hi, a friend and i are planning a backpacking trip to europe summer 2001. i'll be 18, and he 19. we're looking at england, france, spain, italy, greece, and switzerland. we'll be staying in hostels. any advice on where to stay, where not to stay? any info. about trains would be great! i'd like to know how safe italy, greece and spain actually are. also, any idea how much it's going to cost? and any other helpful websites would be great to know. <BR> <BR>thanks, <BR>Sarah

Sarah, I wish I could help direct you to the appropriate website, but it's not here. Lately, most queries here involve 'have you stayed at this hotel', 'where should I go' 'please help me plan my trip' 'is it safe' 'how do I'. In other words, most people here are tourists, not travelers. Case in point, 'is the Marriott or Rennaisance "too American"'. Just go, do it and use common sense.

Sarah, <BR> <BR>The Europe travel site which attracts a much more backpack'n'hostel crowd is www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree - - a great site in its own right - - rarely duplicative of the kinds of info you can find here. <BR> <BR>Best wishes, <BR> <BR>Rex

www.eurotrip.com

I'm not a backpacker, but have come across a couple of potentially suitable sites... http://www.eurotrip.com/ "Your Backpackin' Europe Site", and http://www.artoftravel.com/index.html#TableofContents "The Art of European and World Travel Backpacking". Good luck!

<BR>There are web sites on backpacking that may help you. <BR> <BR>Privately written US site: http://www.backpackeurope.com/ <BR>UK site: http://go.to/bakpak <BR>Needs a few minutes to load a shockwave flash plug-in: http://www.BackpackingEurope.com/ <BR>Short notes by backpackers, and a forum: http://www.eurotrip.com/ <BR>For women, not yet found: http://www.sfu.ca/~rlreiner/ <BR>Newsgroup Backpack travel discussion group: rec.travel.budget.backpack <BR>Hostelling International - International Youth Hostel Federation <BR>http://www.iyhf.org/iyhf/ehome.html <BR>About 270 hostels that are not part of IYHF: http://www.hostelseurope.com/ <BR> <BR>With the e-mail version of this message I am sending a note I have on disc about night train travel. <BR> <BR>You can read the considered views on safety of five consuls <BR>from Australia on http://www.dfat.gov.au/consular/advice <BR>from Britain on http://193.114.50.10/travel <BR>from Canada on http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/menu-e.asp, under "Travel Reports" <BR>from France on http://www.dfae.diplomatie.fr/voyage...s/alphabet.asp <BR>from the USA on http://travel.state.gov, under "travel warnings" <BR>Some experienced American travellers find the American site over-cautious. It is therefor useful to check all five sites. <BR> <BR>I'm afraid I can't help on cost, except to say that costs for back packing in Poland, the Czech Republic (except Prague), Slovakia and Hungary are about a third of those in the countries you've listed. <BR> <BR>I've annotated lists of web sites, long for Britain and France, medium length for the four countries of central Europe that I've named, and short for the countries of south Europe that you've named. If you'd like me to copy these lists to you please tell me so, and say for which countries. <BR> <BR>Ben Haines, London

try www.backpackeurope.com, it should help

try the "backpacker's ultimate guide" or bug, for short: <BR> <BR>http://www.bug.nu/