Travels Begin

SWITZERLAND

February 10, 2009

Travel Writing
Article 1

I had thrilling ideas about European travel. I imagined myself a modern day Thoreau. Each country I traveled through would be the woods near Walden Pond and each train the cabin in which I would conduct my observations and write my commentary for the world to read.

But travel is not the glamorous adventure I dreamed. I cannot simply jump from one country to the next transporting myself on the wings of my enthusiasm and feeding myself with the words from my pen; I needed the security of transportation, food and lodging.

I learned very quickly that a pragmatic approach to travel is the safest and most successful approach. Preparation and planning are vital for smooth travel. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way about the necessity of preparation and planning.

My roommate and I decided to go to Switzerland last weekend after hearing five girls from our group talking about Geneva. I did not know very much about Switzerland, but I have always wanted to see the Alps. The group of girls had booked rooms already in a hostel that we could stay in for Thursday and Friday, so my roommate and I only had to book rooms for Saturday. We reserved our rooms in a hostel called the Lazy Falken early in the week leading up to our trip, but we did not do any more extensive research or preparation. We planned to take a train from Maastricht to Paris, changing trains between the two in Brussels, and then going from Paris to Geneva.

Although our train from Brussels to Paris required reservations, we decided to make them at the station in Maastricht before we left for Brussels. When we arrived at the Maastricht train station, however, most of the seats on the reserve train were taken and my roommate and I had to go on a later train than the group of girls. When we finally arrived in the Paris Gare de Lyon station, we checked the schedule and realized that there were no more trains going from Paris to Geneva that evening. We were stuck in Paris without any place to stay.

As I stood on the platform looking at the train schedule, helplessness overwhelmed me. I felt tiny and insignificant. The air in the station was humming with activity. Men in stiff suits and leather-bound briefcases strode purposefully by on their way home from business meetings or conferences. Mothers holding the hands of small children rushed to catch their connection. Friends walked by laughing and stopped to buy a cup of coffee at a vendor. Reunited families embraced one another and parting couples kissed as the intercom blared and trains arrived and departed in a whoosh of air. But my roommate and I were alone and silent amidst the cacophony.

We had not properly prepared and planned. We had not made reservations ahead of time and we did not look to make sure we could catch the last train going from Paris to Geneva. Our lack of preparation left us stranded.

But we could not stand on the platform forever. We had to find somewhere to spend the night. We made our way to an information center and I tried in broken French and stilted English to communicate our predicament to the attendant. He wrote down a street name and a hostel on a scrap of paper and handed it to me, indicating with his hand that we should turn left after we exited the train station.

After a short walk down a dark street – the stones clattering against my boots as my teeth clattered together in the cold – we saw a blinking sign that said “HOSTEL” in bright red letters. We had found a place to stay.

Although circumstances worked out in our favor, I keep wondering what would have happened if my roommate and I had not found an information desk, if we had gotten lost outside the train station or if the hostel had been full.

Many young people, like me, have the idea that traveling in a foreign country will be a grand adventure. They romanticize it, but the reality is travel takes careful consideration and planning. It sounds glamorous to go from place to place without a worry or care, but it is not. There is nothing glamorous about being stranded and nothing exciting about being hungry. It is much more prudent to be prepared in any situation.