I did an EF tour of Western Europe as a high school student in the early 1990s. Your description pretty much matches my experience: Ride a bus for two hours, stop and take pictures of a famous landmark, get back on the bus for two more hours. I'm happy I got to go and see things like the Eiffel Tower and Neuschwanstein Castle, but when people asked me what life and people were like over there, I had to tell them I didn't really know.
The eldest spent 10 days in the Alps. Mostly little villages. He and his crew had HOURS to get into teenaged misadventures. And the weather was cool. He raved about it. And his tour was maybe 20 kids 4 adults.
3 things turned really turned this trip into a ... challenge. 1) Heat. 2) Size of Crew. 3) Backwards Itinerary which made initial travel extra long.
I'm guessing you know that the polish letter ł, while it looks like the roman L, is actually a different letter and is pronounced like W. So your Italian grandmother had it about right.
Yes, they are actually spelled „gołąbki”. The „ą” is the same letter as in „Iga Świątek” and is pronounced „om” in front of a „b” (but „on” in front of a „t”.)
I didn't know! She was Italian and I started to think that she mispronounced it to spite him. And I saw a bunch of spellings. Think I went with the one from the specialty shop near me.
Enjoyed your tour of places I've never visited, despite having lived in Germany the past 37 years. If you ever make it to Munich, I'll buy you a Maß beer (1 liter)!
I have been to Checkpoint Charlie -- it was in 1989, and the Berlin Wall was still up. We had to go to East Berlin to see the Pergamon Museum, and seeing the Ishtar gate was what made me decide to switch my career path from physics to archaeology.
(I have since been back -- it was weird to see the dingy East German department stores turned into glitzy western versions).
"It’s hard to pretend to be a man of international intrigue and romance when you can feel your own fat rendering." LOL stuff.
Was lucky enough to spend week-at-time visits to various Euro cities (and international locales) for my low-paying job out of college in the 90's. Was able to take in local sites, frugality led me to meet locals who were more than happy to play tour guide. Watched a football match in Germany in the middle of a weekday that was a bonkers event (people getting pass-out drunk in public at 11 Am on a Wednesday is not what you see in the states).
Haven't been back since those days and now I'm feeling the itch again. Great stuff Mike!
In Ireland a few years before this trip, saw a pickup Gaelic football game in Dublin, then had some beers north of Dublin in some ancient village where the locals were watching some important ancient match. Was vibing while some other American tourist, a Skins fan, was boorishly announcing, "This game is so weird. WTF with these rules." Fun times.
I think you hit on it in your essay. Speedrunning major tourist sites doesn't satisfy the itch to immerse yourself in the "real" culture of a foreign land. Just hanging out at everyday places and experiencing some of the "smaller" events and customs is more satisfying IMO. Of course, an unplanned, let's just see what happens vacation can also be boring as hell so you also need to have the ability to collaborate with locals to find the good stuff.
Playing foosball with a bunch of slacker Germans until the sun rose in a smoky, "underground" club in Wiesbaden won't show up in any travel guides but it's my idea of "immersing yourself in the culture".
How wonderful. My wife and I were in Krakow and Berlin this June (fortunately not as hot) and I’ve been to Budapest (and also Auschwitz). You took me back, and it was a great trip. Congrats to your Iggles, and go Bears!
This is wonderful writing. I walk my dogs by Independence Mall regularly, but I still don't go to the Art Museum nearly as much as I should. I should be there 4-6 times a year, and I'm not.
Also, everything you said about the Szechenyi thermal baths, and then some. I was there in a December a few years ago as part of a Budapest/Vienna/Prague trip, and I just found that place to be magical, and wonderfully small-d democratic in a country which ... has some issues.
Loved those baths. Been 3 years since my last Art Museum trip and starting to feel guilty. I have walked there -- well, "Marched" there -- a few times lately, but then my brain thinks it is too inconvenient to get to when I am brainstorming a Sunday date with the wife.
The garage in the back helps; also the existence of places like Pizzeria Vetri nearby.
