suzofga

Hello, My college aged sons will be flying to Europe this summer for 5 weeks. Since my oldest son is an International Affairs major here in Georgia he has met many European friends over the years. They have been invited to couch hop throughout Europe and will have quite the adventure if we can figure out the logistics and travel in between. Here is a tenative list of places where they have friends who can host them along the way. Any help in organizing the best route and what amount of days would be most enjoyed in each place would be great. We have also read about Eurail Pass for college student so if that is an option between these places we would like to consider that as well. Their travels dates are : Fly into London mid day May 21, Fly out of Berlin, Germany June 25.
London, Paris, Lyon, Geneva, Zurich, Munich, Nuremburg, Frankfurt, Koblenz, Vienna, Berlin

nytraveler

well, first - they have selected only fairly large cities. If it were me I would drop some of them - esp Geneva and Zurich - and look at some of the mountains and countryside that people usually go to Switz for.

Suggest they consult the Let's Go Student guides and other backpacker resources - to find out how young people with no money travel - probably quite a bit different from most of the more mature travelers here with somewhat larger budgets.

Also, strongly suggest they do all the research themselves so when things go wrong - and they will - they know exactly how they put the trip together.

adrienne

They're going to 11 cities in 5 weeks? That's a lot of traveling. They'll have about 2.5 days in each city which is not much time. The remainder of their vacation will be spend getting to and from train station, in train stations, and on trains.

They should cut down the list of locations and do some research so they know what they want to see in each place. They won't have much time so they need to carefully prepare their itinerary.

Eurail passes are quite expensive and many trains require reservations for an additional fee. Since they are tight on time they will know when they are moving on to the next place and will save money booking their tickets 60 to 90 days ahead. The Eurostar should be booked immediately as the price increases daily as the travel date approaches.

For the best route they need to look at a map and see what is logical. Train schedules can be seen on bahn.de for all European trains although tickets are purchased from the country where the train originates.

Time in each city:

London - 5 days
Paris - 5 days
Berlin - 5 days
Lyon - 2 days
Nuremburg - 1 to 2 days
Frankfurt - 2 days
Vienna - 3 to 4 days
Munich - 2 to 3 days

Bamaman

Your sons are going to have the time of their lives, and their trip will be talked about forever.

I can see them visiting London, Paris, Lyon, Zurich, Geneva, Munich, Vienna, Nuremburg and Berlin in that order.
I would suggest leaving out Frankfurt and Koblenz with the time allotted.
Unless they really need to go to Zurich and Geneva, I would avoid Switzerland and spend more time elsewhere. It's very expensive but out of the way. Zurich's a little quiet for college students.

JulieCallahan

Hmmmm.... Perhaps they are locked into these places due to friends, but my kids travelled with just their first and last points set. They arrived in Vienna. Did not really care for it. They left the next day and hiked in the Austrian mountains for a few days instead.

They tend to travel faster than I do, react more spontaneously than I do, deal with travel issues better than I do (really bad hostels, etc).

Perhaps this is not an option. Just consider how much flexibility you can give them.