Travel lessons learned the European way

By JULIE MAJOR
School of Communication
University of Miami

BERLIN— We’re at the Ostbahnhof Train Station here, slinging bloated suitcases that are as heavy as cement sacks off of our train from Dresden.

We have less than three minutes to get 25-plus large bags and 19 people off the train. The conductor is pointing at his watch and screaming at us furiously in rapid-fire German and one person is still in the train car searching for a bag that’s sitting on the platform outside. Some of the car doors are locking shut and one student is still on the train, searching for a bag that’s sitting outside on the platform with us.

Believe it or not, we’ve nearly got this disembarking from trains concept down to a science. But the European trains don’t help our cause much. In Berlin and other European cities, trains really only pause in a station. They “stop,” even in the major cities and stations, for only a couple of minutes.

Literally.

For this group of college students studying abroad, it’s just another day of organized chaos. And we still have to find the hotel.

I’m on Day Nine of my two-week European working vacation; by the time I met up with the students in Prague, they had been in Europe for three weeks. They’ve had that much of a head start to learn their way around Prague, learn how to make calls home, shop for souvenirs, get to know each other, fight, make up, and shop for more souvenirs.

Seems I walked in just in time.

Students enrolled in UM’s feature writing and design classes came to Prague as Czech Republic newbies: While they were told by their professors what to expect, they truly had to experience the city and European approaches to living for themselves. And, by coming in after them, I got to learn from their discoveries– and missteps.

So, presented below for the edification of future European travelers, are some of the best tips and hints to make a trip more interesting, safe and enjoyable. Some of these suggestions might sound pedestrian or too wrought with common sense, but they’re all good lessons learned, mostly the hard way.

Besides, you’d be amazed how easily people seem to abandon common sense when they cross over the Atlantic Ocean.

Know where home is. Sounds easy enough, right? Maybe isn’t when you’re in a city where everything from the street signs to the billboards are in a foreign language. After a student got separated from a part of our group at a museum in Berlin, several of us picked up matchbooks at the front desk of our hotel that had the hotel’s name and address printed on it. (Hotel key cards and even old-fashioned hotel keys may serve the same purpose. But, at our small European-style hotel, we were asked to leave our keys at the desk when we left the hotel.)

UM senior Deborah Block made the unfamiliar sound familiar to remember her subway stop in Berlin. “Our stop was Senefelderplatz station, so I just started calling it Seinfeld so I’d know when to get off,” she said.

Try to speak the language – or at least more than just English. Priya Chalam, a junior at Brown University, took a day trip hiking, biking and rafting in the Czech countryside – with a guide who spoke no English. However, both spoke some Spanish. “I was able to practice my Spanish in the boondocks of the Czech Republic,” Chalam said, “which I never would have thought possible. Who’d have thought I’d be practicing my Spanish near the border of Austria?”

Other students learned the basic courtesies like “thank you” and “please” in Czech (guidebooks urge travelers to do this anyway to ingratiate themselves with the locals). UM junior Lori Fulcher did the same in Germany, asking a waiter in Berlin to write down German words for “I would like,” “please” and “excuse me.” She also learned how to ask for alster wasser, which is a German beer mixed with Fanta.

All the students, by the way, learned quickly that pivo is the Czech word for beer.

Travel lightly. It was a painful lesson for Cristina Mas and a few others in our group to learn. Mas, a junior at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., packed two suitcases large enough to accommodate two adult bodies – without dismemberment. The suitcases also traveled like there really were two bodies inside them. Mas was left relying on the kindness of fellow students to help her lug the suitcases on and off trains and into hotel rooms.

“Eighty percent of the clothes I packed, I never wore,” Mas said. “Don’t bring more than one bag and make it a small one. You really don’t need everything you think you’ll need. My experience on the trains has been miserable because of my suitcases.”

UM senior Jennifer Boehm agreed. She estimated she never used half of what she packed.

“You can find pretty much the same stuff here as what you left behind in the States,” she said. “If you get here and you can’t live without something, you can always buy it. It’s easier than lugging it around and not using it.”

Boehm had two suitcases blow out completely at the beginning of her trip, adding insult to injury. “I’m learning to travel light,” she said, “or at least lighter.”

Get lost – with help. A hotel’s concierge is often a wealth of information about the area; minus a concierge, even the front desk staff can offer ideas that aren’t featured in the guidebooks. UM senior Erika Miller made it her near-religious habit to chat up the hotel concierge and staff, picking their brains on what can’t-miss places and things she should do while she was there.

“Pick up all the brochures you possibly can,” she said, “and then ask the hotel staff about the ones that sound the most interesting to you. I saw Cirque Du Soleil in Vienna and I never would have known it was there had it not been for the brochure I picked up.”

Find yourself – in a journal. Travel journals are an ideal way to keep track of the things you experience each day, particularly on an extended trip. If you’re faithful to them, they offer an excellent record of what you did and reading through them weeks or months later help remind you about a forgotten meal or a memory of a museum visit. UM Prof. Bruce Garrison required his feature writing students to write in journals for the duration of their five-week course. “At first I really didn’t like it,” Mas said. “But then I found myself getting into the writing and remembering what I did every day.”

Raise your tolerance level a little on strange smells. Let’s be honest here: In cities where air-conditioning is rare, body odor in Europe is nearly as famous and ubiquitous as its cobblestone streets. Oddly, you get used to it. But think of the positives that spring from the lack of air conditioning. Europe offers more open air cafes and restaurants where you can dine and drink al fresco.

Raise your tolerance level a lot when traveling with other people. Calling someone a character is just a polite way of saying they’re driving you nuts. Everyone’s nerves get frayed when traveling, and nerves have a way of shorting out completely when you travel in as big of a group as I did (at one point, there were 20 of us in Mainz).

That number might not set any Guinness World Records, but it’s a lot of people to keep track of and to get along with. Find your own “fun, happy place” to escape to for an hour or two, or bring along an iPod to escape the confusion and noise on long train or plane rides. Or do what Fulcher did, while rooming with four other girls in Prague: Shimmy out the skylight and onto the roof for a little personal time.

Be wary, always. Let me preface this by saying that crime can happen anywhere. That said, it happened to our group. One student got pick-pocketed on a crowded tram in Prague on his second day there. Another student was robbed at knifepoint by her cab driver on her last day in Prague. Fortunately, neither was harmed.

“I don’t want people to get the wrong idea that this happens all the time,” said Boehm, who lost 100 Euros in the robbery. “But you have to be just as careful here as you do if you visit any American city.”

At least try it. Not everything that sounds bad is – the beer with Fanta actually tasted pretty good. Even the most dubious of items on the menu have great potential. I stopped at an open-air café in Prague and ordered a sandwich from the menu. What I got was a sort of ham and cheese on lightly-toasted bread, with ketchup that didn’t taste like Heinz 57. But it was delicious – and, best of all, it was different. And it wasn’t McDonald’s.

The students do report that McDonald’s in Prague is the same as McDonald’s in Peoria, Ill. I’ll admit I can say the same thing for KFC.

Check your change. For residents of a former Communist country, people in Prague have learned a clever little entrepreneurial habit mainly practiced by hot dog vendors from New York to New Orleans: Shortchange the customer a few bucks. Most European countries use the Euro, which is similar to the American currency. The Czech Republic doesn’t use the Euro yet, and its koruna (or crown) bills are in difficult-to-compute increments of 50s, 100s, 1,000s and 2,000s. If you have to pay for something with a big bill, count your change before you walk away. Or better yet, ask your hotel to break your larger bills into smaller, more manageable amounts.

Sleep when you get home. This may well be the trip of a life time, so experience it all. Enough said.

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