When you go, find this Van Eyck (St Francis Receiving the Stigmata) in the early European Art. It is tiny -- 5" x 5 3/4". It should be impossible to create the level of detail he does in an object that small. It may be the most amazing thing in the whole building -- and then you can go see the Duchamp porny thing through the hole in the wall. https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/102076
Got quite a chuckle opening this on the Vienna subway at rush hour. Fortunately it's not nearly as hot here as you had it. Plus our hotel has AC! Really enjoyed the diversion from football and looking forward to the mega-preview in a week or so.
Thanks! I was actually looking at rail stations in Budapest and elsewhere with envy during our trip. "I bet we can get to the middle of the next city in relative comfort on that thing, rather than loading into the tour bus to go over mountains again."
Having done an EF eastern europe tour as a teen, I don't recommend bus focused, whirlwind tours for anyone. The whirlwind tours feels like a distinctly American way of visiting a place. I've learned that slower trips where I spend days at a location are more pleasant, relaxing, and fulfilling.
This all reminds me of a man I once knew who 'hated' tours. However when he was in a new town he often rented a car and simply followed one of those double decker tour busses and listed to the tour guide blasting his spiel over a megaphone.
Thanks for posting this travelogue! I remember you referring to the trip (via Twitter?) as it happened. I live in Prague, so I was curious how it went for you. I am no fan of such crammed and exhausting tours, but at least they give you glimpses of things that you might want to return to. Hopefully some day you can draw up a more realistic itinerary and then settle in for a week or two or three to experience things at a more human pace with room for random discoveries.
I really wanted to cross that bridge. The Bridges of Prague are a famous math problem that often appears in high-level textbooks. But I think it was also the height of tourist season, and midday, and the lack of free time was infuriating. Plus, the hotel out on the outskirts, where the only attraction nearby was KFC ...
My god...the tour from hell...perhaps all tours are...never been on one, nor a cruise ship...whatever traveling I've done has been solo (Scotland), or with my wife (Paris, London), or with two friends (the national parks via car)...thanks for your report...there are advantages to being a curmudgeon...
I'm with you. The idea of going through all the costs/hassles of international travel to be put on a daily schedule that determines where you'll be at all times sounds like 3rd level of hell stuff to me.
Initially, I liked the idea of an itinerary that would take the guesswork out of travel. And 3 of us traveled for the price of 1.5! Then I found myself yelling at some kid's parents to stay in line for the fourth straight head count in front of a bus in 98 degree heat because we were an hour behind schedule for a sit-down dinner where I had no control over the menu.
Yeah I was talking about tours/cruises in general. Honestly, parents chaperoning young people for a week straight in foreign lands is a major positive in the karma ledger. I admire you for doing that because it's more than I could handle.
One reason my wife and I are still married is both of us think vacations should result in LESS responsibility, not more. Schedules, deadlines...that's what we're trying to get away from. A beach house with literally nothing on the agenda is nirvana to us.
I took the family on an extended Griswold style adventure through Europe this summer, and still catching up on TDR articles and the (sad) state of the world in general.
We also visited a concentration camp (Dachau). Being shown the sites of Hitler's rise in Munch on a bike tour the day prior, then learning (on a wet, rainy, fitting weather day) how the first prisoners of that nearby camp were political, was a blow to my general "it'll never get that bad, right?" optimism....
Stupid work has caused me to get way behind on Tanier reading, so I haven't been commenting at all ('cause who's gonna read my brilliant riposte 3 weeks later?), but I gotta ask: Is the title of Chapter II an XTC reference? 'Cause we're the same age, and god I loved that album (still do), which played a key role in a formative European trip of my own 'round about 1987.
This is a great summary of a pretty grueling trip. I love going to Europe when I can (which isn't very often, more than once but less than five time), but I also love planning travel so I try to limit where I'm going and not do bus type tours. That gives me the benefit of saying "I have to go back" because there are many places to visit. I wouldn't want to go with a big group, though - I feel like that part of the experience really drained you even though you don't say that explicitly in the story.
Great article, love the non-football content evry now and again. Genuine question for Americans, you mention a few times how much you want to visit Europe and if your not sure you'll ever make it back - why (and I really don't mean to sound like a European snob) don't you just go back next summer? I ask because as a Brit on public service salary it feels very achievable to blvisit the US every couple of years if I were so inclined
Most in the US get 2-3 weeks of paid leave. If you want to visit Euro without it consisting of mostly travel you need at least 10-14 days IMO and that means having almost no leave for the rest of the year.
