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12:47 PM

"I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is not a question." made my day

THe first part of the line is automated, I did not look whether I could change it to 'post' or something like that.

I need to get some Rep today, to offset the bounty. I am almost sure to get some, as only answer to a bounty Q when it went into the grace period, but I would like to get some off a Q or A I did.

Just can not think up a Q. Only one I have planned was about a city with more canals than Amsterdam, or a continent with a better waterways system than Europe, but I bet that both of those the answer would be 'does not exist'.

1:49 PM

@ZachLipton it would be nice to restrict both the voting age and the politicians' age from the top

I would go for a 70-years-old cap

2:05 PM

Good reason to get all young people voting, so they outnumber the older ones.

Q: Where can I find arrivals / departures timetables for Italian train stations online?

@Berwyn @JoErNanO I have a new Italy question for you. Who else is an Italy expert? @GayotFow if you ever get bored of UK visa questions ;)

0

I am looking for a place where I can find the arrivals / departures timetables for all Italian train stations (or at least the ones served by Trenitalia & Italo). Ideally a pdf of those paper arrival / departures timetables that you find in the stations. See this image if you still don't know wha...

I am sitting posed with my finger over the chrome button to start a search for you.

Great :)

Not sure I will find anything, I start looking at the places I know other countries companies post those links.

Not speaking/reading Italian is no help there, I admit.

2:34 PM

@mts would this page be any use to you? You will have to do an online translation if you do not speak Italian: trenitalia.com/tcom/Informazioni/Orario-ferroviario

2:50 PM

@mts I use the trenit app for that

but I guess just for day of travel

@Willeke that's a very interesting find, it's software and not exactly what I was looking for (it has the detailed schedules per line and not per station) as far as I can tell, but defs worth an answer! Thanks

OK, I'll write that answer.

@Berwyn I do as well, but I wanted to have more of an overview of all the trains of the day, looking whether to make a morning or afternoon trip

I used to love train timetables. Learned to use the Dutch one as child, about age 9 I think, and can still read almost all published timetables.

But online searching has made things easier for many travels.

I still look for all trains on a certain line if I want to make a choice between several options.

Which is easy enough when you know the area but much harder if you can only do online searches as you do not know which line is the key one.

3:15 PM

I agree. the +1 on your A is from me :)

thanks

3:46 PM

@Berwyn and @JonathanReez those are two great answers, both resources are new to me. Will have a hard time picking the accepted answer! Thanks and +1

question has also made it on the hotlist

I have a feeling one of the things it measures for the hot list is how quickly a question gets an answer

@mts in times of doubt, use King Solomon's method: youtube.com/watch?v=wsbgwNe4Rv4

;)

hot list is basically rate of incoming answers and upvotes

so upvoting competing answers can give you considerably more rep if that makes the question hotter

and since it's bounty bonanza time, I guess we can make everyone happy in that regard :)

4:06 PM

I put up 3 bounties that I think are all busts

it's so hard finding a good question

Links? Otherwise I have to find your page

account information

travel.stackexchange.com/users/43570/berwyn?tab=bounties

Thanks

Sorry, non of those are within my knowledge area.

I though the visa one was interesting

Have you considered mine? travel.stackexchange.com/users/27650/willeke?tab=bounties

I do not do visa (unless pressed into it and guided by @GayotFow

4:13 PM

I have looked at yours. Don't think I can solve them though

Fair enough. I did not pick them because they were easy to do.

Q: How do I find the cheapest date to book a given hotel?

If you are looking for a big bounty, give this one another shot:

7

I am looking for a site or service that allows me to search a hotel (or hotels, or a specific beach/location) for the cheapest date. Most sites want you to tell them when you plan to visit. I WANT the site to tell me when to visit based off of the best price

online-resources bookings hotels tips-and-tricks

Q: who is exempt from schengen visa

1

I am British, my husband is from El salvador. We want to visit frankfurt, madrid., crete and italy for a few days only before going to UK . Do we need any visas like a tourist visa or a schengen visa?

visas schengen eu spouses

I am not going to award the bounty to any of the existing answers

and here is a hint: travel.stackexchange.com/a/71438/32134

Incorrectly closed as a duplicate. El Salvador is an annex ii country, while Jordan is not.

4:18 PM

For the hotel thing I have scripts to do that kind of thing

But I only book Hyatts

You could post your scripts or describe how you set them up at least

that'd be amazing

It'd be impossible

They're perl scripts that I run on linux

They calculate every possible combination of stays to find the lowest cost in a city

@phoog did you re-open vote and/or put a comment on the Q about the reason it is wrongly closed?

which might be night 1-3 in hotel 1, night 4 in hotel 2, night 5 in hotel 2, night 6-7 in hotel 3

@phoog thanks for pointing out, have voted to re-open

@Berwyn what exactly is the impossible part about it?

4:20 PM

Which Q is that?

