Europe by Eurail

In 1990, I spent six months travelling through Europe. I flew into Vienna, Austria on 15 May 1990, and eventually departed from London on 15 November. For three months, from mid-May until early August, I travelled by minivan with a small group through Eastern Europe. I then embarked on a marathon Eurail backpacking odyssey through Western Europe for a further three months with Dean Keiller, a Victorian sheep farmer.

Along the way, I travelled by minivan, bus, train, ferry, campervan (that's a story about Morocco I'll save for another time), car and hovercraft.  Dean and I also hitch-hiked in East Germany (it was the only way to get to Berlin) and Switzerland. We ultimately travelled as far north as Harstad, more than 300km above the Arctic Circle, as far south as Meknes in Morocco, as far east as Varna on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, and as far west as the Strait of Gibraltar.  We visited 22 countries in total, much of it thanks to the prudent use of our Eurail ticket. The opening image for this post was taken in Austria as Dean and I were making our way from Munich to Venice via the Brenner Pass.

For years, I've talked about writing a series of retrospective posts about this once-in-a-lifetime experience. Without a doubt, it's a mammoth undertaking. We were on the road continually, rarely staying more than three days in any location. I have an album filled with photos, ticket stubs and other memorabilia. There are also storage tubs filled with supporting documents, plus photos that never made it into the album. I estimate it’ll take about 20 posts to tell the full Eurail story, plus another 10-15 for the additional months in Eastern Europe.

Our Eurail ticket proved a godsend. It offered unlimited travel for a set number of days, plus discounts on a range of other transport options, including buses in Norway, local trains in Italy and ferries to Greece. Dean and I bought a 15-day flexipass that could be used freely on non-consecutive days for three months after activation. 

Initially, we used it to travel from Switzerland, via Frankfurt, to Helmstedt on the old East German border (where we hitch-hiked to Berlin) and then on to Trondheim, Norway via Oslo and Bergen. By this stage, we'd used four of the ticket’s travel days.  It was becoming abundantly clear that if we didn't plan our itinerary carefully, we'd end up seeing very little of Europe. 

As a result, Dean and I spent an afternoon at a Burger King in Trondheim with a Eurail map in one hand and a timetable book in the other, planning a more efficient route through the rest of the continent. Below is a map I maintained and progressively annotated as we travelled. 

In hindsight, had we planned our route sooner, I’d have trimmed at least 4-5 days from our time in Scandinavia, and a day in Paris, to spend time exploring Portugal, Madrid or France.  For example, if we’d dropped Bergen, we could have returned from Morocco to Paris via Seville, Madrid, and Bordeaux.

To make the best use of our Eurail ticket, we often slept on trains as the ticket's terms and conditions allowed us to board a train in the evening and travel overnight without counting the first day as another travel day. Likewise, we'd often stop for half a day at an intermediary destination to see a few sights before moving on again. This enabled us to explore Pisa and Pompei without using extra days on our ticket.

Here's a summary of how we ultimately used our Eurail ticket, plus a few other modes of transport we clocked up along the way. Remember this itinerary followed three months of continuous travel through Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Northern Greece. You’ll notice we leveraged the ticket for lengthy repositioning trips, such as travelling from Southern Spain to Paris in a single night and day, a distance of almost 2000 kilometres.

EURAIL DAY	DATE	START CITY	TRANSFER VIA	DESTINATION
* Overnight train journey
1	8 Aug	Eigen	Frankfurt	Helmstedt
	9 Aug	Hitchhike to Berlin
	10 Aug	Berlin
	11 Aug	Berlin
	12 Aug	Postdam. Hitchhike to Hanover
2	12 Aug*	Hanover	Copenhagen	Oslo
	13 Aug	Oslo
	14 Aug	Oslo
	15 Aug	Oslo
3	16 Aug	Oslo	Hardangervidda	Bergen
	17 Aug	Bergen
	18 Aug	Bergen
4	19 Aug*	Bergen	Oslo	Trondheim
	20 Aug	Trondheim
	21 Aug	Trondheim. Planned our full European itinerary.
5	22 Aug	Trondheim	Bodo	Navik
	23 Aug	Bus to Harstad
	24 Aug	Harstad
	25 Aug	Ferry cruise in the Lofoten Islands
	26 Aug*	Stamsund. Overnight ferry to Bodo
6	27 Aug*	Bodo	Hell	Stockholm
	28 Aug	Stockholm
	29 Aug	Stockholm
	30 Aug	Stockholm
7	31 Aug	Stockholm	Goteberg	Copenhagen
	1 Sept	Copenhagen
	2 Sept	Copenhagen
	3 Sept	Copehagen
8	4 Sept*	Copenhagen	Hamburg	Munich
	5 Sept	Munich
	6 Sept	Munich
9	7 Sept	Munich	Brenner Pass	Venice
	8 Sept	Venice
	9 Sept	Venice
	10 Sept	Venice
	11 Sept	Venice
	12 Sept	Local train from Venice to Florence
	13 Sept	Florence
	14 Sept	Florence
	15 Sept	Local train from Florence to Rome
	16 Sept	Rome
	17 Sept	Rome
	18 Sept	Rome
10	19 Sept	Rome	Pompei	Brindisi
	19 Sept	Overnight ferry to Corfu
	20 Sept	Corfu
	21 Sept	Corfu
	22 Sept	Corfu
	23 Sept	Ferry to Patras. Train to Olympia
	24 Sept	Train to Patras. Overnight ferry to Brindisi
11	25 Sept	Brindisi	Pisa	Zurich
	26 Sept	Zurich
	27 Sept	Zurich
12	28 Sept*	Zurich	Milan	Barcelona
	29 Sept	Barcelona
	30 Sept	Barcelona
	1 Oct	Barcelona
13	2 Oct*	Barcelona	Valencia	Cordoba
	3 Oct	Cordoba
	4 Oct	Train to Ronda
	5 Oct	Ronda
	6 Oct	Train to Algeciras/Gibraltar
	7 Oct	Ferry to Tangier. Drive to Fez
	8 Oct	Fez
	9 Oct	Fez
	10 Oct*	Train to Meknes. Overnight train to Tangier.
	11 Oct	Ferry to Algeciras. Train to Seville
14	12 Oct*	Seville	Barcelona	Paris
	13 Oct	Paris
	14 Oct	Paris
	15 Oct	Paris
	16 Oct	Paris
	17 Oct	Paris
	18 Oct	Versailles. Paris
15	19 Oct	Paris	Rotterdam	Delft
	20 Oct	Delft
	21 Oct	Delft
	22 Oct	Delft
	23 Oct	Bus to Calais. Hovercraft to Dover. Bus to London
	1 Nov	Bus to Inverness
	7 Nov	Bus to London
	15 Nov	Overnight flight to Singapore
	16 Nov	Evening arrival in Singapore
	17 Nov	Singapore
	18 Nov	Singapore
	19 Nov	Overnight flight to Sydney
	20 Nov	Arrival in Sydney

