The time had arrived and Europe needed to be visited. Here is a brief (?) summary of the thought process that ended up with a trip from the equator to the high arctic.
By air 
By boat 
By train
First we decided that we were going to visit Europe, and , as you know, it is a big place with lots to see, this needs to be divided up to get the best out of the place. Also to consider is that some areas are hard work with respect to language and culture, so much harder to plan and manage with little experience of the area.
- Eastern Europe, Poland, Hungary etc
- Central Europe, Germany, Switzerland
- Western Europe, France, Spain
- Italy, nearly by itself
- Mediterranean, Greece and Israel
Where is Britain ? ah The UK has a whole different travel agenda.
We decided that Eastern Europe was a place to start. But because of the language we thought we would join a basic 2 week tour initially then do our own thing. Then war broke out in Syria and Eastern Europe had a refugee crisis. We don’t want to be trying to navigate and take train in countries strugging with badly behave refugees at train stations.
Change plans
Aby’ss friend Nat says she is going to Svalbard from Dublin, she has cheap tickets and would Aby like to join her for a few days.
Result – Aby needs to be in Tromso on a set date to fly to Svalbard to meet Nat. Now we have an item to plan around.
We worked out a little six weeks journey covering Norway, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Italy and Singapore.
Here is a brief outline, number in superscript are the number of nights
- Fly from Sydney 1 to Singapore 1
- Fly Singapore to Copenhagen
- Train from Copenhagen to Goteborg 2
- Train Goteborg to Oslo 1
- Train Oslo to Bergan 2 with side trip on Flam Railway
- Boat Bergan to Tromso 3
- Tromso 4 but split into 2 visits
- Here Aby flies Tromso to Svalbard 5
- Dee sails from Tromso to Kirkeness to Tromso 6
- Bus Tromso to Narvick
- Train 1 Narvick to Stockholm 3
- Train Stockholm to Lubeck 1
- Train Lubeck to Kaub 3 in Rhine Valley
- Train Kaub to Traben-Trarback 3 in Moselle Valley
- Train Traben-Trarbach to Zermatt –3
- Train Zermatt to Pontrssina 1
- Train and bus Pontresina Managio 3 on Lake Como
- Bus and train Menagio to Murren 4
- Train Murren to Zurich 1
- Fly Zurich to Singapore 1
- Fly Singapore to Sydney 1
You will find a whole pile of small articles about the places we went to the where we stayed and the transport in between.
Here are some of our overall conclusions
- Train travel in Europe is great
- Don’t bother with fast trains, just don’t see enough out the window
- Some places are better than others
- Not as expensive as we anticipated
- The Nordic countries are a good start for tourless-travel
Next – Australia to Singapore to Copenhagen