Key Takeways from our 2016 Europe Trip

Here are the key takeaways from our trip.

1. Travel light and enjoy the trip. Make use of the self service laundries. That itself is an European experience and takeaway. Laundries may not be found so easily in tourist areas, so research ahead, taking your hotel as the base. Remember, Google Maps is your friend. In Bruselles, I could find two laundries within a five minutes walk from the Gared du Midi. In Amsterdam, there was a laundry two tram stations away. But do keep in mind, it takes around two hours for the process. You could schedule it late at night or early morning. You could even start the process, roam around, and come back after an hour, for your presence is not needed once the machine starts rolling.

2. The verdict is split open on whether to layer yourselves in three of four thin clothes plus a jacket or take a thick (fur) coat. Take your pick depending on how well or poor you can handle cold. If your body is not too receptive to the cooler climes, you may need both!

3. Indian SIM cards works perfectly fine for whatsapp calls, and there are free wifi on most trains, railway station, hotels, restaurants, parks, museums, shops, and boats. You really do not have to spend a penny on telephone. However, it does help top have a local SIM number on hand to make emergency calls. This normally presents a problem if you are traveling multi country. For all the EU and Schengen integration, a French SIM card still goes into roaming mode in Bruselles or Zurich, and you cant make international calls. France’s Orange seems to have a SIM card, which for 39 Euros gives 10 GB data nad some talktime across most of Western Europe. If you can get your hands on that, do not look further. I couldn’t get one from Charles de Gaulle, and opted for another French SIM card at 30 Euros instead. It worked fine for the six days in Paris, but since then we were cut off from making calls and packet data.

4. Opt for a mixture of cash and travel forex card (scout around, we got the best deal from Tata Forex.) Make sure your travel card is Visa, or at the very least Mastercard. God help you if you have Diners Card or American Express. Keep your Indian credit card and debit card, but don't use it unless you really have to. using the pre-loaded travel card does not cost any extra money. You pay a premium of 3.5% over and above the exchange rate when you use your Indian credit or debit card.

5. Unless you are a hardcore vegetarian or a Jain, ditch the food packets, and travel light. Food, even the vegetarian stuff, is freely available. About 5 Euros is all it takes for a pizza, a falafel, or a supermarket meal.  It's actually cheaper than India if you factor in the size of the pizza or the length of the sub.

6. You can drink tap water with confidence everywhere, but bottled water is not too costly either, as long as you purchase 1.5 litre bottles from supermarkets. In Germany, a 2 litre bottle costs just 0.25 Euors (or approx 20 INR), about half the price in India! But avoid the small shops, railway stations, and airports, where a small 0.5 litre bottle sells for outrageous 3 Euros or even 5 Euros in some places.

7. Be prepared to be ripped off big time if you enter an Indian restaurant. A dish of substandard channa masala costs around 30 Euros at La Maharani in Bruselles and 35 Swiss Francs at GourmIndia in Luzern. Naan to go with the channa costs extra. Get into a Turkish restaurant instead and opt for a pizza or falafel. A family of four can eat to their heats content for about 30 Euros. As a rule of thumb, allocate Euro 10 per person, per meal.  If you set foot in an Indian restaurants, triple this amount.

8. There is no way you are going to cover everything you want to see in a single trip. How you pace yourself and how much to see is entirely up to your taste, preference, and energy levels, but it is advisable not to try and do more than three things on any day – one main must-do activity, another secondary activity which may either precede or come after the main activity, and then  a third activity which is dispensable if you run short of time. Beyond that be flexible enough to make changes to your itinerary as the situation unfolds - for instance do something indoors on a rainy day. In any case, do not rush. It is better to see one attraction well that rush through two attractions superficially.

9. Don’t over do the tourist attractions. Simply loitering around in a park, sitting at a roadside café watching people move around, taking in the sites in a bus or train trip are all enriching experiences, much more valuable than what monuments and museums offer.

10. If we did this trip now, with the wisdom of hindsight, we would have skipped Bruselles altogether and given ourselves an extra day in Paris and Amsterdam each. We don't regret our time in Bruselles one wee bit, it is only a question of prioritizing what is better with the limited time on hand.

We made the hard decision to skip Spain, especially Barcelona. However, skipping the Italian mainland (Rome and Venice), Berlin and Budapest was deliberate. Rome, Venice, and Berlin would constitute the core of our next trip to Europe, whenever it is. We would definitely want to visit the charming Paris again, and Amsterdam too.

Tax Refund

Finally a note on tax refund. If you buy anything above 150 Euros from a single shop in the European Union, you qualify for a tax refund when you exit the European Union. The cuckoo clock we picked up from Triberg qualified.

Getting the customs stamp from Malpensa was easy enough, with the customs officer not even bothering to inspect the cuckoo clock. Again, the trust which I experienced at the start of the trip. 

I lost hope at the next stage though, when I found a kilometer long line to get the cash. After wasting five minutes in a non moving line, I realized the line was for guys who wanted to pack in their cuckoo clocks and other goodies into their checked in luggage. With a customs stamp already in our kitty, and the cuckoo clock in our hand baggage, we could collect the money after immigration.

Fortunately, the VAT refund desk at the other side of immigration hads just two customers ahead of us.

Who wouldn’t love to get a few additional Euros on their hands, but the evil Slovenian who was (wo)manning the refund desk at Malpensa would have none of it. She insisted on refund only to a credit card, probably suspecting we wouldn’t have one to present. But three cheers to State Bank of India. I flash my credit card, and she has no option to process my refund directly to the credit card and issue me a refund. EDIT: The refund was credited to my account after a month, after I had lost hope of ever seeing it!

Descend into Chaos

So 18 days after we set foot on Europe, we took off from Milan Malpenso airport, and flying across the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, touched down at Dubai. The layover at Dubai was five hours this time. Cashing in the food voucher courtesy Emirates took a good part of the five hours, as it involved a three kilometer walk inside the airport, from terminal A to Terminal C complete with a train ride, and then backtracking to Terminal B from where our flight to Cochin was scheduled to leave. Anyway, next morning, we landed at Cochin International Airport.

 

To call the scene at Cochin International Airport as a fish market would be to insult the fishmongers. The design is faulty to begin with, with the paths of the boarding and disembarking passengers (of various aerobridges) crossing, and one group being held up to let the other group pass.

Next comes immigration. To be fair, the staff on duty are doing their jobs to the best of their abilities, but they are clearly understaffed to manage peak hour rush. I don't get it why they can't have a single queue, and  let the person at the front of the queue go to whichever immigration desk becomes free. That way everyone gets  an equitable chance without having to test one's luck by joining one queue, only to find it slow moving.

The real problem comes after the immigration check. There are two added levels of screening. One to see if someone has “escaped “ without any entry stamp, and another metal detector to hear if someone is smuggling in gold inside their rectum. The problem compounds when people break the line with impunity, and crash in ahead of you without even a pang of guilt.

The scene at baggage carousels is even more chaotic. I had the pleasure of watching Casablanca, one of my favorites, through the in-flight TV provided by Emirates. The situation at the station at Paris (Gare du Lyon?), where the last train to Marsailles was leaving before the German tanks came rolling in was more orderly than the baggage collection area at Cochin International Airport in April 2016.

After a long wait for well over an hour, our baggage finally came trundling through the conveyor belt. I grabbed it before anyone else took a fancy to our bags and simply walked away with it. For all I care, I could have walked away with ours and any bag I fancied, and then made a claim that we never received our bags, with no one any wiser.

The new terminal at CIAL may improve the material infrastructure, but who would improve the basic culture of the people using it, and who will instill a sense of commitment in the people responsible for running it?

ALSO SEE: Key takeaways from our tour

Down South to Italy

 

We had initially planned on the scenic Bernina Express from Zurich to Milan, over the route that goes across the Alps, rather than cut under it. However, considering it would mean spending the whole day in train, and a minimum of three train transfers with luggage, we ditched the idea and trook the straightforward Luzern – Milano express through the Gotthard pass. In hindsight, we are glad we did.

The only direct train from Luzern to Milan leaves at 08:46 from Luzern and reaches Milan Central at 12.50. However, there are hourly trains in this route, and you dont even need a reservation on most of these trains, as long as you put up with the minor inconvenience having to change trains at Lugano.

As it transpired, the route is just as scenic, and we didn't miss the Bernina route one bit. We got down at Como, two stops ahead of Milano Central, as we found a bargain apartment there for about INR 8000/- a night, a good alternative to overpriced Milan where daily room rental started at INR 13,000/- per night, and INR 25,000/- was the norm for a room in a decent hotel.  The host Maria Teresa is especially charming, and I recommend the Maria Teresa apartment to anyone who is in the area.

Lake Como makes for an attractive viewing on its own, and the cable car up to Givonni can be quite an experience, but coming as we did from Switzerland, it was an overdose of scenic spots. We were rather infatuated by the Como cathedral, a unique art deco monument, the delicious pizza and pasta on the cute sidewalk cafes near the Como Nord Lago railway station, and the tasty Gelatinos.

The costs at Como were the lowest we found in Euirope, with a  sumptuous Italian meal of pizza and pasta costing just EUR 18/- and four jumbo gelationos under EUR 10/-. 

 Milan is a hour away by train from Como. We had time only to visit the magnificent Duamo, shop for some clothes at the sprawling Victor Emmanuel Gallery, have another set of pizzas for dinner at a tourist trap restaurant near the Duomo square, and shop at the Carrefour near the railway station.

Would another day at Milan or Como have been worthwhile? Yes, for the shopping. There are several outlet stores in the region that we didn't have time to visit. However, with  an extra day on hand, we would have skipped Como and Milan altogether, and headed straight to Venice.

 

The connection from Como to Malpenso airport is straightforward enough, with a easy change of train at Soronno. The train to Malpensa leaves at a different platform, but there are elevators that make the transit easy. Do bear in mind, you may not have time to catch the immediate train, as scheduled in the Trentalia website, unless you rush, but don't fret. The next train is just 15 or 20 minutes away, taking you directly to Malpensa, and your check in counter is less than five minutes walk away.

NEXT: Descend into Chaos

SWITZERLAND vs THE BLACK FOREST

Triberg Railway Station

Near Lake Titisee, Schwarzwald

From Amsterdam, we made our way to Gengenbach, where we stayed at the fascinating Schwarzwald villa we had pre-booked through booking.com. As it is always in Europe, the journey itself is a key highlight of the trip. We chose the slightly longer but infinitely more spectacular route via Koblenz and Mannenheim, which took us through the banks of the Rhine for the most part of the journey. If you are emulating the journey, sit on the left of the train and look out for the numerous quaint castles perched on hilltops, all along the way.  

Near Lake Titisee, Schwarzwald

We got down at the famous spa town of Baden Baden and transferred to a regional train for the last leg of our journey to Gengenbach. Depending on where your train stops, you could make this transfer at Karlsruhe or Offenburg as well. If you are staying at Titisee instead of Gengenbach or Triberg, get down at Freiberg and transfer to the regional train.

Gengenbach

But why the hassle. Why not just stay at Baden Baden, Offenburg or Freiberg itself, which are on the mainline, and much bigger cities anyway, you may be wondering? For one, the Black Forest towns offered us the best chance to experience the European countryside up close and personal. Second, when you stay in these small towns, you get a Konus card, which entitles to free transportation in the region. From the moment we landed at Gengenbech, until we reached Basel in Switzerland, we didn't spend a single euro on transportation. Everything was covered by the Konus card. Visitors get this card free of cost from their accommodation provider.  Compare this with the 250 CHF Swiss Travel Pass.

Gengenbach

Strange are the coincidences of life. As I was making the booking and communicating with Christel, the owner of Schwarzwald Villa, little did I know I was chatting with someone just 20 kilometers from my house. Christel was in Kochi at that time, attending a Yoga session, and enjoying the Cherai beach. Anyway, Christel and Alberto are the best of hosts you can get, very friendly, charming, and doing everything to delight their guests. The three days we spend there were easily the best three days of our European expedition. If you happen to cross their paths, do not leave without savoring Roberto's delicious croissants and coffee.

Gengenbach is a small town, but Offenburg is just six minutes away by train, Two Turkish restaurants on either end of the station - Istanbul, and Nazar, serve the best pizza, kebab, and falafel's we've tasted in our lives. If you have time for just one, go to Istanbul cafe.

Gengenbach Old Town

Now, whether you like Switzerland or Black Forest would depend on whether you liked Hansel & Gretel or Heidi during your childhood.

Switzerland is known for its stunning scenery, snow, chocolates, and high prices. The Black Forest in Schwarzwald region of Baden-Wurttenberg state of Germany has all these, except the high prices. The Black Forest countryside is just as stunning as Switzerland, if not better, and the costs are roughly around one-fourth. German trains are far better and just as punctual as the Swiss ones, and the infrastructure is on-par. You would  get food at one-forth of the prices, you can travel at one-tenth of the prices, and hotels at around half the prices. The people are friendly on both sides of the border, but the Germans more friendly so. Swiss bus drivers shrug you off if you seek information, but I'm yet to meet a German who does that. Also, the Germans are more likely to know English than the Swiss. Where Black Forest falters, and Switzerland excels, is at marketing. The only reason I find to visit Switzerland is to experience snow during the summer months.

In our three days in Germany, we roamed around the charming and enchanting Gengenbach, which seems to be struck in the middle ages, visited the enchanting Lake Titisee and the water park cum spa there, and finally the cuckoo-clock town of Triberg. I would rate these experience as the best ones of the trip, along with the snow at Mt Titlis. 

The water park and spa of Badeparadies Schwarzwald at Lake Titisee is paradise on earth. But this is by no means the major spa of the region. The famous spa town of Baden Baden is on the edge of the Black Forest.

Mt. Titlis, Swiss Alps

In our three full days in Switzerland, we went to Mount Titlis twice, Mt Rigi, and the Hergiswil Glass Factory museum, besides roaming around Luzern old town. It does seem too little, considering the possibilities, but we focused on quality over quantity. Snow is not something we get to see everywhere, so two days in Titlis, with a lion's chunk of the second day in the exciting snow park. 

Lucrene

Mt. Rigi can actually be skipped altogether without much regrets if you have been to Titlis, but the cruise to get there is worth it, and the cogwheel train to go up is just as good. Only there is nothing much to do at the top, and after a while, the scenery becomes an overdose. We didn't  go to the other hyped up mountain in the Lucrene region – Mt Pilatus, since most of the key attractions there, including the Alpine slide was closed, and would open only by May.

Lake Lucrene

The Giswel Glass Factory, compete with its museum, glass maze, and other attractions oftfer an interesting diversion and a unique experience. It is situated alongside a lake, making it just as well. The nearby Coop supermarket is the place to pick up some bargain on factory seconds Lindt chocolates. 

Mt. Rigi

Lucrene

While we are on chocolates, a word of advise though. Don't pack up too much for India. It melts, and when you refreeze it, the taste is not half as good. Enjoy the moment and indulge in as much chocolates as you can when you are there, and leave it at that.

Luzern old town is charming, and definitely worth a few hours of anyone's time. The Lion monument is worth a photoshoot, but the Glacier Park can be missed without much regrets if one is short of time. The Swiss Transport Museum is rated highly, but it requires a full day, and unless you are in Europe for

Wegis

the long haul, there are better things to do with the limited time available.


If we had another day, we would have made our way to Interlaken to get more of the scenery, and
perhaps continued all the way to the Broc Chocolate Factory, Gruyiere Cheese Factory, Lake Montreaux, and Chillion Castle. Well, travel always involves making trade-offs, and there should be something left over for another day.

Our stay at Luzern was at Ibis Luzern Kriens, a bit out of the way, but good value for money in an otherwise pricey Switzerland. It is on the way from Luzern to Giswel and Engelberg, so we saved a few minutes that way. The hotel is actually on the foot of Mt. Pilatus, and set in the open countryside.

NEXT: Down south to Italy