A Change in Policy.

For the past few years, as readership of these posts has slowly grown, I have been getting proposals from people and companies wanting to run advertising here. I’ve turned them down, all of them, without a second thought. For one thing, I was uncomfortable with what I felt would be taken as an implied endorsement of whatever it was those people were trying to sell. That’s about to change.
 
PrintRailbookers, a company specializing in train travel, has asked if I would include ads for their services on this page. After more than a little thought, I’m willing to give it a try.
 
I’m comfortable with that decision because I have used Railbookers on three occasions for my personal travel: an extensive trip to Germany, Russia, Mongolia and China—all by train; another rail journey to France, Denmark and Norway; and this past summer to France, England and Scotland. All travel once I left the U.S. was by rail and Railbookers did all the ticketing, plus recommending and reserving hotels for which they provided vouchers. They also provided all necessary information for visas and they arranged for someone to meet me upon arrival in Moscow and in Shanghai and drive me to my hotels. They even got me a choice seat for the Military Tattoo in Edinburgh.
 
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Here’s an example of service above-and-beyond-the-call that I received a year ago when, because of a demonstration by migrant workers at the entrance to the Chunnel, the Eurostar train I was on returned to Paris after taking us halfway to London.
 
Even before we arrived in Paris, I received a text from Matthew Foy, my Railbookers contact in London, asking me to call him. Railbookers had heard of the disruption of Eurostar service, knew I was on that train, and Matthew contacted me on his own initiative to see if I needed any help. Furthermore, when he left work for the day, he handed me off to a Railbookers colleague in Sydney, who had been briefed on my situation and was available to assist.
 
At any rate, I do want everyone to know that these links will soon be appearing and that the company behind the ads is thoroughly professional and has my personal recommendation.