It's just too hard to explain, set up and use

I don't write programs that anyone else can use :)

I have just seen your comment and voted to re-open

@Berwyn are you afraid of this xkcd.com/1695 ;)

Something like that...

Seriously, I would love to have that as an answer. You don't need to post code if you are not comfortable with that, just describe your methods so that a decent programmer would be able to create something similar

Take a look to the Q as it is now, you don't want to leave it like this!

@Willeke I did. If there's another question about which countries are in Annex II, we could close this one as a duplicate of that one, but a cursory search didn't find one.

4:24 PM

one of the answers is wrong, the other one is to ask a travel agent and the other two are mine and can't award a bounty on those

at least give a downvote to the wrong answer, since it's still on top ;)

especially how you access the booking interface to get prices would be interesting

or post it on stackoverflow rather than here ;)

Which question is it?

I just scrape the web site with WWW::Mechanize

Q: How do I find the cheapest date to book a given hotel?

7

I am looking for a site or service that allows me to search a hotel (or hotels, or a specific beach/location) for the cheapest date. Most sites want you to tell them when you plan to visit. I WANT the site to tell me when to visit based off of the best price

online-resources bookings hotels tips-and-tricks

right, moved the other answers out of the way :)

While I do understand that people want to search this, I do not know how to do it. I would just select a city or town, use booking.com (which I mostly use anyhow) and compare prices between different dates.

thanks :)

4:30 PM

But I bet that is not the answer you are looking for.

@Willeke I'm afraid not ;) too menial if you are very flexible

That is me, not very flexible in hotels, for me it is the flights or the events I visit that decide the dates.

Mostly I have a three week window for a two week stay, with one weekend I have to be there.

I book hotels on points for personal stays

and for work stays I just need to make sure I can find ones in my chain under the price cap set by work

that does make things easier

But if I did want to stay in a particular hotel any time of the year when it were cheapest, I'd probably write a script to search the hotel site

Though it's often not that simple, since prices fluctuate

4:38 PM

If it is for one hotel only, I would call them and ask them for the best deal they do for any date in the period.

And in some hotels, you can find a cheaper stay by splitting up the nights

It is when you want to compare hotels as well as dates it gets difficult.

My script does that for Hyatt. A 7 night stay has dozens of combinations of sub-stays, than can reduce the price by 25%

@Berwyn prices can be different if booked A-B-C as opposed to booking A, B and C nights?

yes

4:42 PM

sounds like a good idea then

and not necessarily booking each night separately

I've even booked hotels for a longer stay than I wanted and cancelled the last couple of nights at check-in

What kind of work do you usually travel for?

consulting

IT

developer? :)

no. security

4:53 PM

OSCP?

as in the qualification?

as in "university"

Eh?

I know there's OSCP/OSCE and a bunch of other security programs

just curious what you did to learn

I predate any of those things :)

4:58 PM

of course there's also the "academic" security side, which is more about boring ISOs and encryption algos

5:27 PM

/me gets ready to be downvoted

amateur lawyer mode activated

5:38 PM

I have tackeled the 'blue girls' Q by @GayotFow Hoping I did guess his wants right.

7:22 PM

@Berwyn do you think it is possible to redo the referendum?

I doubt it

I think the only option is the general election

to get out of it

According to what I heard on Belgium and Dutch news, people have been petitioning to get a new referendum, way with more signatures than needed to get it into parliament to be talked about.

If they are smart, they will have general elections before any final decisions are made.

@Berwyn, In that Mumbay airport transfer answer, could you give simple advice as in : this one is too short, both are too short or you can trust to make it? Or are all very hard to predict?

Reading your answer I would not know which ticket to book.

I think there's only the option of 1:30 on AI and 2:30 for Indigo

Effectively there's only one usable connecting flight per day on each

But would you be comfortable buying either, just one or neither?

Mr 7000+ rep :D

I'd probably go on Indigo

LCCs typically have better on-time performance

AI has a terrible on-time performance and a shorter connection

7:38 PM

I have added a comment showing that sentiment.

Thanks

7:49 PM

Cheers

My prescience in getting downvoted was accurate

8:24 PM

I had not down voted, but also not upvoted as I read the remark that the answer was not relevant and your 'I'll change it'.

9:06 PM

@HeidelBerGensis how should the Israeli double-citizens question be split?

I don't know much about the specific countries and creating 15 separate question sounds like an overkill

As for the legality - StackExchange is only concerned with American law

American law generally respects laws in other nations, but there's an exception for the Israeli boycott

So it's not okay to discuss bringing a bible into UAE, as the US respects UAE laws on religion

But it's okay to discuss circumventing the Israeli issue

Rory Alsop

@Berwyn you know, you could come and visit Security.SE...

@RoryAlsop poor Berwyn will lose his job if he starts frequenting two SEs

Rory Alsop

@JonathanReez It could be handy for his day job - many fine security consultants over there

Plus, 2 isn't many

stackexchange.com/users/251740/rory-alsop?tab=accounts

lol

@JonathanReez mention the country he/she wants to visit.. then the research can be easy.. some countries even if the rules state that it is not allowed, in reality they don't really care about the stamp..

