On the road (1) Six countries, nine days COMPLETED - Page 23 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
And a very special thank you to our Guides (moderators), past and present, who kept our forums a happy place to be. You are the glue that held everything together, and we are forever grateful to you. Thank you aliceinwdw, Caldercup, MrsM, WillCAD, Fortissimo, GingerJ, HiddenMickey, CRCrazy, Eeyoresmom, disneyknut, disneydani, Cam22, chezp, WDWfan, Luvsun, KMB733, rescuesk, OhToodles!, Colexis Mom, lfredsbo, HiddenMickey, DrDolphin, DopeyGirl, duck addict, Disneybine, PixieMichele, Sandra Bostwick, Eeyore Tattoo, DyanKJ130, Suzy Q'Disney, LilMarcieMouse, AllisonG, Belle*, Chrissi, Brant, DawnDenise, Crystalloubear, Disneymom9092, FanOfMickey, Goofy4Goofy, GoofyMom, Home4us123, iamgrumpy, ilovedisney247, Jennifer2003, Jenny Pooh, KrisLuvsDisney, Ladyt, Laughaholic88, LauraBelle Hime, Lilianna, LizardCop, Loobyoxlip, lukeandbrooksmom, marisag, michnash, MickeyMAC, OffKilter_Lynn, PamelaK, Poor_Eeyore, ripkensnana, RobDVC, SHEANA1226, Shell of the South, snoozin, Statelady01, Tara O'Hara, tigger22, Tink and Co., Tinkerbelz, WDWJAMBA, wdwlovers, Wendyismyname, whoSEZ, WildforWD, and WvuGrrrl. You made the magic.
We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
That said, PassPorter is not going away. Most of the resources will remain online for as long as we can support them, and after that we will find ways to make whatever we can available. PassPorter means a great deal to us, and to many of you, and we will do our best to keep it alive in whatever way we can. Our server costs are high, and they'll need to come out of our pockets, so in the future you can expect some changes so we can bring those costs down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
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Catching up on two updates -- First, great luck on finding the cathedral complete with a parking spot. I love the colors in this particular cathedral, very calming and peaceful as well as beautiful. The view you all discovered was so neat of Lyons. Annecy is a beautiful city, so glad they reclaimed the beautiful lake, too.
Sunday 21 March part four: I dont want to miss the Swiss border! :
Not long after that, we saw a sign about vignettes being compulsory for motorway driving in Switzerland, which was fine, as wed purchased ours before we left home, but then I started to panic, thinking that perhaps wed miss the border to Switzerland. Well, when we finally got to it, there was no chance of that. :
You can tell that the Swiss are very proud of their country, with flags prominently on display at the border. You may be wondering why theres a border, when all the countries in Europe are members of the European Union. Well, theres a very good reason for that. Switzerland is not a member of the European Union and never has been. When I was a kid, my mother, whos Swiss, always had to go through a separate line for immigration to us, as Switzerland wasnt a member of the European Union then. Why? Because of course its a neutral country and doesnt align itself to any organisation.
So, we encountered customs as we approached the border. We were pulled to one side and I thought it was because we had English number plates, but no, they were checking all the cars for the vignettes. I pointed ours out, which was inside a holder, but he told me no. I put it on the dashboard, as I thought thats what he was saying to us, but no, it turned out we had to actually stick it to the windscreen. If only theyd explained that to us in the letter we got with the thing, that wouldve made it much easier.
The problem finally fixed and the pesky vignette firmly attached, we were on our way.
It was clear almost immediately that you were in a different country. Ok, so French was still the predominant language, but the signs were different and my goodness, the Swiss are proud of their country and rightly too.
I will confess that I was very glad, in one way, to be leaving France and entering Switzerland. With the vignette, it meant that the roads were effectively paid for upfront and we wouldnt have to worry about any more toll roads. They had become a bit of a pain, as the time wore on, as Mark was having real difficulty judging the distance for the toll booths and, on occasions, I was really having to strain to pick up tickets or pay the fare.
Very quickly, we came upon Geneva Airport and knew we were close to our hotel, as it was by the airport. I was amazed that you could see the airport building so clearly from the motorway, as we went along.
And then we were there, with the Crowne Plaza in front of us. It looked like an interesting building and we were able to park near the entrance. When we walked in, we had to look for reception, as that was to the right, along with one of the restaurants and, later we were to learn, the other restaurant and the pool were to the left hand side. My goodness, it was a huge place.
We were given a room on the seventh floor and, as we approached the room, we realised that theyd obviously heard about us, as we were right at the end of the corridor. When we threw open the door, not only did we have a nice big room, but we also had a huge balcony. It overlooked the most bizarre things, including the VW factory, a graveyard the rest of the hotel, the car park below, including our car beneath us and the runway off to the left. The place was huge. You could easily have a party out here!
