All roads don’t actually lead to Rome. Swedes aren’t all blondes. And the French don’t tongue-kiss when they meet. However, none of these little disillusionments are reason enough to skip Europe on your trip. It offers the traveller more architecture, music, fashion, theatre and gastronomy per square kilometre than any other continent – which means heading off the main routes will still land you waist-deep in cultural treasures. The prevalence of the euro currency makes spending easier, and at least you’re not giving away as much to the money-changers. What you do with this saving is quite limitless: climb an Austrian Alp, taste wine at an Italian palazzo, rent a surfboard in France, throw back a shot of Russian vodka, cool down with an icy Spanish gazpacho or soak your toes in the Adriatic on the Croatian coast.
MAIN ATTRACTIONS
1 Auschwitz Concentration Camp Poland. A visit to Auschwitz (or Dachau, near Munich) may just be the most profound and enduring memory you take back from Europe. After a glimpse into the gas chambers, a view of the barracks and a walk around the compound, you begin to get a terrifying sense of what life here must have been like under Nazi control. It’s impossible to leave unmoved.
2 The British Museum England. The British Museum contains an incomprehensibly large collection of antiques, prints and drawings, preserved and displayed for free for the education and enlightenment of anyone who cares to come. It’s also possibly the world’s largest musuem of plundered goods, several of which are kept against the wishes of their original owners; the Parthenon Marbles are only the most famous example – see also Egyptian mummies, Benin bronzes, Aboriginal art, the Rosetta stone and many more.
3 The Kremlin Russia. It’s not just a building, but an entire elevated citadel in the centre of Moscow. About sixty percent is off limits to all but government personnel, but you can access the cathedrals, Patriarch’s Palace and Armoury, which houses a fascinating collection of royal carriages, handmade weapons and Fabergé eggs.
4 The Louvre France. This Paris museum could eat most sports stadiums for breakfast and still have plenty of room left over. It opened in 1793, its collection “enriched” soon after by items Napolean’s armies “found”. Courtesy of architect I.M. Pei, it now sports a snazzy glass-pyramid entryway with a calming reflective pool that helps tranquillize the waiting crowds.
5 The Sistine Chapel Italy. Michelangelo (without the aid of a chiropractor, mind you) painted the world’s most famous ceiling fresco here in Rome. Beyond that, there’s a vast collection of statues, frescos, maps and illuminated texts that leave visitors stunned.
6 Venice Italy. The lovely canals and palaces of Venice are approached with more expectations than a George Lucas movie, yet never seem to disappoint. If you can see over the heads of all the tourists, the views are breathtaking at every step. Only after a visit can you finally understand the pains Marco Polo endured to return here.
7 Versailles France. Louis Quatorze certainly knew how to live. There’s the grand entrance, enough rooms to properly house all your party guests, endless gardens that require an army of trimmers and pruners, and a hall with more mirrors than a Las Vegas magic act. It’s good to be the king.
SECURITY ISSUES
It’s always a good idea to check the current political conditions before visiting a country (see Chapter 15), but the following are worth a little extra research: Albania, Russian Federation.
WHEN TO GO
There’s no time when Europe should absolutely not be visited, but it can get rather cold and bleak in the winter (Nov–Feb), even in much of Turkey, and crowded in the summer (July–Aug). If you’re not a beach person, visiting in winter could actually work to your advantage, as you shouldn’t have to queue for museums or reserve hostel beds. July and August are nice in northern Europe and the Alps, and a little too warm for comfort in the south. March to June and September to November are ideal for southern Europe, with perhaps a little overlap into the tourist season so you can appreciate what you’re steering clear of.