@HeidelBerGensis Maybe an answer could mention two options - one for 'relaxed' countries, and one for 'paranoid' countries?

9:14 PM

@JonathanReez According to the WP article you linked, it is perfectly legal (albeit unsourced) for dual citizens of Israel and somewhere else to visit enemy countries with their somewhere else passport.

@JonathanReez most arabs, don't even mention the "I" word.. we consider it an enemy country.. even the countries that have relations with the "I" country.. such as egypt.. or qatar.. people there have double hate..

@Jan yes, it's legal, it's just something an answer should mention

There's around 1 million double Israeli citizens and many of them do travel to Arab countries

But I couldn't find a specific guide on the Internet

@JonathanReez visiting iran for example, can be a serious problem.. iran might make a big deal out of it...

@JonathanReez yes i know there are and i know they travel... The Arabs of 1948 do travel while they hold that passport.. but that's a different story..

the thing is, I am not against the question, but a detailed answer for all of the countries would be bad idea.. plus, mostly will source anecdotes.. no clear rules, except that "it is not allowed"..

I could post the answer that I gave to my friend

Which is to fly to Russia, exit for a few days, then fly to Islamic countries

so that the passport stamps are 'clean'

but it's a bit expensive - staying in Moscow for a few days, getting point-to-point tickets, etc

staying for a few days or not will not make any difference..

as long as the passport does not show any stamps, then he/she will be fine..

but again, no guide..

9:21 PM

Wouldn't a perfectly clean passport be suspicious?

or one with no recent stamps?

why

everyone must travel for a first time..

a new passport is clean..

never heard that it would be suspicious..

to have a "clean passport"

I mean imagine you fly Tel-Aviv-Istanbul-Dubai

show Israeli passport on departure, Russian on landing

the Russian one has no recent stamps - so how did this person exit his country?

so.. ?

since Russia does stamp passports of citizens

A: I would like to visit Israel. How can I work or visit after that in UAE?

many countries do not stamp exit stamps..

i wa never checked for the "exit" stamp in the arrival destination..

AFAIK, dubai does not allow it, and they will deport him.. but, only if it is obvious.. they wouldnt try hard to find that out..

i am sure this was answered before..

had a dejavu just now..

5

No problem -- the United Arab Emirates (and hence Dubai) does not care about Israeli stamps, it's only Israeli passport holders who may have a tough time. Here's the UAE Embassy to the US with a straightforward answer: Q: I am an American traveling to the UAE, will the UAE allow me entry i...

9:52 PM

@Berwyn @Willeke the problem with the general election approach seems to be that no party is unified enough in its position on leaving the EU to run on the issue. At least that is what I've read.

@JonathanReez Where do you get the idea that the policy is "don't help people who are trying to break US law"?

@phoog UKIP seems pretty unified on the Leave approach ;)

@Jan yes, okay, so if UKIP wins a general election that settles it. But otherwise...

God help the world if that happens …

Yes indeed. But the basic point is that there doesn't seem to be a realistic chance that a general election would cancel the referendum result.

If enough candidates basically running on a Remain platform were re-elected, that could signal a mandate to remain perhaps?

the vast majority of current MPs were remainers after all

10:15 PM

Yeah, I totally agree. As the German saying goes: Now Britain's got the salad. (They need to find out how to work with it).

I'll trust that's hilarious if you have a German sense of humor

@phoog The policy is "Don't help break any laws", but what is really a "law"? I would argue that only laws recognized by the US count, since SE is an American company

The US does recognize the majority of laws in other countries, even if those particular laws are different in the US

One exception is extradition - the US will only extradite for crimes that are also crimes in the US

Another exception is the Israeli boycott - where the US was actively punishing companies for adhering to related laws in other countries

Another (historical) example is the South African apartheid

If it was still running, I believe a question on how to hire a black employee would be legal on Expats.SE

since the US enacted sanctions against the South African government

to quote Bill Clinton "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is."

yeah, is perjury against the law anyway? ;)

Q: Asking questions / Giving advice which may break the law?

8

So a user asks: How do I minimize the chances of TSA agents confisticating liquids larger than 3 ounces? on Travel.SE. Now, if the TSA rules are legally binding, aren't they essentially asking about breaking the law? And if so, should we close it, and under what category? Aside: Does anyone k...

discussion questions answers legal

See the official response from Stackexchange

@ZachLipton Bill Clinton got away with it ;)

"When in doubt, err on the side of helping people" seems like a good guideline indeed

10:30 PM

Of course I won't deny my own views on the Israeli-Arab conflict make me a bit biased...

10:41 PM

@ZachLipton Nope, it's matter-of-fact. It's basically: 'You got yourself into some situation. I don't envy you, maybe I tried to warn you. Now it's up to you to sort it all out.'

that does nicely sum it up yes