Welcome to Part II of my final blog post! If you read Part I you will remember that I was talking about my observations of differences between Europe and the United States, so let's jump right back in:
Cars
Overall, cars are smaller in Europe than in the United States. Americans seem to have a fascination with having huge trucks and SUVs which use tons of gas and take up lots of space, and this just isn't the case in Europe. For one thing, many cities and towns were built much earlier than American ones, which means the roads were not designed for cars and are much narrower and wouldn't accommodate the same types of vehicles. Also, gas is much more expensive in Europe, so it would be much more costly to drive a truck that gets 12 miles per gallon in Europe than it is here. Another difference is that most European cars are still standard transmission. I'm not sure why Americans decided they were too lazy to shift the car themselves, but the vast majority of cars here are automatic, which means most Americans who have learned to drive in the recent past don't know how to drive standard. There is no longer the advantage of better gas mileage with standard transmissions because automatics are about equal now, but I still feel like I've been cheated out of a bit of the fun of driving by not knowing how to drive standard.
The UK and Ireland have the added difference of driving on the opposite side of the road from the rest of Europe, and most of the rest of the world. Very considerately, many intersections in London and other British cities have signs telling foreigners which way to look for oncoming traffic, but it still took me several weeks to get used to looking right first when I crossed the road. And strangely, I spent so much time and mental energy remembering that, I've noticed myself still doing it occasionally even though I left Ireland two months ago.
Something that surprised me when I got to England, which I had forgotten from the last time I was there, is that they use miles and yards to measure distance, just like we do in the U.S. I had assumed that all of Europe used kilometers, but I was wrong. The UK uses an interesting mixture of metric and imperial measurement, using imperial for distance measurements like miles and yards, but metric for most other things, like temperature (and I think weight? I can't remember for sure).
Fun fact about street crossings in the UK: apparently there are specific names for different types of cross walks in the UK (maybe in other places too, but I had never heard of it before being in England during this trip). I was puzzled and also very amused when I saw a sign next to a cross walk that said "Humped Zebra Crossing." I had never seen anything like that before and didn't really know what to think. One of Vickey's coworkers was very knowledgeable about it and explained to us the different between the different types of crossings while we were at the pub later that day. I don't remember the specifics, but I do remember that another type is called a Pelican Crossing (they were all named after animals), which was also very amusing.
Transportation
From what I can tell, public transportation seems to be much better in most European cities than it is here in the United States. There are a few factors that could be influencing my opinion on that though, since I've only ever lived in a big city once and that was Las Vegas, which just had terrible public transportation. One city I know of that does it right in the U.S. is New York, with very easy public transportation running 24 hours a day. But other than that, most Americans I know, regardless of where they live, own a car, or at least know someone who can drive them places. From what I noticed, it seems less common for the average European to own a car, whereas in the U.S. it is often just expected that everyone has one. One thing that was difficult a few times during my trip was transportation between city centers and airports. I didn't have to do it very often luckily, but sometimes it took a bit of planning to figure it out and lots of travel time, and of course it often cost more than the typical ticket, even if it was only one stop further on the line. It was especially difficult in Istanbul, where I had to take three different modes of transportation, and then walk the rest of the way to where I was going. But since I have rarely had to worry about taking public transportation to or from an airport in the U.S., I'm not the best person to ask when it comes to comparing the two.
My Eurail Pass
I had mixed feelings about my Eurail pass at different points along the process. At the beginning I was really excited about it because I really enjoy taking trains and this pass saves you lots of money on train travel compared to buying individual tickets. But then I realized that there are other ways to travel that would have been cheaper than trains, like buses and sometimes even budget airlines. Then there were certain trips that I was going such a far distance at once that I ended up traveling for over 24 hours straight and changed trains up to five times, and it got to be really exhausting. During some of those trips I wished I had just bought a plane ticket and saved myself the time and stress. Much of that stress came from constantly checking train timetables, trying to plan out the fastest trip with the fewest number of stops, missing trains and having to make new plans, etc. I realized that Eurail passes would be much better for certain types of trips than others, so it is important to know how you want to travel and what your priorities are. Here is my list of pros and cons I found with the Eurail pass.
