After I graduated from college, I traveled around Europe with a Eurail Pass.For 4 glorious months I wandered.
I’d like to say that I flew to England (my point of departure) with a plan but in reality I didn’t have one. Once, I got on a train in Poland and rode all the way to Portugal. Because I could.
I wrote in my journal at each stop, noting the way that cars were added and subtracted and how the skin color and languages of the passengers changed along withe the upholstery and food available in the dining car.
Our schedule was loose, and unhurried though we did make plans to meet specific friends in specific cities on certain days. Nice in late June. Then a week of cold rainy Germany where a grad student friend was doing his doctorate. I met up with my boyfriend in Paris, nursing a cold, and then we joined college friends in Prague to wonder at the change that was taking place before our eyes. It was the early 90s.
I now marvel that we were able to connect with one another at all, in this day and age before texting and smart phones. We wrote letters that included the date and time our trains were due in at x station andhoped and prayed that we’d see a familiar face when we got there.
On a recent trip to Barcelona I was standing on the street outside one of the Gaudi properties – La Pedrera. It was strange to be standing with my teenaged daughter on the exact same spot I’d stood with her father, 20 years ago, as a recent grad. It looked the same but so much was different. On that day long ago, I’d spent the morning in a bookstore, furtively reading up on the local architecture, hoping that I wouldn’t get kicked out for consuming the book without buying. I would have loved to have bought the book but it was expensive – my funds were limited. Besides, there was little room in my small traveler’s backpack for much more than my well thumbed and scribbled in copy of Let’s Go Europe – the backpacker’s bible of the 90s.
I’d failed to take notes and I couldn’t remember the finer details any more than I could afford the posh tour. So the inside of this building had remained a mystery.
There I was in the same spot again, as equally clueless and curious as I’d been two decades ago. But this time, I had an iphone. Six seconds later, I could have led a tour.
We opted not to spend the extra money on a walk through the crowded tourist filled structure. The photos on our phone and the view from outside were sufficient. No bittersweet longing this trip.
Travel has changed so much since I was a young backpacker. Aside from the ability to pay for a bed in a room without a hundred other backpackers and vagabonds and the wisdom of age, technology has changed how we journey through cities both ancient and new. Instagram informs us of what to expect in up to the moment detail. Google maps prevent us from getting lost. Travelocity reviews let us know which places to avoid and online reservations for everything from car service to hotels to tours and meal delivery, have made arriving late in a strange city so much easier to fathom. Language divides are less challenging. Every city of a certain size seems to have a Starbucks full of the scents and brewing sounds of home. It’s all so different, but one thing remains the same.
Nothing thrills me more than the prospect of a Eurail Pass.
Nothing I’ve ever won has thrilled me more than the family pack of 4 passes that I won at TBEX. Four passes, two months, 15 days of travel. I’m still not sure where I want to go on our epic trip next spring. I’m sure I’ll savor every sweet second of planning and dreaming however. Family travel with Eurail is truly a dream come true.
We’ve started planning our journey – plotting the possibilities with pennies and dimes on a map. Pennies for the cities our ancestors hail from and dimes for the places we simply long to go and see. Too many places for one visit. Too many wondrous things to see. Twenty years was too long to wait.
We have a lot of ground to cover.
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