Comparison of two student trip organizations

Hallo!

Now that we have been traveling several times with those student trip organizations, pm2am student trips and Studifahrten, we decided to make a small comparison of them!
We will summarize all the trips we have been to with the companies and tell our opinion about the organizations.

The first trip we made was to the beautiful Amsterdam in the Netherlands! The trip was organized by Studifahrten and the cost was only 30€. We spent only one day there, but it was actually enough :) The organization of the trip went okay. We felt that there were too many breaks during the bus transfer to Amsterdam and we could have traveled there faster without so many stops. Otherwise everything went well except when we were supposed leave from Amsterdam. We were scheduled to leave in the evening around 11 and everybody was there on time waiting for the bus, but the most important thing, the buses, were not there :D We have no idea what was the problem, but we had to wait for them about half an hour in the cold..It wasn't so nice, but otherwise we didn't have any problems with the organizers!

Yes, we had fun in Amsterdam! :)

The next trip we made was to the Oktoberfest in Munchen! This time we wanted to try the other company pm2am and chose the trip by them. We spent one day in Oktoberfest and the cost was in total 55€. In this trip, we had no problems with the organizers, everything went well! Except of course something had to happen so our bus broke down during the drive to Munchen :D but luckily it wasn't anything the bus driver couldn't fix!

Welcome to Oktoberfest!

After the Oktoberfest the next trip the made with the student trip organizations was to the Rhine Waterfalls and Zürich! We also traveled to other places but the trip were not with the companies, so we will leave them out of this post :D

The Zürich trip was again with the pm2am Student Trips, for some reason we preferred this compnany and did all the other trips except the first one with them. The Zürich trip went again with no specific problems.

In all of the trips we have had the same problem and it is that there is too much time reserved for free time. Normally we have free time about 10 hours after a sightseeing tour where we already see all the most important sights. What can you do after that with 10 hours? Of course there is always something more to see and do, but not for 10 hours. With all the trip we could have left back 1-2 hours earlier in the evening. In the Zürich trip was specially seen since the city was not that big and it was really expensive so you really couldn't do much there :D

The beautiful Alps in Zûrich!

The last trip we have made and will make was a really ultimate student trip! We visited Wien, Budapest and Bratislava with pm2am. Three cities in three countries and just four days! The cost was 149€, not bad for seeing three cities :) 

With this trip we actually had bigger problems...We were scheduled to arrive back to Köln on Monday morning around 9, on Sunday afternoon we heard that we will not be arriving to Köln in the morning. We were told that we will arrive around noon, which would have been okay, but it turned out that at 13.30 we were still nowhere near Köln. We had a presentation in school at 16.15. so we needed to take a train from Bochum to Köln to make it on time! We were a bit nervous to say the least...:D Luckily we made it but this didn't really leave us with a good image of the company...

Not until today when I (Jenna) received a phone call from the pm2am company telling that we had complained about the Budapest trip...I wasn't sure what to expect :D He told me that as compensation we could participate to their Paris trip this weekend for free or get a 30€ discount on any other trip! This was a big surprise and a very good one. This made us very happy and actually this is the way companies should handle complaining customers :D Big thanks to pm2am to making the effort and offering this for us!

Now a more general opinion about the student trip organizations. The business idea that they have to organize these trips to international student is really great and this is an awesome opportunity for us to see Europe with a student budget!

Even though the idea is very good, we have some improvement ideas for the organizations. There is too much time reserved for free time in the evenings, we could always head back around 8 or 9 pm not at 11 pm. Also for Studifahrten, they could have less breaks during the drive to and from the destination. We think that pm2am is doing well in this aspect,  they don't have too much or too long breaks. 

Also to look at the images of the organizations. Pm2am is a much more professional company and it actually has professional looking Facebook page and flyers etc. Studifahrten on the other hand is less professional, it feels more like a "family company". 

Hopefully this wasn't too heavy to read, for a change not so many pictures :D We have had an amazing time in all of the trips and we have seen so many places in just a few months! Such a good thing that somebody is organizing the trips for us! 

Next post will be about our school!

Bis später!

Jenna&Maiju

Bratislava

Hallo!

