Notes from Abroad

Tomorrow’s the big day!

AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

I can’t believe the countdown is already at 0. Where the heck did the time go!? I really have no idea.

Being sick for pretty much the entire week last week was a blessing and a curse: It forced me to stay home and relax (and book some hostels), but it also kept me from going out and getting the things I needed. Luckily I managed to gather everything up over these last few days and my list is now complete (I hope!).

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Well that’s it – classes are over, finals are over, and all that’s left to do is graduate. These last few weeks have been absolutely crazy. but they’re over and now I have an entire week (a.k.a. Senior Week) to just hang out in Ithaca and do whatever my little heart desires. And then I realized: oh boy, I’m leaving in 16 days. I don’t even know where I’m going to stay or where I’m going to go! So much to do!

So my week of downtime has turned into a week of scouring the web for planes, trains, ferries and hostels to try to piece together at least the first few weeks of my trip. It’s been a very expensive past few days and I’ve only booked about two weeks worth of travel and lodging, but I think that’s more sticker shock than anything else.

Why the changes? Well, I’ve decided to put myself at the whim of cheap transportation and (hopefully) comfortable, but affordable hostels. Along the way I’ve found a few sites to be absolutely indispensable:

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Sorry for disappearing over the last week or so. We’re in the final stretch of the semester and life is a little hectic.

So what’s new?
I’m working with someone from STA Travel to get my various passes in order. I’ll be using the BusAbout and Eurail passes that I won to supplement some of my travels around the continent. As for the plane tickets that were also a part of the prize, it looks like I’m going to be planning a second, mini-trip to the UK sometime next spring (yay!).

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As more friends find out about my upcoming adventure, I am getting more and more advice about places to go and things that I just have to see. So I’m putting it out there: where should I go? Ignoring the itinerary I set out (because I think it’s going to be subject to an overhaul next week…more on that later), where do you suggest I spend my time? I’m up for anything – from a tiny town in Bavaria to Piccadilly Circus (though, the less touristy a place is the better in my opinion) – I’d love your suggestions. It’d be even better if you could suggest an awesome hostel in the area because as I’ve mentioned, I’d like to avoid sleeping on park benches!

Go on, leave a comment! If I end up going to that particular place, I’ll even take a photo in your honor (or send you a post card…snail mail is fun!)

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My mom came to visit me at school yesterday to take some of my winter and miscellaneous stuff home to make moving out next month easier. I took her with me to go try on backpacks and look at some tevas for my trip because she would be honest about whether I looked like a moron in goofy shoes and a giant bag.

I think that’s when it hit her that I was actually serious about this trip and she proceeded to try her very hardest to convince me that going by myself was not a very good idea. I should find someone to go with me. I should stay in hotels. I should only go for a month. I should, I should, I should…

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After some long and hard thinking, I’ve decided to do the unthinkable. I’ve decided to -gasp- leave my laptop at home for the summer.

If you know me at all, your first reaction will likely be along the lines of “WHAT!??!?!??!?!!?” followed by all sorts of visions of me going through some sort of hardcore rehab-esque withdrawal. Yeah, I’ve had those same visions. But in the end I decided that I really don’t need a laptop. For the most part I work in the cloud and while it would be nice to have my trusty MBP around so that I have at least something familiar in my life, it’s big, bulky, expensive, and distracting.

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Now that I have my working itinerary down (though it’s been through a few changes since I posted it) I figured it was time to start working on the not-so-fun part: the budget.

This part was actually a bit scary and a bit challenging: some of the numbers that I was calculating were far higher than I anticipated while others were lower. The most difficult part, though, was figuring out how much to budget in for food! I already know to avoid restaurants as much as possible and to try to go to markets and such, but it’s not like I’m going to be buying groceries for a week at a time. And I do want to have the option of eating out every once in a while, because let’s face it, I won’t be able to make pasta as well as the restaurants in Italy and I wouldn’t even know where to begin in cooking an authentic German dinner.

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t wasn’t easy, but after many, many hours of staring at maps, reading through travel books, looking at airfares, scouring flickr, talking to friends, and just plain ole daydreaming, I’ve finally nailed down a working itinerary!

I have to say, it took a lot for me to cut out places like Glasgow and Stockholm, but when it came down to which places had to get the axe, I tried to pick groupings that would logically form into a future trip: a trip to Scandinavia, for instance, would let me cover Stockholm, Copenhagen, Oslo, Helsinki and a bunch of other places instead of just the first two. Same goes for the UK. The UK seems like the easiest trip to make somewhere down the line and dedicating an entire trip to the UK would let me cover the more rural parts of England and also fit in Wales and a lot more of Ireland.

So, with the exception of London, none of those places will be included in my trip this summer.

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I’m slightly geographically challenged. I have an excellent sense of direction (if I do say so myself), but when it comes to being able to place things on a map, well let’s just say it’s not exactly my forte.

That posed a bit of a problem when it came to figuring out my itinerary. I had a list of cities that I rattled off, but I couldn’t really tell you how far apart they are or where a good number of them are in relation to each other. I needed a map. A good one. Off to the book store I went, but to my surprise, price tags were upwards of $20. $20! For a map! No thanks. That’s why we have the internet. After a little poking around I found a decent, grammar school geography class map that was perfect for my needs (like I said, I’m a bit geographically challenged). I needed a way to “stick pins” in the map so I could see if any logical patterns would emerge that would help me to decide where to fly in and where to fly out. Using my trusty list, I marked down the cities on the map in 3 colors: definitely, hopefully, and possibly. (And yes, I realize those aren’t colors).

With all of the points laid out before my eyes, it finally hit me: holy crap there’s no way I’m going to cover all of this.

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