vartec

2,377 reputation

215

bio	website	careers.stackoverflow.com/…
	location	Amsterdam, The Netherlands
	age	36
visits	member for	1 year, 8 months
	seen	9 hours ago
stats	profile views	45

	2,377 reputation	bio	website	careers.stackoverflow.com/…	visits	member for	1 year, 8 months
215 badges		location	Amsterdam, The Netherlands		seen	9 hours ago

summary answers questions tags badges favorites bounties reputation activity

130 Comments

suggestions reviews revisions comments badges posts accepts all

22h	comment	Is it safe to visit Peru? Safety is always relative. Generally as a European I'd consider both US and Peru unsafe. OTOH, San Francisco area (OP's location) - 13 murders per 100K, Peru - 10 murders per 100K.
May 17	comment	How can roadside cafe quality be measured in Greece or Turkey Depends on your definition of "quality", there seems to be correlation with how elaborated the food is, but a simple grilled shashlik served with bread and cabbage salad might be better quality, than some more elaborated food.
May 17	comment	Is it safe to visit Peru? For sure safer than US, where US citizens actually do get kidnapped.
May 14	comment	Where to take photo for Schengen Visa? AFAIK, smile is allowed, as long as it's not grinning. Rule of thumb is that the mouth cannot be open.
May 10	comment	Local cuisine in Peru Another one worth mentioning is Pachamanca
May 8	comment	Is it common that hostels charge more for woman only dorm rooms? From financial point of view it's logical that they'd charge more for dorms rooms where they discriminate against big part of potential clients, be it "women-only", "whites-only", "muslim-only" or whatever. OTOH, for example in Europe "women-only" rooms would be either illegal or in the grey zone. You cannot discriminate based on sex.
May 7	comment	Do Europeans require a visa to visit USA? Being part of EU is completely irrelevant in case of US visa.
May 5	comment	Can I put Kensington lock in my hand luggage? Problem in Poland is that until recently security screening in international airports was handled by the Border Guard. But since 2013 it's no longer their duty, thus airports had to hire private security contractors. Their training (or lack of thereof) leaves much to be desired.
Apr 29	comment	Why do airports sometimes detect traces of explosives in bags? @jwenting: Actually not "false sense of security", it's rather that people are irrationally scared of terrorist on planes, thus with "security theater" you give them more realistic sense of security. As in air travel is actually very safe, but it isn't really thanks to TSA. Air marshals OTOH are true security, but they go incognito.
Apr 29	comment	Why do airports sometimes detect traces of explosives in bags? @jwenting: Semtex is tagged with Ethylene glycol dinitrate. BTW. "foreign" as in extra-terrestrial? :-P The law obliging manufacturers to add taggants is a UN convention. As for homemade explosives, IIRC that is the problem, hence for example the ban on liquids, as homemade liquid explosives are not easily detectable. Anyway, airport "security" isn't really about security, it's about "security theater"
Apr 26	comment	Why do airports sometimes detect traces of explosives in bags? @Karlson: as far as I know, it's not chemical reaction, they just place swabs in the ion-mobility spectrometer.
Apr 24	comment	What are the restrictions on importing honey to uk from Czech Republic for distribution, and is there a limited amount as for answer to the question: both Czech Republic and UK are part of European Union, and one of basic concepts in EU is free trade.
Apr 22	comment	Is there a way to get to the top of Mount Everest without hiking too far? How taking unprepared tourist to Everest ends: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Mount_Everest_disaster
Apr 19	comment	Is it allowed to carry “a knife” or “a pepper spray” while traveling by road in the Schengen area as a woman? @jwenting: that would make great question for Skeptics.SE ;-)
Apr 19	comment	Is it allowed to carry “a knife” or “a pepper spray” while traveling by road in the Schengen area as a woman? @jwenting: not unlike caliphates of France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.
Apr 19	comment	Is it allowed to carry “a knife” or “a pepper spray” while traveling by road in the Schengen area as a woman? @jwenting: high rate of rape in Sweden is due very broad definition of rape there, which in other countries would constitute not rape, but sexual harassment.
Apr 18	comment	Why is buying an airline ticket from the company more expensive than from an aggregator like Skyscanner? actually this is not only limited to airlines, may other businesses have lower prices when accessing from aggregator sites. Logic behind it is that if someone uses aggregator site, he's not decided on airline yet. And obviously lower the price, higher in the search. Sometimes $5 can make difference between result #1 and result #20.
Apr 18	comment	Traveling international from Peru with dual citizenship baby Actually in some countries it's more than just "should be", it's a legal obligation to use country's passport while entering/leaving if you're citizen.
Apr 18	comment	Traveling international from Peru with dual citizenship baby Leave Peru with Peruvian, enter Poland with American.
Apr 16	comment	Is there catering on Dutch domestic trains? When I traveled on A'dam->Brussels train few months ago, there was a trolley (train was normal IC, not Thalys), but they didn't offer much (coffee and candy bars). That train seemed to be operated by Belgian Rail.