RECOMMENDED VACCINATIONS
WESTERN EUROPE
- Routine boosters for measles/mumps/rubella (MMR), diphtheria/pertussis/tetanus (DPT) and polio
- Hepatitis A
- Hepatitis B (optional)
EASTERN EUROPE
- Routine boosters for MMR and polio
- Hepatitis A
- Hepatitis B (optional)
- Rabies (optional)
- Typhoid
GETTING AROUND BY AIR
With cut-throat budget airlines battling it out in the skies, your biggest cost for flights within Europe is likely getting yourself out to the airport. Really. It’s not uncommon to find flights for £12–25/$19–39. Except for certain routes at certain times of the year when demand is particularly high. If you can find a great deal, it’s not a bad idea to use it to augment your rail or bus pass, so you don’t have to use several days of your pass (and your trip) to make a beeline across Europe.
Many of these start-up “no frills” carriers use minor airports located a little further from the city centre, but you may even save time; some walks to the gate are only 100m. When they say no frills, they generally aren’t kidding. But since the flights are almost never more than three hours, does it really matter that it feels more like a bus? Pack along a meal and you’ll be fine. You might even pack some cheap, compact earphones so you don’t need to buy the ones they try to flog you. No need to worry about safety. Whatever corners they need to cut to streamline their company, there’s no getting around the strict EU regulations that govern the industry.
Since every major European city and half the minor ones seem tapped into
the budget routes and there’s no single search engine (although 
skyscanner.net probably come
the closest and cheapflights.co.uk will do the next best thing – scour the web
for the best deals offered by other discount brokers and consolidators), the
trick is figuring out which airlines cover which routes so you can visit
their booking sites. To make a thorough search for the best airfare visit
attitudetravel.com/lowcostairlines and input where you’re headed
from, and it’ll show you where you can get to on budget airlines.
LOWEST DAILY BUDGET (EXCLUDING TRANSPORT)
Expensive (£50–60/$78–94):
Britain, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland
Mid-range (£35–50/$55–78):
Austria, Belgium, Croatia, The Netherlands, Russia, Spain
Budget (£20–30/$31–47):
Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Turkey
AIR PASSES
- Visit Europe oneworld.com. Offers
220 destinations in 53 countries (including Algeria, Morocco and
Tunisia) with member airlines of the One World Alliance; you
have to fly into Europe with an Alliance carrier to qualify.
Fares depend on the mileage you cover but often represent a
fairly good saving on short routes. Buy the minimum two coupons
before you leave for Europe; more can be purchased after you
arrive. No upper limit.
- Star Alliance Europe Airpass
staralliance.com. Flights to 280 destinations in more
than forty countries, with eleven Star Alliance airlines;
available only if you fly to and from Europe on an Alliance
carrier. Minimum three coupons, maximum ten, which have to be
used within three months. Pricing is complicated, and taxes and
surcharges are high, so keep a lookout for this when you compare
prices.
- EuropebyAir e-flight-pass
europebyair.com. California company that offers
e-ticket flights on Brussels Airlines to 44 cities in Europe and
north Africa. The generally low fares increase if you want to
hit Moscow or Tel Aviv. Also has partnerships with dozens of
other European airlines for cheap individual flights.
OVERLAND ROUTES
Europe doesn’t really have overland routes, it has an overland web. With open borders, an extensive infrastructure and travellers using bus and train passes like amusement-park tickets, there’s more darting around on whims than specific A to B passages. The more socially inclined migrate like wildebeests to the major backpacker-endorsed festivals: Somerset’s Glastonbury, Pamplona’s Running of the Bulls and Munich’s Oktoberfest. A rail pass is your best bet (both for cultural reasons and leg room), although not quite as cheap as a bus pass. Biking and driving are viable options as well. Zipping around on flights, no matter how cheap, is probably not the best way to see Europe (hard to make inroads with the local community at 30,000 feet), but it offers a great chance to connect two or three spots that might otherwise be out of range. For example, you might want to spend the bulk of your trip in Spain and Portugal, but you can hop on a plane in Barcelona and get to Rome or Dublin for a long weekend without breaking your budget.