Pros:
-Saves money if you want to travel by train
-You can take as many trains as you want each travel day
-Most trains you simply get on without needing a specific ticket, except for long-distance or high-speed trains which need a reservation
-Leaves your travel dates flexible because you do not have to book ahead of time
-Europe is very well connected by train, so getting to most major cities is easy
-There are a variety of choices for time period and number of countries that allow you to choose the best combination for your trip
-Easier to budget because transportation costs are already paid for
Cons:
-Trains are often not the cheapest option
-Not ideal for long distances
-Some trains require reservations, which cost anywhere from a few dollars to over $20 per seat
-Some reservations sell out on a few very popular routes (which happened to me on the way to Italy), and would need to be booked well in advance
-Some countries are not as well connected by train (like Greece, where I didn't end up using the pass except for the ferry to get there)
-Some countries do not participate in certain pass types (I could not use my pass in the UK)
So my recommendation would be that a Eurail pass is a good idea if you want the flexibility to go with the flow and not be stuck with strict schedule, and you definitely want to travel by train. However, I think getting the Global Pass which I had that covers over 20 countries is too large of an area to conveniently travel by train. I think using a Eurail pass would be best if you want to stick to a smaller area with a Regional Pass, so that you don't have such long distances to cover. If I had it to do over again with this trip, I might not get the Eurail pass, or at least not get the same one. Since I did my planning sort of spur of the moment as I went from place to place, it was nice to have the flexibility of being able to change plans. However, I didn't end up using all of the days on my pass because I hadn't planned out exactly when I was going to travel, and didn't realize that I would not be able to take trains to get where I was going in Greece (I had 2 days left at the end out of 15, which I would have used in Greece if it had been possible). If I was doing it now, I would probably get a Eurail pass for fewer days, use it for the shorter trips, and supplement it with flights for the longer hauls. Or just take buses for the shorter distances instead of trains. But again, it's about what you want. I really like taking trains, and they are much more comfortable and often more conveniently located than buses, so it made most of the journeys very enjoyable for me.
Some stats about my trip, and where I go from here
Over the course of my months in Europe, I had many different experiences, visited lots of new places, and traveled by various means. And because I am a big fan of making lists, I compiled some of the data about all of this. It's pretty cool to look at this way. So for those of you who also like lists, or who like seeing the numbers, here is a small overview of my journey:
5 months
21 weeks
147 days
15 countries
31 cities and towns
14 Couchsurfing hosts
5 hostels
4 friends' houses
3 WWOOF hosts
1 hotel
13+ days of train travel
13 buses
9 planes
1 ride share
1 ferry
1 taxi
Innumerable city buses, metros, trams, etc.
~$6,000 spent
Countless people met along the way
After all of that, I feel so grateful to have had the opportunity to make my dream of traveling around Europe a reality. Two years of dreaming and saving money really paid off! I had so many wonderful experiences and learned a lot in the process, which in many ways left me with even more questions about my future and how I want to live my life. I would love my next trip to involve staying in one place and living there for a while so I can really get the feel for how life is in that country, like I got to experience in Spain when I studied abroad there. And seeing my sister's life in Germany made me realize that I don't necessarily have to settle down (whenever that happens) in the U.S., maybe I will fall in love with another country and want to live there. But most of my family and friends are here, so would I really want to give up being close to them? Then the WWOOFing experiences showed me how some families are living non-traditional lives that involve producing their own food and being as self-sufficient as possible. I would love to live my life that way someday, and I would love to get even more experience with WWOOFing or visiting farms or communities who are living in a more harmonious way with nature than our modern society dictates. And I still have the urge to travel more and see as much of the world as I can, so I don't see myself settling in any one place for very long in the near future. Traveling also made me realize that there are so many things out there that I want to learn, and a big part of that is language. I've always been fascinated with languages, but for some reason I haven't made much of an effort to learn any other than Spanish. So the main questions this trip has left me with are: Where do I want to go? Where do I want to live? How do I want to live my life? What do I want to do as a career? How can I involve all of the things I care about (traveling, sustainability, learning, helping the environment and other people) into one lifestyle that will made me happy, not broke, and feeling like I'm making a difference in the world? All of those are questions that I will keep pondering as I continue to search for employment, travel, and live my life.
Thank you to everyone who has been keeping up with my adventures on this blog and who has helped me out along the way. I really appreciate all of the support I have gotten throughout this process. Hopefully my next adventure will start soon, and when it does I will do my best to keep you all updated about that as well.
Thank You, Danke, Gracias, Takk, Grazie, and thank you in any language in which I learned it but now can't remember. ;)
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