Add fact that there's a big difference between traveling from NY to Europe and traveling from...Texas or California...adds hours onto the trip.
Then there's the fact many Americans simply lack curiosity about the world around them. I don't know the exact number but I believe something like 50% of Americans have never traveled more than 50 miles beyond their birthplace. Many are happy to just stay where they're comfortable.
Also British, but work in travel. The two big differences are how little annual leave they get in the US, which mean they’ll often have a few long weekends, rather than one ‘big’ trip.
The other is that they have far more inclusive tours in terms of guides / moving every day etc. Very few Americans just rock up in (eg) Rome, and spend 4 days just wandering around people watching and drinking coffee. More likely, it’s day 1 guided tour of Vatican and Colosseum, day 2 Borghese Gardens in the morning before train to Florence, day 3 Uffizi and side trip to Pisa for the leaning tower etc, day 4 off to Paris or similar
As a football writer I officially had 2-3 weeks of leave but could make it a month with pre-written material, so long as the month was late-June to mid-July. And my wife gets 9 weeks as a teacher. We are lucky in that sense.
Americans are also AWFUL at learning other languages. Few of the kids on the trip who had taken 3-4 years of German could even function a little in Germany. My wife and I, educated and curious folks, know nothing. Even French menus take serious decoding for us. We did more hanging around and people watching in Ireland when my boys were a few years younger, knowing comfortably that we could ask for directions and such.
America, particularly the East Coast, also has tons of attractions, as I point out in the essay. Museum hopping NYC or DC can scratch that itch, there's lots of beaches. Europe becomes a real heavy lift financially and logistically when you can just borrow a buddy's beach house for a few days, splurge for one Broadway show and then call it a vacay!
I did an EF tour of Western Europe as a high school student in the early 1990s. Your description pretty much matches my experience: Ride a bus for two hours, stop and take pictures of a famous landmark, get back on the bus for two more hours. I'm happy I got to go and see things like the Eiffel Tower and Neuschwanstein Castle, but when people asked me what life and people were like over there, I had to tell them I didn't really know.
The eldest spent 10 days in the Alps. Mostly little villages. He and his crew had HOURS to get into teenaged misadventures. And the weather was cool. He raved about it. And his tour was maybe 20 kids 4 adults.
3 things turned really turned this trip into a ... challenge. 1) Heat. 2) Size of Crew. 3) Backwards Itinerary which made initial travel extra long.
I'm guessing you know that the polish letter ł, while it looks like the roman L, is actually a different letter and is pronounced like W. So your Italian grandmother had it about right.
Yes, they are actually spelled „gołąbki”. The „ą” is the same letter as in „Iga Świątek” and is pronounced „om” in front of a „b” (but „on” in front of a „t”.)
I didn't know! She was Italian and I started to think that she mispronounced it to spite him. And I saw a bunch of spellings. Think I went with the one from the specialty shop near me.
Enjoyed your tour of places I've never visited, despite having lived in Germany the past 37 years. If you ever make it to Munich, I'll buy you a Maß beer (1 liter)!
Oooooh. I hope to do France when the wife retires. But I also want to try the Lake Lucerne area.
Very interesting travelogue!
I have been to Checkpoint Charlie -- it was in 1989, and the Berlin Wall was still up. We had to go to East Berlin to see the Pergamon Museum, and seeing the Ishtar gate was what made me decide to switch my career path from physics to archaeology.
(I have since been back -- it was weird to see the dingy East German department stores turned into glitzy western versions).
"It’s hard to pretend to be a man of international intrigue and romance when you can feel your own fat rendering." LOL stuff.
Was lucky enough to spend week-at-time visits to various Euro cities (and international locales) for my low-paying job out of college in the 90's. Was able to take in local sites, frugality led me to meet locals who were more than happy to play tour guide. Watched a football match in Germany in the middle of a weekday that was a bonkers event (people getting pass-out drunk in public at 11 Am on a Wednesday is not what you see in the states).
Haven't been back since those days and now I'm feeling the itch again. Great stuff Mike!
