We all had our first trip. I am not talking about your first vacation with your parents in the Algarve. I’m talking about the travel that you organised alone or with friends, for which you worked for a few changes or where you just launched through the world to live an experience that made you feel that this would be your trip!
When I finished high school, I decided that I did not want to participate in the typical finalist program to the mythical destinations of sun and sea. I knew that with this money I could take my backpack, go through Europe, have fun and at the same time meet new places and live an unforgettable adventure with my friends and that certainly would bring me many more memories and stories to tell.
We decided to go on an Interrail in Europe for 15 days!
From backpacking, with a whopping 20kg each (the first trip!), three girls began the adventure in Amsterdam, and for 15 days they crossed the rails of 8 countries stopping in 11 cities. You must be thinking it was in a flash! It’s true!
We wanted to absorb as much as our eyes could reach.
We travelled on the night trains, which allowed us to manage the little time we had and also save on accommodation. I confess that nothing compares to the feeling of waking up in a different country every day, with a new currency and an unknown language. In the background, it was as if everything went like a dream in which by magic teleportation allows you to travel between cultures and people.
Prague (credits: Carolina Santos)
There are so many special moments from this trip that it is always difficult to choose which ones to share! There were concerts in the Old Town square in Prague, walks through the Plitvice National Park, hours spent in the noisy streets of Nice and Marseilles, garden-like afternoons and walks through unknown villages where the wrong trains insisted on taking us.
I am sure that I will never carry a backpack of 20kg on my back and that losing my wallet on the border between Croatia and Slovenia cannot happen again. Maybe it’s best not to lose your wallet again on any trip! But this last one was worth one of the best stories I have to tell; an early-night hitchhike, a “police grandfather” who only repeated “Croatia in the Schengen”, and who kindly took us to the station to return to the capital.
Continuing between sleeping on garden benches and train stations are the people we know on the way, the conversations in the train cabins, the smiles we brought, and the experiences we shared. Above all, now that we have met and visited, it is as if we were part of history, monuments and trails.
You are sure to want to come back and get to know each country, now with more time, this time away from the big cities.
If travelling is not the best way to get richer, the one that matters, then I’ll be waiting for you to tell me what it is. For me, richness is getting out of the comfort zone, wandering through streets where no one knows me and end up being invited to share stories and know new places!
More than the destinations is the people that make our travels, because the cities, these are there forever, people come and go.
It was my first trip and yours how it was?!
For an adventure on your first trip, choose The Wanderlust!
