Single in a Double Occupancy World...

Single...

In a Double Occupancy World

Okay, first of all may I just say how excited I am to finally have a use for the picture of the Siamese twin banana that I found at the grocery store in Brazil last month. Have you ever eaten a Siamese twin banana? I had never even seen a Siamese twin banana before this one and so I thought it was pretty cool. I guess I'm easily entertained.

Second of all, I will warn you that unlike my last post, this post is a sappy post of me complaining about my sorry lonely life. So, if that isn't your thing, you can stop reading right now. But if you do decide to read on, consider yourself forewarned. So right now I should be on my way to Sweden for my 30th birthday but I'm not. I wasn't ever really sure that I'd be able to pull off the trip which is why I didn't want a ton of people knowing that I was trying to go. But, somehow a lot of you did find out that I was trying to put together a shotgun trip to Scandinavia. I guess I'm not that good at keeping things quiet. Anyway, the reason I wasn't sure if I'd be able to pull it off or not was because I didn't actually get my ticket until LATE Wednesday night. Yes, less than a week ago and I was supposed to fly out TODAY. Earlier this year I was trying to get a little trip together for August but potential travel partners were falling out like flies. That is a saying, isn't it? Well, if it isn't a saying what I mean to say is that I'd find one person that would think they could go with me and we'd get looking at tickets and stuff and then a few weeks later they'd tell me that it wasn't working out for them to go. So, then I'd find another person that acted interested in going and we'd start to plan the trip and then they'd back out too. I have never had such a hard time finding someone to travel with me. I don't know what's wrong with me. Anyway, by the time I planned and unplanned the trip with several people and nothing was working out, it was the end of July. Part of the problem was that during what should have been prime planning time I was in Africa with prehistoric Internet service so I wasn't able to plan as well. And more often than not, I'm the trip planner, the one trying to talk everybody else into going, so I guess if I'm not able to actively bug/convince people to go with me then nothing happens. So anyway...last week, in an act of desperation/depression after finding out that the Antarctica cruise I'd wanted to go on was sold out (because I'd held on trying to find someone to go with me) I decided to call up United and see if I could find a ticket to Scandinavia using some old frequent flyer miles that I've had for a long time and had just never used. And, they had a ticket, and a really great one at that. So, I got the ticket and started researching Scandinavia and just decided that I'd go alone. Anyway, super long story short, this morning, after staying up most of the night packing and still trying to plan things, I just decided not to go. Of course I can't just be like a normal person and decide more than 6 hours before my flight was supposed to leave. Anyway, I wish that I had just decided several months ago to go solo on this trip so I would have actually started planning more in advance. Because it wasn't so much the travelling alone that made me decide to not go (since I'm probably safer in Scandinavia than I am in SLC alone) it was more just the fact that I didn't have ANYTHING really planned in advance and because of that the trip was going to be a lot more expensive than it would have been if planned in advance and there were some things I wanted to do that were already sold out. And I wouldn't have time to get a Eurail pass and so my train tickets were going to cost me double of what they would have if I'd had even a few weeks in advance to plan. Sometimes it is fun to just not plan in advance and go with the flow, but it is a lot chancier doing that when you are going to be alone. It is just that when you are traveling alone you are a little more limited in where you can stay, if you're on a budget like I am, and I was having a hard time finding a decent place to stay for a decent price (even on Scandinavian pricing terms) and I didn't want to get to a city and end up not being able to find a cheap room and having to spend like 400 dollars on a hotel room. At least when you're with someone you can split the cost or if you have to end up sleeping in a train station or something at least you can take turns sleeping and guarding your luggage so you don't get robbed and stuff. Okay, so that is just the BACKGROUND (sorry it was so long) for my whiny post titled "Single in a Double Occupancy World." I'm starting to think that there is some big international conspiracy against single people, especially when it comes to traveling because they sure don't make traveling as a single person easy and affordable. For example, for me traveling alone, just getting from the Stockholm airport to the Stockholm city center via train was going to cost me around 63 dollars round trip. BUT, for two adults traveling together both can go for 65 dollars round trip. And, those two people can bring up to 4 children under the age of 18 for FREE. So, basically, airport transfer in Stockholm for a family of 6 would be 65 dollars and for just one poor single person it would be 63. Really fair, isn't it? And from a business standpoint this doesn't even make since. I mean you might want to offer some sort of a family or group discount to encourage large groups to travel in your country, but they aren't really benefiting too much from this deal. They are making like and extra 2 bucks and allowing 5 extra people to crowd up the train. So, basically the single people are carrying the main financial burden for the train, kind of like we do with taxes in the USA. Okay, so I get that hotel rooms are cheaper if you split it with another person. I get that hotels aren't going to give a single person a room for half as much money as a couple would pay. That makes sense, when they can make double with the same amount of space, why wouldn't they? But why not just build some smaller single rooms? And at some of the hostels I looked into I could pay the same amount to stay in a huge dorm room with 15 stinky Germans as a couple could each pay for a private double room. Now that just doesn't make sense to me. There are all sorts of discounts for travel...group discounts, family discounts, student discounts, senior citizen discounts, military discounts, teacher discounts, etc., but I've never seen a SINGLE PERSON DISCOUNT. In fact, single people pay more. Here's a great example of that. So I've been looking into going on a cruise to South America an Antarctica next year. I haven't been able to find anyone who can or who wants to go. So finally last week I called the cruise company to find out about just going alone. I knew that they had a program called "Single Share" where if you want to go on a cruise by yourself instead of having to pay for the whole double occupancy cabin by yourself they'll match you with another single person of your same sex who hopefully won't be a complete psycho and cut off your ear and eat it during the night. So, this cruise is 1900 dollars, which for a 20 day cruise covering 4 countries and Antarctica is pretty much a steal of a deal. So, you'd think that the "Single Share" price might be just the 1900 for your half of the room plus maybe even 100 or 200 extra dollars to cover the cruise company's costs of organizing the roommate thing. That made sense to me. But, no, that's not how it is at all. Instead they told me that the "Single Share" cost would be about 3400 dollars! What the what the? So, I could either pay 3400 dollars to share my cabin with a complete stranger and potential be killed and eaten in the night or worse, or I could just pay 3800 for the whole cabin by myself. So basically it is like you pay for two people but just one gets to go. Shoot I might as well just pay for someone to go with me if I was going to do that! So the greedy cruise company (which I believe plays a major part in the conspiracy against single people) will make 6800 dollars off a cabin with two single people in it, verses 3800 dollars off a double occupancy situation. How does this make sense? How is this even fair? Someday, I believe, the next generation will look back on our time right now and say to themselves, "How did they ever treat single people so crappy?" just like I look back at the pre-Civil Rights era or pre-Feminist movement and think to myself, 'What were people thinking? How could they be so cruel?' Anyway, so basically, sometimes it really sucks being single. That's all. Now I need to go unpack my bags. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the airline let me change the dates of my tickets and I didn't have to pay a fee, so that was nice. They do that for single and married people I guess. Progressive. Anyway, I'm now scheduled to go in June of next year. So, if anybody wants to see the midnight sun in Scandinavia with me next year, let me know. If I can't get anyone to go with me at least I'll have more time to plan and can maybe find some better deals.