner between the two.

On the surface Dopplr and Tripit are similar – basically you tell the site about your upcoming travels and it will tell you when any of your friends will be in the same place as you are at the same time. It also organizes your travel info into an itinerary which it supplements with other info such as maps, weather, and things to do. You can decide who has access to your trip information and add other users as friends.

Both sites allow you to enter trip information manually, or you can forward your confirmation emails for flights, hotels, etc., and have the site extract the information itself. This feature is key, since I have no desire to perform data entry in order to use a site that is supposed to be making my life easier. TripIt does an infinitely better job with this feature than Dopplr does.

Dopplr seems to be more popular with other bloggers I know, but I’m not sure why. It has done a horrible job of interpreting travel emails. For example, I forwarded it my plane reservation for an upcoming trip to Dublin, and instead Dopplr decided I was going to From, Norway, for almost a year. For another trip Dopplr has me in Night, Canada, one day and Armonai, Lithuania, the next, when in fact I’ll be in Bavaria the whole time. Dopplr also thinks I spent a week in More, England, when in fact I was in Toulouse. Tripit got all those bookings right the first time.

I really like the itinerary presentation on TripIt. It includes vital info about flights and hotels, plus weather and maps for your destination. Flight listings include a handy button which links to the airline’s online check-in. TripIt also has an iPhone app which my husband loves.

Dopplr seems to focus on giving you other information about your destination – restaurant reviews, hotels, sites, etc. – and it encourages you to add your own reviews. Dopplr doesn’t present your itinerary in as useful of a format, but it does keep a copy of confirmation emails handy in case you need to look up information.

The only clear advantage I see to Dopplr is that as of now more people I know use it than use TripIt. This is important for the second big advantage of these sites, i.e. their ability to let me know when friends and I will be in the same place at the same time. A site needs a critical mass of users for this to really work. The easiest way for me to check to see if most of my friends will be in a certain place at the same time as me? Announcing an upcoming trip in my Facebook status.

I’ve been using both sites for about six months now, but I think I’m about to ditch Dopplr for good. Now if only I could get all my friends to sign up for TripIt.

Do you use any travel websites like these? What’s your opinion on them?

Tags: travel, websites

What would you do with €5,800 cash?

Yeah, we thought the answer was pretty obvious, too:

It’s true, stuff + cats does = awesome! Thanks to Oscar for being such a good sport.

Tags: huh?, websites

7 internet resources to help you find a job in Germany

As a follow-up to my post about how to find a job in Europe, here are some of the specific websites out there that can help with your job search if you’re hoping to end up in Germany. Happy hunting.

Xing.* In addition to LinkedIn and Plaxo, a popular networking site in Germany in particular is Xing. The only problem with Xing is that if you don’t already know many people in Germany, you might not find many people to connect with at first. But filling in your complete profile may still be a good idea, as I hear that recruiters and headhunters use the site a lot. There is a free level of membership and also a paid ‘premium’ membership available, and there are searchable job listings with plenty of Germany-based stuff.

LinkedIn* is a networking site similar to Xing, but with a more international membership base (so if your contacts are mostly outside of Germany, you may have a better chance of finding people to link to here). It also has job listings searchable by city or postal code. One cool feature is that it will help you figure out if you have any contacts or contacts-of-contacts who work at a particular company you may be looking to work for.

JobsinMunich.com. This site claims to list jobs targeted at ‘English-speaking professionals’. All in English.

JobScout24. This site is in German, but is probably navigable with just some basic knowledge and educated guessing. Use ‘English’ as a search term (Suchbegriff) to pull up many listings in English.

Monster.de. Just like Monster.com, except for Germany-based. Lots of job listings. Also in German.

Toytown Germany. This big community site for expats in Germany has smaller message boards dedicated to employment offered and employment sought. It also contains various wiki pages that list companies in Germany by industry or area (for example, here’s a page on international companies in Munich).

And don’t forget to check out the websites of individual companies that interest you. Some of Germany’s largest employers include DaimlerChrysler, BMW and Siemens, but even smaller players such as AutoDesk and Infineon are big into hiring expats.
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* If you happen to know me in real life, feel free to add me as a contact on Xing or LinkedIn.

Have you found any other websites to be useful for a job search in Germany? What about for other European countries?

Tags: Europe, expat life, Germany, websites

Dear restaurateurs of Munich,

Please stop using Flash on your websites. It’s a pain in the ass. I come to your site to check out your menu and find out where you’re located, not to watch a multimedia presentation extravaganza that bogs down my computer. And if it takes me more than one click to get to your address, you’re doing something very, very wrong.

Otherwise, keep up the good work. I’m especially impressed by the number of vegetarian offerings you have that involve actual vegetables, rather than just potatoes and cheese.

Love,

Jul

(photo: super yummy vegetarian sushi at Prinz Myshkin, which is one of my favorite restaurants ever despite their website)

Tags: food, Munich, websites

I know useful stuff about travel in Europe!

I almost forgot to tell you guys (although some of you have found it via the link in the sidebar) – a little while ago I started writing for the blog Europe String over at b5media. It’s the perfect outlet for the info I’ve learned after all these years of roaming around this continent (super important stuff like where to watch the Super Bowl while traveling through Europe, information I’ve somehow managed to acquire without ever watching the Super Bowl in Europe myself). So go check out Europe String, and tell all your Euro-budget-travelly-minded friends.

Don’t you worry – This non-American Life isn’t going anywhere. Although it may get even less professional, as all my A-list material now gets funneled off to Europe String. Nah, just kidding. I never had any A-list material, but if I did, you know it would be found amongst my insightful peeks into expat life rather than my nose for sniffing out giant cauldrons of cheap alcohol. Right?

Tags: Europe, travel, websites

10 ways to waste time on the internet

It has been a cold, rainy August here in Zurich (not that I’m complaining – see any of my July posts for how much I hate the heat). Several times I’ve found myself curling up on the couch with some tea and my laptop, determined to reply to all of those emails languishing in my inbox in one fell swoop… before I know it, hours have gone by and all I have to show for it are 30 different open browser windows.

Just in case you happen to be looking for guidance in your next internet time-suck session, I offer you these ideas:

1. Check out what people put on their cats.
I have no idea why, but I find this site hysterically funny. If you like it, you may like this one, this one and this one, too.

2. Explore the blogosphere.
You can do this by clicking on the ‘next blog’ button on the Blogger header bar (at the top of this page), but I’ve found that it often takes a while to find something worth reading using this method. A much more satisfying way of losing yourself in the land of blogs is to click through to blogs on people’s blog rolls (the list of other blogs a particular blogger likes, such as my list of ‘friends who blog’ which you can find on the column on the right). I also like to read other expat blogs. Oh, and leave lots of comments as you go. I love receiving comments, so I am trying to remember to leave more comments for others.

3. Read America’s Finest News Source.
It’s a classic that never gets old.

4. Play games that keep your brain alive.
I love the card game Set, but rarely do I encounter anyone in the real world who wants to play it with me (and the husband is tired of getting his ass kicked).

5. Watch clips from the Daily Show and Colbert Report.
We only get the ‘international’ version of the Daily Show in Switzerland, so sometimes I must resort to the net to get my John Stewart fix. And if that’s not enough video for you, there’s always YouTube and Google Video. Warning – you may not want to start down this path unless you have a whole lot of time to waste. You might end up lost in the nostalgia of old Sesame Street sketches or watching crap like this.

6. Plan a vacation or a weekend getaway.
OK, this one almost doesn’t count as ‘wasting time’ since sometimes it ends up having a productive outcome. But for me, more often than not, attempted internet trip planning leads to indecision caused by too many options, even if I already have a destination in mind. Here’s a simplified version of the process: First it’s over to TripAdvisor to see what hotels are recommended. Then it’s back to Expedia and Travelocity and a couple other sites to see which highly-recommended hotels are available and actually affordable. Then there’s the comparison of taking the train or flying. Do any discount airlines go there? Do we want to depart at 4:00am? And so on and so on.

7. Send a message in a bottle or two.
This site makes me too aware of the fact that I am wasting time, but if you get an interesting message or two, it can be a little addictive. I’m still waiting to receive that one life-changing message from a stranger…

8. Look at other people’s photos.
Flickr and sites like it allow you to search through millions of photos by key words and tags, or just browse through the most recently uploaded pictures. Want to see other people’s Street Parade pictures? Or photos of the Swiss Alps? It’s all out there in cyberspace.

9. See what dieters ate in the 1970s and laugh yourself silly.
If I try to explain to you what this is, you won’t believe me when I say it is so funny it makes me pee my pants. Skim your way down to the bottom of the page to where it says “Click HERE to start the tour,” and click there. Just do it.

10. Play reindeer blogger games.
I am still pretty new to the blog world, and only recently have I begun exploring beyond the blogs of my real-life friends. Slowly I’m discovering all the crazy things bloggers do to drive traffic to their sites, meet new people, and have fun. Things like Weekend Cat Blogging, Blog Carnivals, and Photo Scavenger Hunts. This post actually represents my first (only?) dabble into the world of blogger games, as I’ll be submitting it to this.

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OK, so I know I’m not an expert on this time-wasting subject by any means. There are entire websites devoted to killing time on the internet which are much more complete than this list. But if I have helped just one person waste just a little more time online (say, by reading this post)… well then, my mission here is done.

Tags: websites