This week, my cultural conundrum is travel. It’s so much easier and more affordable to travel in Europe than in the United States! Like, shockingly so. With the ease of being able to travel between a handful of countries in only a few hours, the attitude toward traveling is a bit different from what I’m used to as well. It’s pretty normal to be like, “Oh, I’m going on holiday to Portugal for a few days, bye!” or take a day-trip to Germany or Switzerland just for fun. A lot of people who live in Strasbourg go shopping in Germany on a regular basis. In general, the bigger cities in France have good public transportation, so it’s definitely possible to live without a car and just rely on buses, trams, and trains.
Most* towns have a train station, so it’s a great way to get around France (*there’s no train station near Issenheim, so it’s been really limiting). Since I’m under 26 years old, I qualify for the Carte jeune for the trains. It’s usually 50 euros, but it was on sale for half price when I first arrived in France. It guarantees at least 30% off train ticket prices, and it really helps my assistante budget. It’s by far paid for itself several times over at this point, and I highly recommend it even if you’re in the country for only a few weeks and plan on traveling by train quite a bit.
Flights can be really really cheap if you know where to look—40 euros roundtrip from BSL to Amsterdam! Easyjet and Ryanair seem to be the most popular options around here. With Easyjet, you can only take one carryon bag—not a carryon and a personal item, literally just one small bag. That can be tricky if you plan on traveling for several days, but it’s worked out for short trips just fine.
The most popular rideshare service in France is BlaBlaCar, which is more like carpooling than a service like Uber or a taxi. Drivers post how many seats they have available for a specific route, and you pay a fairly low price to basically tag along with them as they take their normal commute. I haven’t personally used it, since there aren’t any routes available near me.
One last thing on travel is that it’s been funny to encounter the European skewed projection of the size of the United States. A lot of the French people I’ve met think that a week-long road trip is enough to see everything worth seeing in the United States. When I explain that it’s a 40-hour drive from NYC to LA without stopping, they’re shocked. It doesn’t even take that long to drive to Russia from my house in France…
Spending time in Europe has definitely made me sad that 1. my hometown doesn't have awesome public transportation, 2. flights around the U.S. are so expensive in comparison to Europe, and 3. I don't have unlimited time and money to jet around everywhere and see everything there is to see. I'm definitely more inspired to find ways to explore new places around Nebraska, though!
(click on the images to view them larger and to read the captions)