On Sunday afternoon around 1 pm we arrived to the last stop of our trip, Bratislava, Slovakia! At this point everyone was already a bit tired from the trip, so we were hoping just to spend couple of hours getting to know Bratislava. But actually for our surprise it turned out that we need to stay in Bratislava for 9 hour, since the bus drivers need to rest.....Nobody was happy about this and we all wanted to leave earlier, but apparently it is in the German law, so we had to spent the 9 hours in Bratislava.

Our day began with a sightseeing tour. The guide of the tour was really nice and she knew a lot of stuff about the history, only downside was that it was really cold there, only +8°C and really windy...(haha not really cold for Finnish people, but we are used to the German weather!) The tour lasted only about an hour and that was actually enough, since the city was quite small. And now some pictures of the city!

Danube river

St. Martin Cathedral

St. Martin Cathedral

Holocaust Memorial

Embassy of the United States 

Advertising Nokia Lumia in Bratislava :D

Bratislava Opera

The oldest hotel in Bratislava, Carlton

Our group for the sightseeing tour!

At the end of the tour the guide recommended us a good buffet restaurant in the city center, so after the tour we decided to go there! It was a nice place and the food was okay too. The buffet cost 6€ and did not include drinks.

After eating we all just spent some time there, because they had free wifi :D At some point we decided to continue our way. We wanted to go shopping, because we had already basically seen the whole city. The guide recommended us a new shopping mall just a 10 minutes walk away from the restaurant! Also during the tour she only recommended us different shopping malls, apparently there is nothing else to do in Bratislava :D We found the shopping center and spent the evening there.

The mall closed at 9 pm and our bus was scheduled to leave at 10.45, so we needed to find a warm place to pass the time...surprisingly we ended up in a McDonald's where also all the others from our bus were :D:D

The bus didn't leave on time, surprise! And there were also some troubles at the border between Slovakia and Czech Republic. We had a presentation on Monday afternoon at 4 pm, so we started to worry if we are going to make it at all since the journey was going to last about 16 hours. We got closer and closer to Köln but not nearly on time so in Bochum we decided to take train in order to arrive in Köln on time. Luckily we made it to the presentation but not thanks to the bus!

Originally we were supposed to arrive back to Köln already at 9 am. Nobody informed us that the schedule is going to change, They only told us about this on Monday morning..and they never apologized to us about the delay. This trip didn't leave that good impression of the organizers. Despite the difficulties the cities were really beautiful and we had a great time! We think this might have been our last trip :(

The next post is going to be a comparison between the two student trip organizations we have used: pm2am student trips and Studifahrten.

Bis bald!
Jenna&Maiju

Budapest

Hallo!

On Friday evening around 11 pm we arrived to Budapest, Hungary. We went straightly to our hostel, which was called Good Mo. We were in a all-girl-room with 10 other girls. Btw there was only one shower for all of us! :D The hostel was good, but the breakfast was just ridiculous, we have never experienced such a bad one! (for example the bread was not eatable anymore..)

 The plan for the night was to have a pub crawl, which was supposed to start already at 10.30 pm, but surprisingly we were a bit late..:D Eventually we left for the pub crawl after midnight! The cost for it was 15€ and it included 1 hour of free drinking in the first bar and 1 free shot in each of the three bars.

The pub crawl started in a pub quite near to our hostel, so we all walked there together. This was the first time that we were out of the hostel, so we tried really hard to remember the way we walked there so we wouldn't get lost.....you can guess how it turned out in the end...:D:D (we arrived to our hostel at 6 in the morning by taxi.................)

All in all the pub crawl was nice, but actually not really worth the 15€. Still we had such a great time, getting to know new people and talking in German!

Jenna, Maiju, Sergio and Daniel

The next morning luckily we had time to sleep after our nightly adventures..:D Our walking tour of the city was supposed to start at 1 pm, but actually it started at 1.30 pm. The tour guide was a bit weird..she explained about half an hour of the tradition alcohol drinks of Hungary, but then she decided we didn't have enough time to go and see the most beautiful view of the city..she was also in a hurry all the time, so we basically ran through the city and got only a short overview of the city. At one point we actually lost her..she told us to walk towards the city and then just left and the whole group were wondering around, trying to find her:D:D And now pictures from the tour!

Our walking tour group!

