In June and July 1979, when I was fourteen years old, I traveled with my family-of-origin (parents and siblings) to mainland Europe for six and a half weeks. We had Eurailpasses (which allowed unlimited travel in Europe's rail network through the participating countries) and rode trains all over the continent, visiting a total of sixteen countries: Norway, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Germany (then known as West Germany), Belgium, France, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, Monaco. Italy, Vatican City, Spain, and Portugal. This was my first trip outside North America, and that, combined with my young age and enormous scope of the trip, guaranteed an unforgettable experience which helped shape my personal development and view of the world, and my interest in travel today. That is not to say it was an easy or luxurious trip: to save money on such a long journey, we traveled with limited means, using backpacks, and often slept on trains overnight during lengthy travel segments. At one point we even slept on benches outside a train station when we had a 6-hour overnight layover and there were no places available to stay in town. We ate mainly out of bakeries and convenience shops. Occasionally we would eat a restaurant meal, and stay in a hotel so we could shower and clean off. Back then there was no euro, so that meant frequent money exchanges (with often long lines) between all the countries listed above. On a couple of rail segments, our train was loaded into the hull of a ship and transported across water (e.g. Copenhagen to Hamburg, Germany). The Eurailpasses covered a few other boat rides, such as Helsinki-to-Stockholm and a Rhine River cruise, and they also covered a 200-mile bus ride through Bavaria in Germany. At one point near the trip's end, we took a taxi from Rennes, France, to the Normandy coast so we could see Mont St. Michel.
The geographic scope of the trip involved about 17,000 rail miles, and extended from the arid plains of southern Spain all the way to Lapland north of the Arctic Circle, and from Vienna in the center of Europe all the way to the Normandy beaches. Even today, over three decades later, despite all the subsequent traveling I've done, this trip remains the standard by which I have compared all the others.
This is a map of the routes traveled, taken from a trip log that I kept every day during the actual trip. The routes strongly reflect the regions where Eurailpasses were valid in those days. Nowadays the rail passes are of greater variety and cover more countries.
Day-by-day itinerary for the 45-day trip, again taken from my trip journal. This was not planned in advance; a lot of spur-of-the-moment decisions were made during the trip, resulting in the itinerary shown here.
St. Peter's Basilica in Rome (Vatican City).
This is a castle in Portugal which we saw on the train ride from San Martinho do Porto, traveling south toward Lisbon.
This is the harbor of San Martinho do Porto, a beautiful resort town on the Portuguese coast a couple of hours north of Lisbon, where we spent two days.
This is a castle in southern Spain that we saw from the train, as it was traveling east of Seville on the way to Valencia and Barcelona.
View from the top level of the Eiffel Tower, with the Arc de Triomphe visible at the top of the photo.
Downtown Lisbon, Portugal
Members of my family backpacking through Zurich, Switzerland.
Alpine scenery in Switzerland visible from the train, going from Zurich to Milan (Italy).
Members of my family backpacking through a park in Luxembourg near our hotel.
Helsinki Cathedral, a Finnish Evangelical Lutheran cathedral, and a major landmark of the city.
Members of my family resting on benches outside the Narvik, Norway train station during a layover. The clock at right reads quarter to 3, and this refers to the early morning. This was early July, and in the "Land of the Midnight Sun", there is no darkness (Narvik is at about 68.4 degrees north latitude).
American military cemetery in Luxembourg, where casulaties from the Battle of the Bulge in World War II are buried. Obviously a very sad place.
View of Munich, Germany, showing many colorful buildings.
The Mont St. Michel island monastery in Normandy, France. Seeing this was one of the trip highlights, which is definitely saying something.
The geographic scope of the trip involved about 17,000 rail miles, and extended from the arid plains of southern Spain all the way to Lapland north of the Arctic Circle, and from Vienna in the center of Europe all the way to the Normandy beaches. Even today, over three decades later, despite all the subsequent traveling I've done, this trip remains the standard by which I have compared all the others.
This is a map of the routes traveled, taken from a trip log that I kept every day during the actual trip. The routes strongly reflect the regions where Eurailpasses were valid in those days. Nowadays the rail passes are of greater variety and cover more countries.
Downtown Lisbon, Portugal
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