I have never imagined that planning a trip would require so much perseverance and hard work. Trip planning is a tedious process and there are many decisions to be made. The first is to decide where to go! Austria is located very conveniently in the center of Europe, and many places are within the distance of an overnight train-ride.
Once you’ve decided where to go, you’ll have to find some friends to go with you. And once you find friends, you may need to adjust the list of places that you’d like to go to include their interests and desires. In this stage of trip planning, there tends to be lots of concessions made, bartering and sacrifice as the group forms and decides where to go.
Then comes the fun part- finding means of transportation. Should you take the train, bus or plane? There are many cheap flights that link cities. Ryan Air is a favorite airline to use- but watch out! The cheap rates are made possible by locations that are out of the way, and may require you to travel on inconvenient days. To travel by train, many students purchased a Eurail Pass which entitles the holder to 10 days of travel within a time span of two months. The pass is convenient to have and can save the holder a lot of money on trains across Europe. The technical rule is that there can be no more than five Eurail pass holders on a train at a time- so if a conductor chooses to enforce this rule, a student could be in for more adventure than they planned for as they are booted off the train in a strange city. Fortunately, this happens only rarely.
To use the Eurail, you’ll need to look up a train schedule on www.oebb.at. Once you find the English translated website, you can look at the multitude of choices when it comes to routes to your destination. I have been surprised at the number of options and frequency of the trains. One thing I’ve learned, however, is that Austrian trains tend to be late. No matter how well a trip has been planned, one late train can cause you to miss all other connections. Most of the time, there are many other trains that will eventually get you to your destination. Italy is a different story- boarding a train five minutes early will take you to a drastically different destination than you intended! Italian trains are known to be right-on-time.
I have a newfound admiration to all the students who actively take the role of “trip-planner”. There are a select few who have the ability to find cool places, once in a lifetime opportunities and the perseverance to bring it all together. Trip planning always requires flexibility, as many students will join the group at the last minute: “hey, that sounds fun!”
No matter how painstaking planning a trip has been, it is a great reward, to enjoy a weekend in a new and foreign environment—no matter how many plans have gone wrong!
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