University of Arkansas Office of Study Abroad: Spring Break: The Rundown #HogsAbroad in England #TravelTuesday

17 April 2018

Spring Break: The Rundown #HogsAbroad in England #TravelTuesday

Where to start?

Quick thoughts:

#1: Maybe America should take after the Brits and have two-weeks of Spring Break (though the recovery period of getting back in the school-mindset is significantly harder).

#2: Living in Europe has many benefits – one being easy access to other countries. I am amazed by my friends who have grown up geographically located where casual trips across the EU on a moment’s notice is the norm.

The Trip: Given a two-week break from school, Ella and I decided to make the most of our time and planned a backpacking trip around Denmark, Sweden, Hungary, Austria, and Germany. This entailed mix-matching the same three outfits, walking more than 100 miles, lots of sight-seeing, and of course, carrying all the necessities in a compact backpack along the way.

Transportation: We traveled by airplane, taxi, train, charter bus, trolley, metro, car, bicycle, ferry, and foot (I missed the opportunity to ride by cable-car in Austria, but I guess I’ll just have to go back for that).

The hosts: Something very unique about our trip was that we didn’t lodge in hotels or Air B-n-Bs – we stayed with locals who knew the area well and offered us great advice on locations, food, introduced us to their friends, and provided us a place to stay for free. We used a platform called Couchsurfing to find our hosts and thankfully, we were able to connect with some incredible people. By the end of our stay with most of our hosts we felt as if we had been friends for a long time. Couchsurfing offered a more personable feel to our travels. I would recommend doing it with your travel partner, but only if the host’s profile looks promising!

Check out the next blog for details (and pictures) about the cities we visited!