In Ireland a few years before this trip, saw a pickup Gaelic football game in Dublin, then had some beers north of Dublin in some ancient village where the locals were watching some important ancient match. Was vibing while some other American tourist, a Skins fan, was boorishly announcing, "This game is so weird. WTF with these rules." Fun times.
I was in charge of the itinerary on that one.
I think you hit on it in your essay. Speedrunning major tourist sites doesn't satisfy the itch to immerse yourself in the "real" culture of a foreign land. Just hanging out at everyday places and experiencing some of the "smaller" events and customs is more satisfying IMO. Of course, an unplanned, let's just see what happens vacation can also be boring as hell so you also need to have the ability to collaborate with locals to find the good stuff.
Playing foosball with a bunch of slacker Germans until the sun rose in a smoky, "underground" club in Wiesbaden won't show up in any travel guides but it's my idea of "immersing yourself in the culture".
Famously in the Czech Republic the windows don't tilt and turn, they merely turn.
It's known as the dreh-fensteration of Prague.
We toured past the window you were referring to!
How wonderful. My wife and I were in Krakow and Berlin this June (fortunately not as hot) and I’ve been to Budapest (and also Auschwitz). You took me back, and it was a great trip. Congrats to your Iggles, and go Bears!
I would love to go to Budapest on a normal day. And the other cities as well.
This is wonderful writing. I walk my dogs by Independence Mall regularly, but I still don't go to the Art Museum nearly as much as I should. I should be there 4-6 times a year, and I'm not.
Also, everything you said about the Szechenyi thermal baths, and then some. I was there in a December a few years ago as part of a Budapest/Vienna/Prague trip, and I just found that place to be magical, and wonderfully small-d democratic in a country which ... has some issues.
Loved those baths. Been 3 years since my last Art Museum trip and starting to feel guilty. I have walked there -- well, "Marched" there -- a few times lately, but then my brain thinks it is too inconvenient to get to when I am brainstorming a Sunday date with the wife.
The garage in the back helps; also the existence of places like Pizzeria Vetri nearby.
When you go, find this Van Eyck (St Francis Receiving the Stigmata) in the early European Art. It is tiny -- 5" x 5 3/4". It should be impossible to create the level of detail he does in an object that small. It may be the most amazing thing in the whole building -- and then you can go see the Duchamp porny thing through the hole in the wall. https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/102076
Got quite a chuckle opening this on the Vienna subway at rush hour. Fortunately it's not nearly as hot here as you had it. Plus our hotel has AC! Really enjoyed the diversion from football and looking forward to the mega-preview in a week or so.
Thanks! I was actually looking at rail stations in Budapest and elsewhere with envy during our trip. "I bet we can get to the middle of the next city in relative comfort on that thing, rather than loading into the tour bus to go over mountains again."
Having done an EF eastern europe tour as a teen, I don't recommend bus focused, whirlwind tours for anyone. The whirlwind tours feels like a distinctly American way of visiting a place. I've learned that slower trips where I spend days at a location are more pleasant, relaxing, and fulfilling.
Exactly. It can be fun to just stay a couple of days in some semi-random but interesting place, like Amberg.
This all reminds me of a man I once knew who 'hated' tours. However when he was in a new town he often rented a car and simply followed one of those double decker tour busses and listed to the tour guide blasting his spiel over a megaphone.
sicko
Thanks for posting this travelogue! I remember you referring to the trip (via Twitter?) as it happened. I live in Prague, so I was curious how it went for you. I am no fan of such crammed and exhausting tours, but at least they give you glimpses of things that you might want to return to. Hopefully some day you can draw up a more realistic itinerary and then settle in for a week or two or three to experience things at a more human pace with room for random discoveries.
I really wanted to cross that bridge. The Bridges of Prague are a famous math problem that often appears in high-level textbooks. But I think it was also the height of tourist season, and midday, and the lack of free time was infuriating. Plus, the hotel out on the outskirts, where the only attraction nearby was KFC ...
My god...the tour from hell...perhaps all tours are...never been on one, nor a cruise ship...whatever traveling I've done has been solo (Scotland), or with my wife (Paris, London), or with two friends (the national parks via car)...thanks for your report...there are advantages to being a curmudgeon...
I'm with you. The idea of going through all the costs/hassles of international travel to be put on a daily schedule that determines where you'll be at all times sounds like 3rd level of hell stuff to me.