Matthias Church

Matthias Church

Danube river

Hungarian cars...:D

Budapest Parliament House

Chain Bridge

Finnish football clubs representing in Budapest!

St. Stephen's Cathedral

After the tour we wanted to do some shopping! We headed to the Vaci -street, which was supposed to be full of clothing stores. We found only few stores and didn't actually find anything, except Jenna bought a scarf from Zara :D We did find some souvenirs though, but that was all. Then we walked to the restaurant street to find a place to eat goulash! Luckily we found a place quickly. The food was really cheap like everything else in Budapest, our meals with drinds together cost only about 8€!

The soup was okay, but nothing special. At least we tried traditional Hungarian food!

After dinner we walked back to the hostel to get some rest before the boat party at 9.30 pm! 

The boat party also cost 15€ and it lasted two hours. The boat went back and forth on the river and we saw the beautiful sights in the night time! The party was really nice! It was something different to the usual parties we have had :D The boat had two floors, in the upper one you could just hang out and look at the view and in the downstairs there was a DJ playing and people dancing!

We were terrified that the first boat in the picture was going to be our boat, luckily our boat was behind it :'D

Nice pose! (riemuidiootit)

The beautiful Parliament at night!

After the boat party there was also an after party in a club but we were too tired so we went back to the hostel to get some sleep. In the morning we were scheduled to leave at 9.30 but surprisingly we weren't on time...There was some problem with the check-out from the hostel, so we managed to leave after 10 am. We made our way to Bratislava and more about that in the next post!

Bis bald!

Jenna&Maiju

Vienna

Hallo!

Last weekend we had a trip to Vienna, Budapest and Bratislava! The trip was organized by pm2am student trips and cost 149 € including transportation, two nights in a hostel in Budapest and sightseeing tours in every city we visited. The trip started on Thursday evening and we were supposed to come back on Monday morning (more about that later...!).

Thursday evening at 18 we left Köln and drove all evening and night to Vienna, Austria! We arrived there in the morning and spent the day there :)
First we had a guided sightseeing tour by walking. The guide was really nice :) We saw all the most popular sight seeings in Vienna.

Vienna Parliament

Vienna Rathaus (City hall)

State Hall, National Library Vienna

Finnish flag!

They were already installing the Christmas decorations in the city center

St. Stephen's Cathedral

After the tour we had approximately 6 hours of free time! We were really hungry so the first thing to do was to find a restaurant and eat :)

Jenna ate Schnitzel

Maiju ate Gulasch

We decided to eat something different for a change so Jenna ordered a schnitzel (pork steak) and Maiju ate Gulasch (beef). Prices were affordable and the food was ok. Nothing special and not the best, but ok. Then we decided to go and see the popular Belvedere, because during the sightseeing tour we had no time to go there and the guide recommended us to go there.

It appeared to be further away than we thought and it took a lot of time for us to find the place :D Also Ana and Caio from Brazil wanted to go there so we decided to spend the rest of the day together. First some pictures taken when we tried to find Belvedere! :D

We found Mozart! ;)

and a cute bunny!

When we found Belvedere, we were quite disappointed because you couldn't go in without paying for an art exhibition. Luckily in the backyard there was a beautiful garden, so it was not totally in vain going there :)

Jenna and her new bff

Then we wanted to go and see a castle! :D Ana told us that she wants to go and see it, because every chocolate bar coming from Austria has a picture of it :D Nobody of us really knew what was it, but we asked about it from the desk in Belvedere and a friendly lady told us how to get there. We took a tram and about in twenty minutes we arrived to Schloss Schönbrunn! It is a castle which used to be Maria Theresia's (Sisi) home! Nowadays they arrange concerts etc. there.

Jenna, Maiju and Caio

After that we went back to the city centre to do  some souvenir shopping and also have a coffee in Aida, which is a cafe the guide recommended for us :) The cakes were delicious and prices were not bad! Such a nice place :) Even though the waitress was really rude: at first she didn't bring everything we ordered and blamed us for that, then she forgot Jenna's drink and in the end we needed to wait for the check a long time. Maybe a bad day...

Ana had SOME spare coins... :D

Then it was time to get in the bus and travel to Budapest! We will tell about it in the next post :)

Maiju&Jenna