With less than 50 days before the end of school, the final crunch for Boston College students has begun. It’s hard to think about what you have to do in the next few weeks, let alone the coming summer vacation.
While there are internships and full time employment to keep you entertained during the summer months, there’s also another option. Traveling as a student offers you certain privileges that you won’t have as an adult. Airfare, hotel stays and even rail passes are all offered at discounted prices. You just need to know where to look.
My roommates and I have just spent the last few weeks planning a trip to Europe after graduation. We’ve been trying to balance a fun and diverse trip, while at the same time attempting to maintain a budget.
The key to traveling in Europe is to plan ahead of time. It’s always best to start with picking a few cities and countries that everyone in your group wants to see.
For people who have no idea where they want to go, there are some great guidebooks available. Even for the more seasoned traveler, the following guidebooks are a great help when planning a European jaunt. Lonely Planet’s Europe on a Shoestring offers a city guide for almost every major European city. It also has lists of cheap places to stay and eat while you’re there. Let’s Go Europe 2000 is another very good book to have. In addition to city guides and hotel listings, it also has color maps for a few of the major cities.
However, one of the best books that we found was Cheap Sleeps Europe, by Katie Wood. Even though this is more of a listing of hotels and hostels than a guidebook, it does have a list of cheap places to stay in every major European city, as well as some out-of-the-way places. It also warns travelers of the dangerous areas of a city in which they would want to avoid staying. Furthermore, it provides phone numbers, since most places require a reservation for your stay.
Of course, before you think about staying someplace, you need to actually get there. Airfare is probably going to be the most costly part of your trip. But there are student discount programs that will help alleviate some of the cost.
Student Travel (www.sta-travel.com) offers reduced airfare for students. However, most of the really inexpensive flights have sold out. There are representatives that you can call who can help you book a reasonably priced flight. The site also has a lot of information about student travel in Europe and sells student ID cards, rail passes and insurance. Council travel (www.counciltravel.com) is another student travel site. It also offers cheap airfare but they are also likely to sell out quickly. The site is packed with information about hostels, travel gear, tours and ID cards.
There are also a lot of non-student travel sites, such as www.lowestfare.com and www.travelocity.com, which offer reduced airline prices. Try to get “red-eye” flights (overnight flights) and roundtrip tickets, as it will reduce the price of your flight.
Most people won’t want to stay in just one European city. The easiest way to travel as a student in Europe is to take the train around.
There are several train passes to choose from and getting the right one will depend on how many people are traveling with you and how long you want to travel.
The best site for information about rail passes and the European rail system is Rail Europe (www.raileurope.com). In addition to rail passes, the site has an extensive database on fares and schedules of trains running throughout Europe. Enter in a source and destination city and you can get the time that trains are leaving from the source as well as how long it will take to get to the destination.
Traveling by rail and staying in hostels is usually synonymous with student travelers. So is the huge backpack that most of them wear during their journeys. Backpacks are rather expensive, but a good one is essential to enjoying your travels.
Eastern Mountain Sports, L.L. Bean and Jansport all offer backpacks.
It is important, however, to make sure that the pack fits well before you travel and that it can carry what you need. Most stores will fit you with your bag once you’ve bought it, an advantage to buying them there instead of through a catalogue or on-line.
Traveling with your friends isn’t the only way you can see Europe. There are several companies who offer tours targeted towards college age students.
AESU, (www.aesu.com), has anything from a week stay in Great Britain to a month and a half trek through most of Europe. These are whirlwind tours, which means you stay in most cities for a day or two before taking a bus to the next location.
Contiki (www.contiki.com) is another well-known student tour group. It offers many of the same tours as AESU. However, it also offers tours to other parts of the world, including Africa, North America and the South Pacific.
Both of these companies will offer tours at a relatively low cost but they won’t include airfare. There are advantages to taking a tour over traveling on your own. You are assured of a set itinerary for the duration of your trip. You also know the places you are staying will be well maintained.
However, there is some merit in just trying to see a continent on your own. Either way, traveling is a great way to pass some of your summer time.
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