Gary Strait's Europe

Gary Strait's European Travel Pages

Your ticket to Europe

Spend a few minutes and let me take you on a photo tour of some of the most interesting places I've discovered in over 6 months of time I've spent living, working and vacationing in Europe.

Choose a destination:

Germany: Black Forest, Bavaria (Alps & Castles) and Rhine River Valley
Switzerland: Central, North, Northeast, East, Southeast (by train), South, West and Northwest
Austria: Innsbruck/Tyrol, Salzburg/Hallstatt and Vienna/Graz
France: Northeast, Central and Alps
Great Britain: England, Scotland and Wales
Scandinavia: Denmark, Norway, Sweden plus Finland
Fun with Language

The above (except Scandinavia) are all independent travel

Group tours:

Italy (September 2000 with Rick Steves' Europe through the Back Door)
Scandinavia (July 1998 with Rick Steves' Europe through the Back Door)
Ireland (June 2003 with Rick Steves' Europe through the Back Door)

Rick Steves seems to be taking over Europe, on my 2000 tour with his company we saw (or rode on!) buses belonging to 3 or 4 other Rick Steves tours, and met some tour members from one of those other tours. Other than this, I was met by people in some of the towns he writes about walking with his guide books (not tour members) and even had one of them ask me for directions (the opposite happens too, we met a few Americans in out-of-the way locations he writes about who had never heard of him).

My European experiences come mainly from a 6-month working assignment near Stuttgart, Germany. Many Americans go there in the Military (there are several American bases in the area), but I was there working for a private company so I wasn't on a military base surrounded by other Americans. During this time I was able to take short trips on weekends. I also spent nearly a month of these 6 months on vacations. I've been to many of the destinations around where I lived in Germany several times because I became a travel guide for friends and relatives who came to visit during my assignment. In addition, I've also been to Europe 11 other times (total of 20 more weeks). Most of this travel was on my own, or traveling with friends so I had to find my own way. I always thought this was a good way to travel, that it would give me the flexibility to see what I want and make my own schedule.

More recently, I tried a group tour of Scandinavia, organized by Rick Steves, author of some of my favorite travel books (I go mainly by his books and the green Michelin guide books). I liked this too, it was well organized and came with a nice group of people that quickly became a group of frends during the tour. It didn't turn out as I feared that it would be a group of helpless people who needed to be led around, some of these people had quite a bit of travel experience, and life experiences... in many cases they were in a group for the ease of having all the arrangements taken care of, for the guide's informative talks, and for the companionship. My Italy tour included someone who had escaped from East Germany many years ago by being hidden in a VW bus (that's someone who definitely knows how to travel without a guide leading the way!), and my Ireland tour included someone whose father had been a passenger on the Titanic and survived (this story told to us after our visit to Cobh, then Queenstown, the last port of call for the Titanic to pick up passengers before beginning the Atlantic crossing). These interesting travel companions, plus much more descriptive commentary than I ever get traveling alone, made the group travel interesting. Did I like this vs. independent travel? Well, after trying a Scandinavia tour in 1998 I decided to do another tour of Italy in 2000 and another of Ireland in 2003, so I guess they passed the test. I haven't traveled with any other tour company, but I think it would be hard to beat Rick's for the kinds of things I want to do. His tour groups are just the right size, so you can get to know everyone by name (without nametags) but still pick out some better friends from the group in case not everyone is your type, so you can all gather 'round the guide and be close enough to hear when he/she is talking (even in a crowded location with background noise), so your group can visit smaller hotels and restaurants, so you have room to spread out on the bus, so you don't wear out your guide and actually have a good chance to ask questions.

These are the European countries I've visited:

Austria
Denmark
England
Finland
France
Germany (my home for 6 months)
Italy
Ireland
Liechtenstein
Netherlands (airport only)
Northern Ireland
Norway
Scotland
Sweden
Switzerland
Wales

Traveling Post 9/11

I was actually booked on a flight from New York to Stuttgart on 9/14/01, so the events of 9/11 really hit home for me. I did not know any of the victims myself, but the effect on my own plans was considerable. Some planes, including the one I was scheduled to be on, departed on 9/14, the first day flights began to resume, but I rescheduled as allowed by airline policy, to 9/28 (two weeks later). This trip began with my arrival at the airport only to have to sit in the parking lot for 2 hours waiting for an evacuation of the terminal due to a security problem to be resolved. After a long check-in process with the remaining passengers scheduled to depart that terminal over the hours the terminal was closed, I departed late, missing my connection in Amsterdam. I was moved to a later connecting flight to Stuttgart, but arrived to find that my luggage did not arrive with me. It remained lost for the next 3 days, after which it was delivered to my hotel. The return flight went more smoothly, although I was switched to another flight due to consolidation of flights due to lighter passenger loads. It was during my return flight, about the time the airplane re-entered US airspace, that the US began strikes on Afghanistan. I heard the initial news reports as I was leaving the airport.

Security was a bit more tight in Europe, but otherwise Europe was as I remembered it. My next trip to Switzerland in 2002 was uneventful, as was my 2003 trip to Ireland, outside of a new undertone of resentment of US policy noticeable following the launch of the war against Iraq that I had never detected in Europe before.

Created June 30, 1996
Updated December 29, 2003
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