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Topic: Senior Year Europe Trip (Read 1736 times)

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datamanc3r

#1 November 15, 2008, 07:20:35 pm

The Irrepressible
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Okay, classic end-of-high-school thing to do. Europe trip.

My girlfriend and I are saving money to go to Europe next summer (june-ish), and being the dumbass, uncultured Americans we are, we need some ideas. Where should we go? What should we do? That sort of thing.

I kind of hate going around and sight-seeing because those trips are expensive and pretty boring. Yeah, I'm sure the Eiffel tower is great, but I don't want to go "OH YEAH, JUST SAW EIFFEL TOWER, CROSS FRANCE OFF THE LIST." Focusing on shit like that really takes away from the overall experience. So we're really just looking to travel around and see what's life like on the other side of that great Atlantic puddle. Seeing as how traveling around is pretty much a regular thing to do for you WEIRD FOREIGN PEOPLE, keep in mind that this is pretty new to us. I've NEVER been outside of my country. So general basics would be awesome.

For now, how did your trips go? What do you recommend bringing? Have any cool stories to tell?

"I would be totally embarassed to write this, even as a fakepost. it's not funny except in how you seem to think it's good. look at all the redundancies, for fuck's sake. "insipid semantics, despicable mediocrity" ugh gross gross. I want to take a shower every time I read your prose." -Steel

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Cho

#2 November 15, 2008, 07:33:20 pm

Comrade!
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We went to Cancun for our class's senior trip.

Maybe you should try backpacking across Eastern Europe (any pussy liberal arts major can backpack across Western Europe, it takes a real man to go through the East). Or, you could make a cross continent trip visiting all of our European gaming worlders (You can invite yourself to sleep on their couches).

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GirlBones

#3 November 15, 2008, 08:03:12 pm

I will.
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the coolest kids have been to prague

boop oop a doop

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Lars

#4 November 15, 2008, 08:04:37 pm

Fuck off!
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if you have money and is interested in culture:

go to Rome and do fucking everything you can that is culture related. go visit ruins and cathedrals during the day and go to operas and old restaurants at night. get your ass into the vatican state and check out that shit. visit the spanish steps and the pantheon.

seriously, if you do this, get up every day at like 7 AM and go strong all day trying to get a sense of everything you can. it's a great experience and I recommend it.

the same thing can also be done in Paris but imo Rome is better though they're both perfect culture cities.

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Sarevok

#5 November 15, 2008, 09:25:50 pm

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Go to ukraine, you can pay roughly $100-$200 for a day trip to see pripyat, the abandoned radiated town next to chernobyl pp

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Kaworu

#6 November 15, 2008, 09:30:09 pm

kaworu*Sigh*Isnt he the cutest person ever
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I was planning on doing something similar next year but to New York, just spend a week up there and soak shit up rather than sightseeing (that stuff is boring as)
(but It turns out that the study trip may be to New York and I can't afford going there twice!)

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RPG

#7 November 15, 2008, 09:45:12 pm

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I want to do something like that next summer too, for two or three weeks. I was thinking I'd go to Italy, France, Netherlands, and maybe Germany. I still haven't thought much about it however, so yeah.. this thread would be pretty useful.

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Awakening

#8 November 15, 2008, 09:56:47 pm

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I agree, sightseeing isn't very fun, because everything just seems planned and mundane.
Europe is a great place to go, though - I've been there twice - just allow everything to be spontaneous.

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GaZZwa

#9 November 15, 2008, 10:07:25 pm

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My eurotrip last summer was done by rail. Interrail and Eurail passes are incredibly good value. My Interrail pass cost me £295, which got me unlimited rail travel within all European countries for a month. You often have to book a seat on the train in advance (ie. the night before or that morning) and occasionally there are surcharges of about 2 euros for this, but all in all, it's amazing. We kind of did what you're looking to do. Sure, we did end up seeing some sights, but we also just wandered around each city, had some good food, met some good people, had some crazy experiences, taking it all in. When you're far away from home in a foreign country, even shit as mundane as catching a train can be somewhat exciting. A splendid time is guaranteed for all.

My 5 week travel itinerary:

Bergen
Oslo
Stockholm
Malmo
Copenhagen
Berlin
Prague
Krakow (with trip to Oswiecim)
Vienna
Bratislava
Budapest
Ljubljana (with trip to Lake Bled)
Venice
Munich
Basel (with trip to Zurich)
Geneve
Lyon
Paris

It was quite a hectic 5 weeks.

ps. go to traditional Budapest swimming baths for maximum octaganarian nudity.

Last Edit: November 15, 2008, 10:13:54 pm by GaZZwa

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crone_lover720

#10 November 15, 2008, 10:12:25 pm

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go everywhere, see everything. eat the food!! make sure you try lots of different kinds of pastries and foods

btw the people in prague were pretty terrible in my experience. also if you go to the tourist section everyone will try to rip you off

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Lars

#11 November 15, 2008, 10:12:39 pm

Fuck off!
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gazz what did you do in oslo?

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GaZZwa

#12 November 15, 2008, 10:14:27 pm

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Quote from: larsdood on November 15, 2008, 10:12:39 pm

gazz what did you do in oslo?