We relaxed for a little while, with Mark proving that he needed some sleep with the immortal words I dont speak Swiss. For anyone else wondering, the country speaks three different languages, all of which are official languages of the country. Geneva and the area around Lake Geneva speaks French, the very southern end of the country nearest to Italy speaks Italian and the rest of the country speaks German. However, there are variations on those languages. As someone with a Swiss mother, I knew only too well from learning French when I was a kid that theres a Swiss-French version of French, as I used to get into trouble with my French teacher for using that variation...
Then we headed out to explore Geneva. As we asked Tim to take us to the city centre, I thought oh good, its only 10 minutes away, much better than the 20 plus minutes he said for Lyon. I shouldve known better, as we got stuck in lots of traffic. Mark declared maybe it was rush-hour traffic, until I reminded him that it was Sunday. Well, maybe it was shoppers, he speculated, until I pointed out that all the shops appeared to be closed. Good grief, this place was dead, except the roads were packed. And guess what else? It was raining. As a result, I didnt get many photos on the way into the city.
As we drove, we saw lots and lots of cranes and building work. As Mark said, it was as if there was no recession. Finally, after Tim declared we were in the city centre and we couldnt see any attractions, so we decided to plus in one and chose Jet dEau, the plume of water thats pushed 140 metres (nearly 500 feet) the air. Tim brought us out right opposite the thing and, amazingly, our luck for parking held, and we were able to park right by the junction for it.
The Swiss-German is rather hard to understand as a "Germany"-German speaker. We call it "Switzerduitsch"
Sabine, do you happen to know if Austrian German is different to Germany German? I'm alright speaking Germany German as I did it at school, but my guidebooks say that some parts of Austria have their own variation. I'll be gutted if we get there and I can't put my seven years of learning into practice!!
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Tinkerboo (or in the real world, Toyah) Reading Challenge 2015: 0/84
Follow my journey from sweaty panting mess to running goddess (I hope!) Out walking with The Boy...
My curiousity has been going as I read the posts. Early in this TR you mentioned you had a new car, but never mentioned anything more about it. What make and model do you have now? Great pictures, and yes it looks like it would not be possible to miss the Swiss border.
My curiousity has been going as I read the posts. Early in this TR you mentioned you had a new car, but never mentioned anything more about it. What make and model do you have now? Great pictures, and yes it looks like it would not be possible to miss the Swiss border.
She's (because all cars are she ) is a Skoda Superb. Beautiful car, she's our second Skoda and we've been very pleased with both cars from them. I think the Superb and the Octavia (our previous model) are now amongst the top sellers in the UK, which says something.
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Austrian German ... Germany German ... Germany German
I'm sooooo confused!..
I was going to say that I thought the Swiss spoke German... I guess I was right... ... ... and wrong!!
I had to google "swiss vignette" to find out what it was. Cheryl you are soooo furthering my education with your TRs! Only this time, I'm enjoying my studies!
I haven't heard of Skoda since I was stationed in Turkey, back in the '70's!
OK... I'm ready for the PAR-TAY!! That room surely is big enough! I'll cash in a couple of FF miles and we'll book a weekend to Switzerland!!
(Uh-Oh, I better watch what I post with this crowd... someone will start a new "Swiss Weekend" thread!)
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Sabine, do you happen to know if Austrian German is different to Germany German? I'm alright speaking Germany German as I did it at school, but my guidebooks say that some parts of Austria have their own variation. I'll be gutted if we get there and I can't put my seven years of learning into practice!!
Austrian German is indeed different to Germany German but it's not as bad as Swiss German. The difference is mainly in how things are pronounced. The written language is the same.
Now, as a native German (as in Germany German - getting Kenny all confused again ), I can understand Austrian German just fine. Not sure if you will be, though. Just tell people you're a non-native speaker - most Austrians are able to speak "proper" German (that's Germany German ).
OK... I'm ready for the PAR-TAY!! That room surely is big enough! I'll cash in a couple of FF miles and we'll book a weekend to Switzerland!!
(Uh-Oh, I better watch what I post with this crowd... someone will start a new "Swiss Weekend" thread!)
Now there's an idea! If you do ever come over, we'd definitely come and meet you for the weekend.
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the rest of the hotel, the car park below, including our car beneath us and the runway off to the left. The place was huge. You could easily have a party out here! 
As a result, I didnt get many photos on the way into the city. 
Education, nostalgia, and, of course, PAR-TAY!!!
Cheryl you are soooo furthering my education with your TRs! Only this time, I'm enjoying my studies! 
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