I would never do a cruise ship!
Initially, I liked the idea of an itinerary that would take the guesswork out of travel. And 3 of us traveled for the price of 1.5! Then I found myself yelling at some kid's parents to stay in line for the fourth straight head count in front of a bus in 98 degree heat because we were an hour behind schedule for a sit-down dinner where I had no control over the menu.
Yeah I was talking about tours/cruises in general. Honestly, parents chaperoning young people for a week straight in foreign lands is a major positive in the karma ledger. I admire you for doing that because it's more than I could handle.
One reason my wife and I are still married is both of us think vacations should result in LESS responsibility, not more. Schedules, deadlines...that's what we're trying to get away from. A beach house with literally nothing on the agenda is nirvana to us.
I took the family on an extended Griswold style adventure through Europe this summer, and still catching up on TDR articles and the (sad) state of the world in general.
We also visited a concentration camp (Dachau). Being shown the sites of Hitler's rise in Munch on a bike tour the day prior, then learning (on a wet, rainy, fitting weather day) how the first prisoners of that nearby camp were political, was a blow to my general "it'll never get that bad, right?" optimism....
Stupid work has caused me to get way behind on Tanier reading, so I haven't been commenting at all ('cause who's gonna read my brilliant riposte 3 weeks later?), but I gotta ask: Is the title of Chapter II an XTC reference? 'Cause we're the same age, and god I loved that album (still do), which played a key role in a formative European trip of my own 'round about 1987.
This is a great summary of a pretty grueling trip. I love going to Europe when I can (which isn't very often, more than once but less than five time), but I also love planning travel so I try to limit where I'm going and not do bus type tours. That gives me the benefit of saying "I have to go back" because there are many places to visit. I wouldn't want to go with a big group, though - I feel like that part of the experience really drained you even though you don't say that explicitly in the story.
Let's just say the kids weren't the biggest problem on the tour.
Great article, love the non-football content evry now and again. Genuine question for Americans, you mention a few times how much you want to visit Europe and if your not sure you'll ever make it back - why (and I really don't mean to sound like a European snob) don't you just go back next summer? I ask because as a Brit on public service salary it feels very achievable to blvisit the US every couple of years if I were so inclined
Most in the US get 2-3 weeks of paid leave. If you want to visit Euro without it consisting of mostly travel you need at least 10-14 days IMO and that means having almost no leave for the rest of the year.
Add fact that there's a big difference between traveling from NY to Europe and traveling from...Texas or California...adds hours onto the trip.
Then there's the fact many Americans simply lack curiosity about the world around them. I don't know the exact number but I believe something like 50% of Americans have never traveled more than 50 miles beyond their birthplace. Many are happy to just stay where they're comfortable.
Pretty generous with that third week of American vacay. Maybe after 15 years on the job.
Also British, but work in travel. The two big differences are how little annual leave they get in the US, which mean they’ll often have a few long weekends, rather than one ‘big’ trip.
The other is that they have far more inclusive tours in terms of guides / moving every day etc. Very few Americans just rock up in (eg) Rome, and spend 4 days just wandering around people watching and drinking coffee. More likely, it’s day 1 guided tour of Vatican and Colosseum, day 2 Borghese Gardens in the morning before train to Florence, day 3 Uffizi and side trip to Pisa for the leaning tower etc, day 4 off to Paris or similar
This is all true.
As a football writer I officially had 2-3 weeks of leave but could make it a month with pre-written material, so long as the month was late-June to mid-July. And my wife gets 9 weeks as a teacher. We are lucky in that sense.
Americans are also AWFUL at learning other languages. Few of the kids on the trip who had taken 3-4 years of German could even function a little in Germany. My wife and I, educated and curious folks, know nothing. Even French menus take serious decoding for us. We did more hanging around and people watching in Ireland when my boys were a few years younger, knowing comfortably that we could ask for directions and such.
America, particularly the East Coast, also has tons of attractions, as I point out in the essay. Museum hopping NYC or DC can scratch that itch, there's lots of beaches. Europe becomes a real heavy lift financially and logistically when you can just borrow a buddy's beach house for a few days, splurge for one Broadway show and then call it a vacay!