Survival Tips for Travel Nightmares

Wintertime is a hodgepodge of iTuned snowboarders and luck-deprived gamblers that live on free fried food and beer by the bottle. The gondola-ride from the casinos to the top of Heavenly Valley you spend cramped with newbie skiers who struggle to stay upright while trying to pronounce your Bogner ski boots.

Boutique Hotel Gone Bland
Survival Tip: Go during colder winter months and stay in the nearby Mitte, where all the fun shopping and galleries are located.

We read the newspapers and saw the sketches; Berlin's Potsdammer Platz was supposed to be everything you could ever want in a modern city minus the flying cars. At the center of Potsdammer Platz is the coliseum-like Sony Center and this well-touted boutique hotel. Whisked through check-in, convention center-inspired hallways lead to institutional doors that could just as easily open to a German dentist's office.

While the suites are large, the décor is straight out of an Ikea catalog with loveseats upholstered in industrial fabrics and laminate office furnishings that come up a cubicle short. A sweltering summer evening results in the discovery that there's not even air conditioning, but don't open the window as the noisy neighborhood is even more worse than the heat.

Bare-Bones Business Class
Survival Tip: Phone ahead to make sure you're on a reconfigured aircraft with lie-flat or flatbed Business Class seating.

Is luxury un-American? We thought so on a recent red-eye from Los Angeles to Miami. While the ticket said First Class, the 737-aircraft seemed downright Third World minus the flying chickens. The 2-by-2 seating layout offered two Lazy-Boy style chairs in silvery-blue leather with extra storage in its busted seams.

An attempt to lift the leg rest for some sleep uncovered no leg rest at all. Disguised under a flap of leather, the airline either sawed them off to create additional rows or never had them to begin with on the aircraft. As for the in-flight entertainment, a 10-pound tubed-television suspended on the ceiling was anything but state-of-the-art and failed to ever work despite the flight attendant vigorously slapping its side.

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