Group lunches and dinners on European bus tours are frustrating

This topic is relevant, perhaps, for any travel agency, but I came across it precisely in those years while traveling with TTV. Here are stories about several trips from 2010 to 2012. They came to mind because I found that my posts about them have been removed from the TTV forum.

I don’t remember a tour without such events, only their quality often leaves much to be desired, and for the most part this is a primitive “scam for money”.

I don’t remember exactly the cost of dinner with the national Fado program in Lisbon, but it was significant, more expensive than many additional excursions. At the time of booking the tour, the cost of this additional event on the travel agency's website was small, but then it increased several times at once. I asked a question on the forum about this and received a response on duty that it was my mistake or there was a typo. The response was supplemented by an enthusiastic advertisement for the event, which turned out to be "spreading cranberries".

Dinner was ordinary, and the performance of examples of unique Portuguese art was limited to a few numbers. The rest of the repertoire was arbitrary, including, I remember, even "Moscow Nights". For some reason, the owners of the establishment thought that Russian tourists should be happy to pay several tens of euros to listen to this work in the Portuguese capital. And we ourselves could sing it, for example, on the bus, and for free!

I published a story about the tour on the travel agency forum, mentioning this case too, but the story was deleted by the site administration, then something from the story was returned, only a little more than a dozen posts remained from two pages of text - it was thoroughly “cleaned” from critical stories. They also deleted my question with TTV's answer containing false advertising of the event.

On the same trip, when visiting Sintra, the group had a wonderful lunch with wonderful Portuguese wine.

Empty bottles were immediately replaced with full ones at no additional charge. Well-fed, "slightly tipsy" tourists proceeded to an additional excursion to the charming Regaleira estate, and then, satisfied, went to the hotel. No one except me even remembered that the program originally included the Pena Palace, which was "accidentally" forgotten in the afternoon euphoria.

Now I rarely visit the TTV forum, but every time I find another deletion or movement of my previous messages - they interfere with someone! I published the following story in Travels on mail.ru, but the project ceased to exist.

In the Czech Republic, near the Ossuary in the town of Kutná Hora, the group was scheduled to have lunch at the small hotel U Ruze. There was a preliminary agreement, but it turned out that we were not expected. I signed up for the national dish "fried cheese", however, many portions were not enough, I was kindly offered a choice of fried meat or nothing!

I had to choose the first, waited more than an hour. Under a thick, thick layer of breadcrumbs, there was something that could not be cut even with a knife. It was impossible and did not want to eat this piece of someone's sole, so I left it. I almost forgot in this dinner also "potato soup", which for some reason was made of pearl barley, as in memorable soviet canteens!

More than once TTV sent me with a group to the Novomestskie Pivovars in Prague. I was cautious, but those who wanted exotics paid the price for curiosity. They also love to count. Having received from my neighbor a payment for a dinner with a mug of beer, the same waiter immediately put the same mug paid by the neighbor on my bill as the second one I drank.

I will not forget dinner at a restaurant with a certain "Sasha" in Berlin. National flavor was supposed, but it was not observed in the dishes. For dessert, there was ice cream hastily cut into slices from purchased briquettes.

There are a lot of good wines in Germany, but we were handed "French" wines, which were semi-sweet. The French don't drink. There was no need to talk about the “bouquet” of this chatter of unknown origin. As a "national program" there were thieves' songs performed by our former fellow citizens who for some reason decided that they were dealing with their own kind. The cost of the event was serious - several tens of euros for each!

It would seem that this is why the travel agency forum exists, where tourists can talk about these cases, but critical stories or stories in their entirety are regularly deleted. This is followed by some "experts" (it is not known in what area), who receive discounts for the activity of the embellishing travel agency for paying for their tours.

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