Tag Archives: european train travel

First Time Travel to Europe

Leave a reply

I have always wanted to go to Europe.  Even before I really understood what that meant.

Two years ago, I had this conversation with a friend:

Me: I want to go to Russia

Her:  Me too!  Where do you want to go?

Me:  Uhhhhhhh, Russia?

Her: I want to go to Moscow, St.  Petersburg and ride the Trans Siberian railway.

OH.  I see what you mean.  You don’t just pick a country, you pick destinations within a country.  I was so not even close to being well traveled outside of America that even that had never occurred to me.

I had always wanted to see the world, but had a million different reasons that were stopping me.  I’m scared to go alone, I can’t afford it, I’d rather take an easy vacation instead…and so on.

Then it happened.  I was staring down the barrel of age 40. I was only two years away from the age my mother was when she was diagnosed with the cancer that eventually took her life.   I started panicking that I had done nothing in life that I had ever truly dreamed about.   In a way it was kind of like a midlife crisis.  Although as a good friend of mine once told me it’s not because “mid life crisises are for boring people who wake up one day and realize they are boring.  You just woke up one day and decided to be even more interesting”.  Either way, its time to go.

There are so many ways to travel in Europe.  I don’t mean just transport options, although that exists as well. I mean the whole “Where do I go?!?” and so on.  There’s so much to see in this world, how can you possibly narrow it down to ONE destination??

It can be completely overwhelming, which is another reason I had put it off for so long.  There are a million different ways to pick your destination.  How did I pick my first?

One night I was in Las Vegas, for my annual Christmas trip.  Before going to bed one night, I saw a Facebook event invite for one of my favorite bands (Grey Area, if you must know), who were going to be playing Europe for the first time, in Belgium.   I said “if I win enough to buy a plane ticket, I am going”.  Well……the next morning……

8018558_orig

I was completely shocked.  I now  had no reason to not go.  I could not talk myself out of it be Continue reading →

First Stop on First Solo Backpacking Trip: Prague, Czech Republic

1 Reply

So here we are, the morning after Groezrock Festival ends.  I wake up in Geel, Belgium at 5:00 am to the sound of church bells outside my window. I am ready to go and get started on my trip.

Today is by far the worst travel day of my trip, but it needs to happen to get me situated where I want to be.  I am going from Geel to Brussels Midi.  From Brussels to Frankfurt.  From Frankfurt to Nurnberg.  From Nurnberg to Prague. It’s fifteen hours of traveling.  In addition to that, it includes a bus ride. For some reason, the bus ride intimidates me. I don’t know why. I’m like that even back home in New York.

I wake up and walk to the Geel train station to start my long day.  At Brussels Midi, I grab some breakfast and figure out where I am going.  It is at this point while standing on the train platform, that I realize my ticket actually has information on it that I didn’t know it had.  You know, because the ticket is in German and I do not speak German.  It turns out that on the ticket is the car number and seat number.  I knew I had made a seat reservation but I did not know how to read the ticket.  I asked a conductor for help and he pointed this out to me on my ticket.  He also showed me how to tell where each car is going to be when the train pulls in.  From this day forward, I now know that I can use Google translator to figure out my pre-purchased train tickets and find this information.  Easy, peasy!

Continue reading →

Budapest, Hungary

Leave a reply

chain bridge budapest

The train to Budapest was actually quite enjoyable.   The seats were very comfortable and they were out in the open and not inside a cabin. I do not like cabin seating.   I don’t want to spend hours face to face with someone.

I arrived in Budapest at midnight.  I walked outside. It is POURING.  I thought I found the metro but I wasn’t sure since there is absolutely no signage outside.  I wait and finally break my hatred of asking people for help.  They tell me yes, this is the metro station.  Thank you.

I go downstairs, burning hot.  The escalators are very fast, this scares me to death.  I don’t know what it is but recently I’ve started to get scared of getting on escalators going down. It’s the stupidest fear and it developed right in time for me to go to Europe with these super speedy down escalators.

Continue reading →