I was offered drugs and attacked by Nigerian prostitutes.

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Shepperd

#13 November 15, 2008, 10:24:40 pm

MUSULMAEN
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we're on the Rhyne on the Rhyne you have to rhyme

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Barack Obama

#14 November 16, 2008, 12:22:09 am

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go with just a backpack and only stay in hostels, otherwise you're an awful tourist

Last Edit: November 16, 2008, 12:29:55 am by DietCoke

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Vellfire

#15 November 16, 2008, 12:44:06 am

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I think you should just WANDER THE TOWNS, that's awesome to do. Wandering around Reykjavik not knowing what there was to see and not having a plan meant that I got to see a lot of things I otherwise wouldn't (and I ate some awesome food). Just do shit like that. Go somewhere and look around, don't spend all your time wandering a town trying to find some tourist spot you heard of, just wander for the sake of seeing the city.

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Lars

#16 November 16, 2008, 01:52:32 am

Fuck off!
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Quote from: GaZZwa on November 15, 2008, 10:14:27 pm

I was offered drugs and attacked by Nigerian prostitutes.

and people say oslo isnt an international metropolis huh!

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Lyndon

#17 November 16, 2008, 02:30:05 am

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I went round Europe this year and would say that you definitely need to stay in hostels if you want to meet people. We stayed in a few awfully cheap hotels and they were rubbish because there was no common room etc. I'm gonna do a plan like Gazzwa did. Like him, we used to the interrail pass (which I recommend). We only went for 3 weeks though

Marsielle (expensive, probably not worth going to)
Rome (a lot of impressive history to see. go to a bar called Scholars)
Vienna (Go to a hostel called Wombats)
Budapest (really cheap. Make sure you go to baths and the island is a cool place for night life)
Prague (You'll find a lot of guys on a stag do unless you go to the right places. Make sure you go to the club that has 7 floors. Don't use the taxis, they are run by the mafia)
Krakow (Night life is pretty dead other than a friday and saturday where its mental. Go see Auschwitz, its close)
Warsaw (Don't be surprised if you see a dismembered corpse on the train line.)
Berlin (Stay in a Wombats hostel again if you can. Matrix night club is awesome. Go to a few cocktail bars too)
Amsterdam (note: if you have smoked weed before, expect the weed to be 10 times stronger than what you are used to.)

These are the only places I got to go to and we had an excellent time in all of the places except maybe a few nights in Poland where we got into some trouble.

I recommend traveling with a group of people because you get that school trip vibe. I went with 7 other guys and to be honest, other than seeing the sights in Rome and Auschwitz, we pretty much got drunk and met the locals and that was our agenda. This a good way of getting to know the culture imo

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datamanc3r

#18 November 16, 2008, 02:42:51 am

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This'll be pretty awesome.

Yeah, we're pretty much thinking the same thing. We're travelling light, and definitely by rail. I'll probably just bring my clothes, sketch pad, and a camera if I can keep it from being swiped. What else would I need to bring besides the necessary papers? Also, would it be feasible to *find* a good hostel just by walking around -- so that I don't have to spend the nights figuring out where to stay next? (Alternatively, I could mooch offa you GWers).

Hm. As for where to go, I'm thinking Italy definitely. I'm not really acquainted with Eastern Europe, but I'd be willing to check it out. I wanna go to Spain to test out my Spanish skills (all those wasted years taking Spanish have got to pay off) and she wants to go to France. Other than that, we should have some time to just travel around without too much planning.

By the way, what's the best period of time to stay in any one area?

EDIT:
We're thinking 3 weeks, too -- but it seems like a pretty skimpy amount of time.

Also, just to make sure, what's the general drinking age?

Last Edit: November 17, 2008, 01:26:20 am by Juris

"I would be totally embarassed to write this, even as a fakepost. it's not funny except in how you seem to think it's good. look at all the redundancies, for fuck's sake. "insipid semantics, despicable mediocrity" ugh gross gross. I want to take a shower every time I read your prose." -Steel

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GaZZwa

#19 November 16, 2008, 05:30:13 pm

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www.339eurotrip.blogspot.com is the uh, travel blog that my friend kept when he had a chance to hop on a computer.

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Artis Leon Ivey Jr

#20 November 16, 2008, 05:49:57 pm

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Quote from: DietCoke on November 16, 2008, 12:22:09 am

go with just a backpack and only stay in hostels, otherwise you're an awful tourist

Quote from: david foster wallace

As I see it, it probably really is good for the soul to be a tourist, even if it's only once in a while. Not good for the soul in a refreshing or enlivening way, though, but rather in a grim, steely-eyed, let's-look-honestly-at-the-facts-and-find-some-way-to-deal-with-them way. My personal experience has not been that traveling around the country is broadening or relaxing, or that radical changes in place and context have a salutary effect, but rather that intranational tourism is radically constricting, and humbling in the hardest way--hostile to my fantasy of being a real individual, of living somehow outside and above it all. (Coming up is the part that my companions find especially unhappy and repellent, a sure way to spoil the fun of vacation trave To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience. It is to impose yourself on places that in all noneconomic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing.

brian chemicals

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