10 Weeks in Europe - Part 8 - Random Thoughts

1. Favorite activity: Wandering around the streets, especially the little alley streets, just being there. I know I was always either walking around with my mouth hanging open at the sights or just smiling stupidly in my excitement at seeing these places. It was awesome. We did an amazing amount of just walking around. Upon arrival in each new place, one of us would say, “We made it! We’re in .......” We really were like a couple of kids.

2. Other Favorite Activity: Drinking coffee! It was fun to observe the different customs surrounding coffee drinking – and figuring out how to ask for what we wanted. I think our biggest spending item may have been coffee drinking! But what a great way to people watch! We were intrigued to learn that in Spain there is one price for a cup of coffee at the bar (low), another for a coffee at a table, and a third price for coffee at an outside table (highest). The locals walk in, stand at the bar, down their caffeine fix and leave. It appears that they need their fix several times a day, but it has little or nothing to do with socializing. Now that I think about it, the 3-tier system wasn’t just for coffee. It was for everything, including food.
3. Awesome Architecture: I was struck by the difference in the architecture. In Spain and Italy, the buildings were awesomely detailed and artistic. It seemed that their creators simply wanted to impress the world with the most complex, artistic, expensive structures in the world (“Where did they get all that marble?” / “How did they DO that?”). If they were also strong and secure, so much the better. But as we traveled to Austria and Germany, and to some extent the Czech Republic, it seemed that the buildings’ designers had been aiming for big, powerful, and secure. If they were also beautiful, that was o.k. Usually they were. But many in Austria and Germany seemed strictly utilitarian. Interestingly, clothing styles seemed to follow a similar concept! After the classy dressers of Italy, Austria seemed downright homespun.
4. Getting Around: The only way to travel extensively through Europe is by train. Eurail pass in hand, we felt the freedom of being able to go anywhere, although there were additional charges for sleeping cars or reserved seats, and a separate pass was required for the Czech Republic. The trains were (almost) always on time and it was a very relaxed way to travel. There were all different sorts of seats and accommodations on board, but almost all of them were very nice, even luxurious in some instances. Some of our more interesting experiences were related to the train system. In the larger cities we used the Metro systems (not included on the Eurail pass, but very inexpensive) to get around everywhere easily. There were only 3 places we wanted to go where we couldn’t get to by train, but took the bus, which was also enjoyable and convenient.
5. Carrying Stuff: The only way to carry your stuff around Europe is by backpack. We saw many people struggling up stairs in train stations and metro stations (yes, some have escalators, but not all) and in hotels (yes some have elevators, but not all) carrying or dragging suitcases. Smiling, but trying not to gloat, we “bounced” up the stairs with all our stuff on our backs. By the way, the ground floor in Europe is zero, not one, so if they tell you the room is on the second floor, that means there are two flights of stairs to climb!
6. Packing: The only way to backpack for an extended period of time is to drastically limit the amount of stuff you take along. My full backpack weighed 12 pounds when we left home. Any more than that would have been too much for me. Do you really need more than 3 outfits to wear? We won’t discuss what it weighed upon our return, with the cookbooks, art books, flyers and picture postcards, as well as the wine and cheese purchased on the last day, but I have a tip for the next trip: Paper weighs a lot. Take along a few big manila envelopes and mail the accumulated paper back home to yourself every couple of weeks. Wish I had thought of that before.
7. Guidebooks are Heavy: We read numerous guidebooks before we left, then tore out just the parts we thought we needed to take with us. I didn’t want to throw them away once we had been to each area, so I kept carrying them around. Another time, I would mail them back home to myself.
8. Lodging: Spending a lot of money on lodging is not necessary in most places. Also, there is no direct connection between cost and quality. We always took rooms with private baths, and the rooms were always more than acceptable. Most were really nice, and had been recently renovated, with nice modern bathrooms. Our lowest cost room was 39 Euro ($48 US), and that was one of the nicer places we stayed. Although we paid much more in some places, it was mostly because we were too lazy to look around for a better price, or didn’t want to spend the time walking around looking. The lines between hotels, pensiones, and hostels were blurred, with many calling themselves “pension/hotel,” or “hostel/hotel,” although generally speaking, the “hotels” had things we didn’t really need (tv, phone, etc). We didn’t want to be tied to an itinery, so didn’t make advance reservations, except for our first stop, in Madrid, and for semana santa in Rome. There was never a problem finding a good place to stay.
9. Tourist Information Centers: Every town, large and small, seems to have at least one information center, usually in the train station. They can provide a wealth of useful information, as well as help you find a place to stay. Some will call and make a reservation for you (often for a small charge), some will just give you lists, and some, like the wonderful lady in Sorrento, will chat with you about the different hotels, call over and have them hold a room for you at the one that sounds best until you can walk there (at no charge), and just generally make your arrival pleasant.
10. Food: Spending a lot of money on food is not necessary in most places. Our favorite foods in Spain were found in the tapas bars, which I especially adored because even though I don’t have a big appetite, I was able to try lots of little things. And there was always a fabulous variety of delicious things to try. In Austria, we found a wonderful place with various little munchies on small slices of bread. There may have been 3 dozen types to point and choose from, and they were all good!
