On Sun, 29 Aug 2010, Joel Jaeggli wrote: > In both the netherlands and japan cases, not figuring it out was an > option... Once I saw what was available in the netherlands I simply > arrived at AMS and took the first train in the right direction. > > likewise with hiroshima, figuring out whether I sould be on 08:07 hikari > or the 08:13 nozomi was way to find grained a level of detail to work > out until 07:52 > At the risk of turning this into a string of competing anectdotes, let me tell you what I did for Maastricht. I went to the German Rail website (has to be less than 90 days before your travel date to PURCHASE tickets, but you can of course check any time): http://www.bahn.de/i/view/USA/en/index.shtml I then looked for trains from Frankfurt to Maastricht with an aim to spend most of the journey on German high speed trains (and the fewest changes, one was sufficient). I found a route via Endhoven which is NOT the fastest, but I picked it anyway. I then ordered the tickets for both outbound and return for delivery by mail to the US. In this particular case, the "price cannot be deteremined" message appeared because of the particular non-German trains involved. German Rail wrote me back via e-mail a couple of days later with the complete price, and within a week of going to the website (and about 3 months in advance of the IETF), I had a first class, round-trip ticket from Frankfurt to Mastricht (return via Liege). Allowing for the train changes, which I agree one should try to avoid if travelling with luggage, I would say that my journey to Maastricht was no more onerous than to Hiroshima. I do agree, however, that Hiroshima had much more to offer as meeting venue and let's not forget the extraordinary measures the city itself took to welcome us. None of this solves Mary's problem of safety and availability of groceries on a Sunday, or nearby availability of most things, and I am of course not suggesting that such concerns should be dismissed when selecting a venue. Ole _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf