O.k. question. I know I don’t have any money to travel right now...SO why am I still <BR>flipping through my Europe travel books??? Answer: I’m hooked. I think about going <BR>back to Europe all the time. I also look at this forum WAY too much (but that would be <BR>a whole other thread: When did you get hooked on this forum). <BR>Anyway, since I don’t really need detailed info. on hotels, directions from the airport, or anything that specific, how about satisfying my real need to talk about Europe and tell me about your first experience travelling in Europe, and basically how and when you got hooked. <BR>I got hooked when I was 17, and 40 of us Catholic school girls (amazingly enough we <BR>didn’t have to wear our uniforms) travelled to France, Switzerland, and Monaco on an EF <BR>tour. Although I would never go to Europe on a tour again, that is when I saw for the <BR>first time the beauty of Paris, the South of France and the Alps. I also remember having <BR>the time of my life when we went to Cassis and got to ride on a speed boat on the <BR>Mediterranean. It was wonderful. I’m looking forward to hearing your stories.

I think I was always hooked on travel. When I was very little I remember sitting on the knee of a family friend and listening to his tales of Egypt (ok,so it's not Europe). I was mesmerized. He brought back a red leather hassock for my family and me a leather purse with Egyptian designs on it which I treasured for years. Later I became fascinated with the Netherlands. I don't know why - we didn't know anyone from there, but I had to get a pair of wooden shoes to wear around the yard. <BR> <BR>My first view of Europe was of London on the way back from Africa. I booked into an expensive hotel in Knightsbridge because I knew it would be a welcome change from camping, the lack of hot water & plumbing, etc. <BR> <BR>My mother had told me London was "horrible" but I immediately took to the view out my room's window of the misty, grey street scene in October. The cool air felt especially great since I had a fever. I just wandered the area for the day and decided right then to come back which I did the next year. Since then I have only been to Greece and the Netherlands in Europe so I have a long way to go. <BR> <BR>I still feel a relative new-comer to the Fodor's site, having only been connected to the internet for about a year and a half and learning about it some months later from another travel site. But...I may have been here longer than I think because I can't remember if I've already told this story! <BR> <BR>

When I saw the Eiffel Tower for the first time. When I stood on the balcony in Eze Village and looked out over the Mediterranean. As I ate my first Roger Verge dinner at Moulin de Mougins. When I woke from a nap in my room at the Moulin, feeling the balmy September air blowing over me. <BR>When I was treated with the utmost dignity at the Connaught in London. When I sat on Monet's bench in Giverny and surveyed the wonderful garden and his pink house. When I opened my door to the bathroom in our room at Kinnitty Castle in Ireland and saw the SIZE of the room. When I saw a fjord in Norway for the first time. Waking up in our B&B in the Black Forest and hearing it pour down rain. Walking up that steep hill at Neuschwanstein and turning around and seeing the castle the first time. Train arrival in Venice every time. <BR> <BR>I get renewed every time I go, and then start planning the next trip. Right now we are planning Spring Break 2000 with our niece: 3 nights London, Chunnel to Paris, 4 nights Paris. I am also preplanning a Loire Valley and Normandy total trip. I am getting hooked on pictures of Chenonceau and Izay le Rideau.

My first European country was Finland, where I spent one summer studying Russian with a college institute in the sixies. It was my first experience with another culture, and then we went to Russia for three weeks, and was I ever hooked for good! The experience changed my college major, and my whole life! But before I went off to Russia, I remember I would sit in my quiet Finnish outpost and think about all the other places in Europe I'd not yet been to, the far more typical ones to visit, like France, England, Italy. I vowed I would get to them all one day, and I did. Now the only reason I'd like to win a big lottery jackpot is so that I could indulge my habit of European travel. Yeah, the other continents are OK, and someone can send me to them for business travel (and I have gone that way), but for ME, if I am going to spend MY money, give me Europe, all the time!

when i met aerosmith at harrods in london this year.

When I woke up to the church bells ringing in Rome.

The first time my parents took my brother and I (aged 12 and 9) on a 3-week trip to the British Isles. That was the start of annual treks to Europe and gave us a great basis for travelling later on. Both of us remember so much from that trip 30 years ago (can't believe it was THIRTY years!!) I also remember bickering in the back seat with my brother, refusing to look out the window at the scenery, and driving my parents so crazy that once they left us in the hotel room while they went out to dinner (it was a kinder, gentler, safer time then.) Can't believe they wanted to bring us, and then kept doing it year after year, but I'm sure glad they did.

My grandmother would bring back dolls from her trips, back in the days when dolls where dressed in native costumes of the real fabrics, not cheap rayon. I, too, fell in love with Holland because the doll had long blonde hair like mine, and she had WOODEN SHOES. I was really disappointed when the entire population of the Netherlands didn't wear them. <BR>She also took wonderful slides, and the closeup of a bird of paradise in Hawaii hooked me on the tropics (so, you ask, why does she live in the desert?). <BR>My dad was stationed in India during WWII, took lots of (black&white) pictures, and told stories about walking through the streets of Delhi. He brought my mom a carved wooden box, and I can still remember the smell of that wood today. <BR>I watched Rama of the Jungle, and thought that anyplace that had camels and elephants and monkeys had to be a go-to. <BR>Last, but not least, I saw Sound of Music as a child, and I wanted to wear a dirndl skirt and twirl around on top of a mountain. I have not yet done that, and time's a-wastin'...

A thousand years ago when we were young, my grad-student husband and I took all the savings bonds he'd earned as a paper boy in Iowa and cashed them in for student-fare tickets to Athens. That was money we needed for the next 2 years of grad school, but we'd had a 6-hour honeymoon and had the sense that we'd never be able to fly to Greece for $200 RT again (!), so we did it, even though I had to battle serious flight-phobia to get on the plane. Best thing we ever did (not counting having a son). <BR> <BR>It was a wondrous month in Greece, Italy, and the former Yugoslavia. The week we spent on the island of Hvar comes back vividly when we see the sad news reports. We thought we'd go back again as soon as money started to come in, but it never really did. <BR> <BR>Then, we both lost our jobs within a few weeks of each other in 1976, right after the Bicentennial. Someone finally gave my husband a job but it didn't begin until October, so we decided to see our own country on a shoe-string (the severance pay and some savings) and drove from DC to San Fran. via Chicago, Grand Canyon, LA, and back). Second best thing we ever did. <BR> <BR>Our second trip to Europe was 25 yrs. later, this year. But I've been reading travel guides for years in the meantime, and eagerly listening stories from traveling friends and relatives. This forum is an extension of that, and even though it's pretty unlikely we'll get overseas again for a few years (until we've paid college tuition for our child), it's nice to reminisce about where we've been and dream about where we'll go.

My first trip to Europe was to Greece when I was 9 months old, and my parents took me to meet my grandparents. We went back many times. I guess I can't remember a time when I wasn't travelling.

1957, flight deck of the USS Lake Champlain. After 3 weeks at sea during the Lebanon crisis we were rewarded with liberty in Barcelona. Standing on that deck at 0600, watching the coastline appear; it still gives me a moment of nostalgia. We've been back to Europe many times since, but I still get a thrill, raising the shade on the 767 and seeing the coast of Ireland in the morning sun. POSH still works.

Wow, this is such a great question! <BR>So here's my weird answer. Does anyone else out there remember a television show from the 1970s called "Big Blue Marble"? From the age of 5 on, I watched it religiously every Saturday morning at 7 am, before anybody else in the house was up. None of my other family or friends watched it but I never missed it. Where I lived (Lansing, MI) it aired on the local ABC affliate but no one else I've ever met has any memory of this show so it must not have been a national program. Anyway, I'm pretty convinced that show prompted my interest in travel. I can even still remember the theme song ("The earth's a big blue marble when you see it from out there..."). The show was geared toward kids maybe ages 5 through 17, with stories each week on a different kid in a different country, which were like documentaries showing how different cultures lived, but from a kid's perspective. It was fantastic! One week it would be on a little girl in China, the next it would be on a boy in Bulgaria, etc. You got to see where they lived, what they ate, the games they played with their friends, etc. I was totally obsessed with the show and watched it each week with the World Atlas in front of me and after the show I would look up everything about the country featured (the maps, annual rainfall, major exports, etc.). At the end of the show they had an address you could write to if you wanted a pen pal somewhere else in the world. I got a pen pal through the show when I was 7 who lived in New Zealand and we wrote to each other until we were 18 and both went off to college and finally lost touch. I'm pretty sure that's how the interest in travel started, and I'm grateful for it! Eventually they cancelled the show and I had to start going to the library and reading National Geographics and checking out books about other countries. Fortunately, my parents supported my obsession and even though we couldn't really afford to travel much outside of our state when I was young, they would take me to local ethnic festivals -- I remember going to the Polish festival, the Greek festival, etc. <BR>I also wrote to the United Nations in New York and they sent me all kinds of information about foreign countries that I studied constantly! <BR>As I grew up we started taking more trips around the US and Canada and I was hooked. Finally went to Europe (England, France, Italy, Germany) during the summer after my first year of law school at age 22. Once I started working, I decided my goal was to take, each year, at least one domestic and one foreign trip to someplace I've never been before. I'm like you, Vanessa -- planning the trips is at least half the fun, and I sometimes buy travel books and read them cover to cover way before I can even take a trip to the place the book is about. <BR>