EUROPE BUS PASSES
BUSABOUT
Nine countries covered: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland
North Loop Twelve cities in six countries
South Loop Thirteen cities in five countries
West Loop Thirteen cities in four countries
North Loop Thirty-four destinations in nine countries, from nine days to six months
EUROLINES
Fifty-three cities covered: Alicante, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Bordeaux, Bratislava, Brno, Brussels, Bucharest, Budapest, Clermont-Ferrand, Cologne, Copenhagen, Dijon, Dublin, Edinburgh, Florence, Frankfurt, Geneva, Gothenburg, Grenoble, Hamburg, Kaunas, Kosice, Lille, Lisbon, London, Lyon, Madrid, Marseille, Milan, Montpellier, Munich, Nantes, Nice, Nîmes, Novi Vinodolski, Oslo, Paris, Porto, Prague, Pula, Rennes, Riga, Rome, Strasbourg, Stuttgart, Toulouse, Tours, Vienna, Venice, Vilnius and Zurich.
You can only choose from two passes with Eurolines, a fifteen-day or a thirty-day one, but you will pay different rates depending on whether you want to use the pass in low, mid or high season.
BUSES
There are two bus passes worth looking into, and they both undercut
the train fares: Eurolines ( eurolines.com) and Busabout ( busabout.com). Eurolines is
cheaper while Busabout takes you right to a hostel (one they hope you’ll
stay at), and provides onboard movies and a guide. That gives you less
reason to look out the window and less opportunity to meet locals, but
it will save you time and the hassle of picking and finding a hostel.
Eurolines and other local and national bus services are likely to be the
cheapest option (after hitchhiking) for short-distance travel,
particularly in the UK, where train prices are exorbitant. In the UK,
consider the low-cost intercity service of Megabus ( megabus.com).
TRAINS
Europe is train country. How else would you describe a rail network totalling 240,000 kilometres? By comparison, there’s 45,000km of rail in the US and Canada, an area more than twice as large. It’s not necessarily the cheapest way to get around, it’s simply the preferred way. And not just because the rail routes are often more scenic – the facing seats provide an opportunity to meet locals, the aisles allow you to stretch your legs, some carriages allow full reclining at night and the train’s chug-chug (if you manage to get an old-fashioned one) adds an authentic travel beat to any conversation.
There are several passes available at raileurope.com and eurail.com. Eurail passes come
in many flavours depending on how many days you intend to travel, and
the total length of your trip. The more extensive (and expensive) Global
Pass covers 28 countries, meaning all of both Eastern and Western Europe
with the notable exceptions of Albania, Macedonia, the Baltics and the
UK. The Eurail Select pass is a better choice if you want to explore a
specific region. The pass allows unlimited travel for varying time
frames in 26 countries (all of the Global Pass countries minus Poland
and Bosnia-Herzegovina).
In Turkey, the express trains and sleepers are worth looking into and provide a nice leg-stretching change from the bus rides, but the local (yolcu and posta) trains barely exceed the speed of rust.
CARS
RENTAL
For a longer road trip, rental is on the expensive side. To make
it affordable, find a travel companion or group of them. If you’re
renting over the course of a 21-day period, you can lease from kemwel.com, europebycar.com or
renaultusa.com,
all agencies that take advantage of tax loopholes by leasing out new
cars then selling the practically new vehicles on the used market.
When calculating the cost, don’t forget to factor in higher petrol
prices, road tolls and parking fees. Rental companies generally
lease to those 18 and over, but some require drivers to be over 23.
Rentals are best booked in advance, which can be done direct, via a
travel agent or through the mainstream online flight-booking
sites.
BUYING A CAR
Buying a car in Europe is a fun alternative, provided you don’t
run into mechanical trouble or get stuck trying to off-load it
before your flight leaves. For language reasons, the UK is a good
starting point, though you’ll want a left-hand drive if you’ll be
spending most of your time on the continent. To see what’s
available, look at the newspaper classifieds, as well as specialized
magazines such as Loot ( loot.co.uk) and Exchange and Mart ( exchangeandmart.co.uk). At gumtree.com and tntmagazine.com/uk
you’ll find other travellers’ cars and camper vans which, for
high-mileage reasons, may not make the most sense (although the
seller may be able to offer help with all the paperwork, as well as
some great tips). Some of the vehicles are registered on the
continent, and as long as you’re not keeping the car in the UK, you
can get around the UK registration.