11. What Time is Dinner?: We found that every town we visited had different customs on meal times. It helps to ask the locals or at the hotel about this when you arrive. More than a few times we found everything was closed at the time that we decided we were hungry. We always carried around snacks (and wine!) but that didn’t help if you were craving pasta! In one town in Spain, we realized that we had to eat early in the evening. Then arriving in the next town at around six in the evening, we decided we were hungry. There was not one eating establishment that opened for dinner before 8:30. Every country and every town in each country seemed to be different on this.
12. Where Shall We Eat?: Asking the locals where they eat is the best way to find good places. Not only will their recommendations be cheaper, but the food will be way better. An effective alternative, and the one we actually usually used, is to wander the streets until something tickles your fancy. Our favorites were always the little hidden away, or hole-in-the-wall places that weren’t mentioned in the guidebooks.
13. Art Education & Audioguides: If I was doing it again, I’d try to do some reading on art and art history before the trip. I loved getting to see so much famous art, but it would have been more interesting if I had understood more. I was overwhelmed by the size and detail of much of the old art. I was also shocked at the deep, vivid paint colors used in some. I had expected them to look dark. I learned that some look dark because of the years of accumulated dirt and grime and stuff that was painted over them, but that the original colors were brilliant. The audioguides available at the larger museums, usually for about 3 euros, were well worth the cost.
14. Tour Busses: The Hop On / Hop Off bus tours available in most large cities were a great way to get a preliminary orientation. They provided headsets with pre-recorded information in several languages. They cost from $13 (Madrid, which also offered ½ price for seniors) to I think about twice that much in Paris. You can spend the day hopping off and then on again at any of the stops along the way.
15. Language: I’ve heard over and over again that it is not necessary to know the languages when traveling Europe because so many people speak English. While it’s true that you can almost always find an English speaker when you need one, there are times when you cannot. Especially away from the major cities, language can be a challenge, whether trying to get information on the trains or simply trying to order some food. My advice would be to learn as much language as possible, and then carry along a good translator, whether a book or electronic. We had enough Spanish to have no problems in Spain, my little bit of Italian helped some, or at least provided amusement for the locals. We didn’t stay long enough in France for me to really try out my bits of French. But in the Czech Republic, I could have starved while trying to read a menu! Austria and Germany also seemed great mysteries to me. If you’re going to stay strictly in tourist areas and eat in tourist places with menus in multiple languages, you can get by with just English, but it’s a lot more interesting when you can communicate at least a little bit, and the “local” places are always more fun than the “tourist” places.
16. Weather: We wanted to beat the hordes of tourists and heat of the summer, so we left on March 24th. On March 26th, after observing what other people were wearing in Madrid, I bought myself a warm black jacket (had to be black to fit in!), along with a big heavy sweater, a long-sleeved undershirt, and a pair of warm tights. A couple of weeks before our return, the weather finally got nice. I still probably wouldn’t want to go in August next time, but maybe would wait until April or so.
17. Money: We took only a small amount of cash in US $’s. We just stopped at an ATM machine every few days and got cash in the local currency. There are ATM machines everywhere. We used money belts to carry our cash, credit cards, plane tickets, eurail pass and passports. The euro makes traveling from country to country ever so much easier. The only country where we had to switch to another currency was in the Czech Republic.
18. Senior Discounts: Many places have senior discounts, even if they don’t advertise them. It’s definitely worthwhile to ask, since some can be as much as 50%. Once in a while the discounts were only for European Union residents, but in most places discounts were available for anyone over 65, or sometimes 60.
19. Meeting People: People most everywhere are friendly. Sometimes the easiest way to start up a conversation is to ask for help. Most people actually like to help strangers, especially if it gives them a chance to talk about their own country. We didn’t, I think, do enough of this. It’s easy when you’re traveling as a couple, to tend to talk to each other, in your own language, and miss some opportunities for new friends.
20. Just Do It!: Traveling Europe is such an amazing experience that I can’t believe neither of us had done it before. Of course there’s always a reason not to go: not enough money, not enough time, when I get that big promotion or that new job, maybe when the kids are grown, maybe when we retire. Or we’re too old, or too something else. We met all kinds of people from many different places, and they were all having fun. We met very young people traveling on their own, we met young couples traveling with as many as four small children. We met people in their 80’s and 90’s. They were all traveling independently and having the time of their lives. Some stayed at hostels with shared bathrooms and bought food at the grocery stores, from street vendors and inexpensive hole-in-the-wall places. Some stayed at upscale high priced hotels and ate in the more expensive restaurants. They were all having their own brand of high adventure. If there were anything I would change, it would be to go much sooner. I would have loved to have taken my kids when they were young. At the time, of course, I thought I couldn’t do it, didn’t have the time, didn’t have the money. Now I know that, if I had it to do over again, I would find a way. One thing that Gene and I realized when we started talking last year about doing this trip, was that we didn’t want either of us to be in Europe for the first time someday saying, “Gee, Gene would have loved this,” or “Wow! Laurie would have loved this.” When we started planning the trip, we thought that this would be the trip of a lifetime, so we’d better do it now. We thought we would go to one or two places so that we would have time to get to know them a little bit. We ended up going to eighteen cities in six countries. Now that we’ve returned home, all we can talk about is where we will go next year!