This is a great thread. I myself got hooked on travel long before I was able to do more than go across the bridge to Windsor, Ontario from Detroit. World War II was heating up--but the Detreoit Free Press (I think) staged this marvelous travel show in downtown Detroit, passing out all sorts of brochures and railway time-tables. My Dad had served as a very junior engineer in France 1917-18 and had loved France. So the entire family went to the travel show--not once but two years running. I was convinced I wanted to go to university in France (with my two years of French I!). Tho' it would be 1957 with a good deal more French, plus a Ph.D. in history in my pocket before I got there. When I did, all the preparation seemed worth it, believe me! Joan

i got hooked on travel from watching t.v. This was back in the days when t.v. was only on for a certain number of hours each day and there were a limited number of shows. There was a travel show on one night a week and I was allowed to stay up to watch it. I can't remember the name of it (I think Bill Burrud might have eventually taken over as host). The narrator wore a suit and tie and looked like he never travelled anywhere (think Nixon on the beach). Whenever he was short on film he would bring his wife, Hatla (sp?) and son David on and she would talk about her native Iceland. She was a gorgeous blonde and my dad would always say "va-va-voom" everytime she appeared. Other than the occasional appearance of Hatla, the show moved at a galacial pace. I wonder if anyone else was inspired to travel after seeing the show. Or can anyone remember its name? <BR> <BR>I was also inspired by the written word. It seemed we always stayed at cabins with musty copies of National Geographic dating from the first issue. I also had a dog eared copy of a Dennis the Menace comic book (special edition--50 cents!) that told about his adventures in Hawaii when it became our 50th state. <BR> <BR>Vanessa, our last trip was in July, so we're broke too. But it is fun getting a contact high from other people's travels.

I was hooked in 1985 at the age of 24, went to London and Paris for a wedding of a cousin-in-law. I loved it so much and felt quite sad as I watch the earth fall away from my airplane window, I was certain that I would never be able to return because of finances. I knew I had to get back. I did extensive reserch on the cheapest way to get back there again and saved all of my money. I was able to return the following year to my surprise. This time as I watched the earth fall away from my plane, I vowed to always return at least once a year if it killed me! My desire for travel has grown over the years. The flame was fanned several times since. When I sat in St Mark's Square in Venice at night sipping coffee and listening to the orchestra in the background. When I saw an older man klacking with clogs on his feet down a dark cobblestone street in Amsterdam, the first time I had a conversation in french with a store clerk in the Latin Quarter of Paris and was actually understood. I believe for me that travel is simply an addiction that I don't wish to cure.

My father told me stories of being in North Africa and Italy during World War II and told me that, apart from the fighting, it was best experience of his life. I had the chance to go on a Junior Year Abroad to Nice, France, in 1968-1969. I used to get up in the morning and think, while I walked to classes, that I was living in paradise. On practically my first day in Nice, I hitched and took a bus to San Remo in Italy and was amazed how you could go into a totally different culture within a short period of time. That year in Nice definitely hooked me.

When I was a child, my aunt would visit and share pictures, meals and adventures of her trips around the world while working for the Foreign Service. She is now a retired ambassador. My first travel was to Honduras when she was stationed there and when I stood in awe in the Mayan city of Copan. It was then I knew that I wanted to travel.

Vanessa, <BR>I first realized that I loved travelling when I was 10 years old and was the one navigating our car trip to Torch Lake, Michigan from Detroit, Michigan.My parents were terrible at navigating and I had a great sense of direction. By my mid-late 20's I decided that I would rather travel than have a big house and new cars. <BR>I didn't get to Europe until I was 31. My ex-husband, my parents and I went to Germany and London. I loved it! <BR>I love this forum and the people and great advice I get here. It is unlike any other base I have been on. I, too, look over the posts many times a week. I am adicted to travel! <BR>Kittie

Lisa, <BR> <BR>I also remember "The Big Blue Marble". I watched it in the Detroit area. I also was the only one interested in it in our household. I loved it! That show is one of the reasons that I was an exchange student in Mexico when I was 16. <BR>I also went to International Festivals, but at Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit. The Polish and Irish festivals were my favorites. I think they still have them in Detroit. <BR>Kittie

Elvira, <BR>I had to laugh at your statement about being really disappointed in finding out that all Dutch people weren't wearing wooden shoes. So was I. Here I was clomping and sliding around (it never occured to me that they were made for a very flat country not a hilly acreage like ours) in these things and they weren't! It was kind of like being told about Santa Claus. Kids. Then there was the Heidi thing. By the way, I have yet to get to Egypt - did you ever go to India? <BR>