In Germany, you might look into buying a Vorführwagen, a demo model which has been in the showroom and used for test drives, or a Jahreswagen, a low-mileage car in good condition that was bought at discount by a car-manufacturer employee and sold as soon as the law allows, which is one year.
The AA ( theaa.com) and
RAC ( rac.co.uk) are the
places to turn to for insurance; they have co-op arrangements
throughout Europe for breakdowns. Once you cross into Asia or Africa, however,
it’s another story (see Bringing your own vehicle).
Bring extra copies of your documents and leave others with a trusted
friend or relative, or in an online vault. They should include road
tax, insurance and ownership papers. If you have a good driving
record in your home country you may be able to get preferable rates
with a European insurer. Get a letter from your insurance agent back
home just in case.
EU driving licences are valid in all of Europe. Other foreign licences (US, Can, NZ and Aus) are accepted, but not in Italy, Portugal, Spain and some East European countries, for which you should have an international permit, easily arranged in your home countrys.
BIKES
This is a continent that deserves to be seen from a bike. The hamlets that tour-buses and cars roll past regularly are some of the greatest treasures. With the major bike races ripping by most places at some point or another (Giro d’Italia, Vuelta de España, Tour de France), you’ll also find an unrivalled respect for cyclists. There’s always a small pub that’s happy to refill your water bottle or a château pleased to fill it with wine. On the other hand, Europe is crammed with narrow roads, high speed limits and no fewer than 20 million drivers who think they’re Michael Schumacher. Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway have some of the finest cycle-only touring trails for those who don’t like to compete for space with motor vehicles or eat their exhaust.
Europe is also a great place to buy a bike, which will make a nice souvenir at the end of your trip. Or, if you can buy a popular international brand, you should have no trouble selling it in a hurry. All cities – and even many small towns – will have all the spare parts you’ll need.
The larger cities all have bike rentals. In Athens, Paris and Naples they may be more likely to get you a bed at a nearby hospital than where you’re going, but in cities like Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Lyon they make city exploration a joy.
HITCHING
Thumbing it in Europe is a little hit and miss, and don’t think about
it without reading the section on hitching safety. In
some countries, it’s considered normal and drivers are sympathetic to
your roadside plight (as many have done some hitching themselves). In
others, such as parts of Scandinavia, you’re something of a pariah. In
places where it’s not as accepted, take special care to dress well and
get to service stations. Some countries have hitching organizations that
will, for a fee, put you in touch with a driver heading in the same
direction who wants to share the petrol costs. It takes away the thrill,
but will likely get you where you want to go. Good places to get a grip
on hitchhiking in Europe are hitchhikers.org and hitchwiki.org.
READING LIST
- Julian Barnes Letters from London
- Dan Brown The Da Vinci Code
- Bill Bryson Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe
- Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky Crime and Punishment
- Umberto Eco The Name of the Rose
- Anne Frank The Diary of a Young Girl
- Adam Gopnik Paris to the Moon
- Ernest Hemingway Death in the Afternoon
- Homer The Odyssey
- Peter Høeg Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow
- Ismail Kadaré The Fall of the Stone City
- Peter Mayle A Year in Provence
VISAS
In general, Brits, Americans, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders don’t need a visa to visit European countries, but there are some exceptions. Russia requires a visa, and you’ll need a transit visa to get there overland through Belarus. Australians and New Zealanders need one for Ukraine. Belarus and Turkey also require visas.
VISA REQUIREMENTS FOR EUROPE
Visas are only required for the following countries:
Belarus A short-term visa for tourism is required of Western visitors for stays of up to 30 days. Application from a tourist company and hotel booking confirmation required.
Russia Notoriously complicated tourist visa required for all.
Turkey Visa required for citizens of the US, UK, Australia and Canada (must be obtained before arrival). Passport must be valid for at least another six months. Multi-entry visas let you stay 90 days.
Ukraine No visa required for stays of up to 90 days for travellers from developed countries, except Australia and New Zealand.