Without a doubt, my Eurail experience kicked off a passion for planning travel itineraries that has endured for more than 35 years. As I look back at the route we travelled, I still marvel at how much ground we covered in those 15 days on our ticket. As we travelled, we met fellow backpackers who often shared insider tips on what to see at a future destination.

However, much of our daily schedule was planned using a paperback travel guide called Let's Go Europe.  If memory serves me well, Dean inherited it from a friend who'd travelled through Europe the previous year.  I also hoovered up brochures and local maps at every train station and tourist information centre. Remember, this was travel in an era before the internet.  We relied entirely on printed maps, timetables and books to guide us on our journey.

We also made good use of youth hostels and slept at campgrounds using a compact pup tent we'd bought in Germany. However, we discovered early on that the tent wasn't waterproof. It rained one night while camping in Oslo. By morning, everything was damp to say the least. A few days later, when more rain was forecast in the coastal city of Bergen, we purchased a plastic sheet to peg over the top of it during inclement weather. 

Months later, while camping in the Netherlands, a different kind of moisture challenged us. We discovered that, with winter approaching, dampness rising from the ground was all but impossible to avoid.  It was an unfortunate lesson about the high water table in a low-lying country like the Netherlands. A week later, we were in London, camping out on the floor of my Auntie Shirley's lounge and the tent was never used again.

We also slept on the deck of ferries (in Norway and Greece), under trees in a German forest (which we discovered was next to a railway cutting the following morning), in a park bandstand (Narvik, Norway) and on floor of homes of people we met along the way such as Olga, a lovely woman from Bergen that we met in Eastern Europe. Some locations even had special backpacking centres operating for the Summer.  For example, in Berlin, the driver who picked us up while hitchhiking told us about a temporary campground where raised platforms covered by a roof had been built for itinerant travellers.

For the most part, Dean and I travelled well together. He was more outgoing and often struck up a conversation with people we met along the way. These encounters resulted in us securing cheap and clean accommodation or discounted access to popular sights. Meanwhile, I was happy to manage our budget, as well as research and plan our daily itinerary, something I usually did most evenings.

Sadly, as the months wore on, our relationship began to sour. I'm mostly to blame. In hindsight, as an introvert, I became overwhelmed by the constant stimulation and daily engagement with strangers. As exhaustion set in, I began to withdraw. I also resented being left to plan our daily activities alone. While Dean was happy for me to take the lead and always keen to explore, I grew frustrated by what I, perhaps unfairly, perceived as an innate lack of curiosity. He later admitted that he saw more of Europe than he would've had the planning been left to him. 

I could have been more forgiving, especially given that Dean initially funded most of our travels.  I sold everything I owned to buy my air ticket and a backpack. Dean knew I couldn’t continue travelling once our initial three-month tour of Eastern Europe ended without a loan. As a result, he generously offered to transfer funds into my credit card. We then used these funds for daily expenses, withdrawing cash from an ATM whenever we arrived in a new country. 

In turn, I agreed to pay him back when I could. This wasn’t as risky as it sounds. Prior to our departure, we'd both secured working holiday visas for the UK, so we knew I’d soon be earning lucrative British Pounds. In other words, it was always in my interest to manage our budget, seeing as much as possible for as little as possible.

The image above is a classic example of the daily budget battle we waged. A note on the back of this photo reveals that it was taken at a cafe in Paris.  We quickly learned that a sidewalk table was always the most expensive seat in the house. My note says "Dean consumes a $10 beer, Andrew an $8 glass of wine. Photo taken by an obliging Japanese tourist". According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the average beer cost less than $2.50 in 1990.

The first of my retrospective backpacking posts has just been published. A recent newspaper article about the Lofoten Islands in Norway prompted me to write about our five-day excursion above the Arctic Circle. You can read about this journey here.  Stay tuned for more posts in the years ahead.

In case you're wondering, Dean and I never used our working holiday visas. Dean was incredibly homesick by the time we arrived in the UK, and we were both shocked by the cost of living in London. Dean decided to return to Australia. I didn't relish the thought of striking out on my own in a foreign country.  In the end, the appeal of Summer in Sydney, earning Australian dollars, was simply too tempting to resist.