“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” Mark Twain
As a family activity, we like to travel. We've taken road trips to North Carolina or across the country, extended trips to Costa Rica, and to a lesser extent, Europe. We've only been to Europe as a family once, in 2003, to Scotland for 3 weeks. Cristina has been to Germany a few times by herself or with Alex (once). Costa Rica is cheaper, both the flight and the living expenses.
Years ago, we began planning what kind of summer trip we should do when Sofia graduates. She's loved Greece since studying Greek mythology, so that seemed a natural choice. But after hosting Ida, our Danish student, the number of friends we'd like to visit in Europe hit critical mass and Europe was the logical choice.
“Whoever created the world went to a lot of trouble. It would be downright rude not to go out and see as much of it as possible.” Edward Readicker-Henderson
How?
People who know us know we have raised our family on a public school teacher's salary. It hasn't been easy. We've gotten help from family at various times, we've had plenty of debt, we lost a house because we wanted to move closer to family during a time when houses in Phoenix were not selling, and we've even filed bankruptcy. So how in the world is a family like that going to Europe? The short answer is cheaply.
When we travel, we never stay in hotels or resorts. We only travel where we have friends or family who are willing to let us temporarily live with them.
We eat like the locals. As much as I'd love to try a new restaurant every day in a foreign country, our budget doesn't allow for that. So we shop in grocery stores and farmer's markets like the locals, and we cook our meals like we do at home.
We're not big shoppers, so we don't bring suitcases of new clothes and trinkets back with us. So the main expense is getting there and back.
I only claim 1 allowance on my W4, instead of 5, which means my employer withholds a lot more tax than they should. I know, I know, I'm giving the government an interest-free loan, since I'm going to get most of the withheld tax back in a refund. But I see it as a year-long savings plan that I can't dip into when the brakes need replacing or the kids have a field trip to pay for. The amount that I get back in a tax refund is significant enough to do something big with, like put braces on someone's teeth, or travel to Europe.
I also spend a lot of time (probably an obsessive amount of time) researching the best, cheapest flights. That involves running checks on various cities and dates. Over and over and over. I started this process in December (it's hard to find fares for flights more than 6 months ahead of time). On an almost daily basis, I checked fares, knowing I wouldn't have the money to purchase until mid-February (I file my taxes on the first day possible). My goal was to find airfare to Europe for $1000 per person. It was disheartening at times. At one point in January, I couldn't find anything cheaper than $1350. That doesn't sound like that big of a discrepancy, but remember that you have to multiply everything by 5 family members. So $350 extra becomes $1750 extra, which is a budget-buster. I knew I was getting about $5000 back in a tax refund.
Patience pays off. About a week after my tax refund was safely in my checking account, I found a flight from Orlando to Copenhagen close to the perfect dates, for $1014 per person. I bought.
When?
Some people justify the low pay teachers get with the fact that teachers have summers off. What people don't realize is that teachers don't get paid for those summers. So we have to take our already low pay and budget it to get us through the two months of summer when we don't get a paycheck. Many teachers work other jobs, tutor, or teach summer school to make some extra money. From 2006 to 2010, I worked summer school, 5 years in a row. Hell, in 2005, I worked at IKEA throughout the summer. A veteran teacher with a Master's degree selling sofas for $8 an hour. But I loved it.
The bonus, of course, is having that much time to do other things, if you can afford to not work the whole summer. This is when we've done most of our traveling. Those years when I taught summer school, the rest of the family usually started a trip without me and then I joined them after summer school was over. Not ideal, but sometimes a financial necessity.
Once Sofia got to high school, our summers were shortened by band camp. The first band camp is during the first week of summer break, and the second band camp is two weeks before school starts. So our 8-week window has been shortened to 5 weeks for the past four summers. With her graduating, and Alex still a year away from high school, we have before us a beautiful full summer, an eight week canvas on which to paint our European masterpiece. We decided to use as much of it as possible. Sofia has an exam after graduation (weird, I know, but that's the Cambridge program) and the cheapest flights were on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so we purchased tickets flying out on Tuesday, June 17 and returning Tuesday, August 12. August 12 is two days into teacher pre-planning, but I'll use some leave days.
Where?
Getting to Europe turned out to be the easy part. Deciding what to do in Europe has been considerably harder. We have longtime friends in Germany and Scotland, so that seemed like the priority, the starting point. I've wanted to visit Denmark for years, and now with Ida in our lives and an invitation to stay with her family, that seemed like a no-brainer (plus the cheapest flights were to Copenhagen).
It seemed a shame to go all the way to Europe and not visit our Swiss friends who also invited us to stay with them, so that made its way into our plan.
The distances throughout Europe are short compared to traveling around the US, but I have news for those who think it's cheap to travel all over Europe by train. It ain't. I guess it's relatively cheap if you're a single student backpacking from country to country, but for a family of 5 with a necessary degree of luggage, trying to go to as many places as we are, trains are cost-prohibitive. Even as expensive as gas is in Europe ($8-$9 a gallon) the cheapest option is to rent cars and drive wherever we need to go.
The filmmaker Guillermo del Toro said, “The saddest journey in the world is the one that follows a precise itinerary. Then you're not a traveler. You're a f@@king tourist.” I disagree. When you have a family of five trying to visit four countries on a shoestring budget, a precise itinerary is required for solvency and sanity. We're far from tourists, as we'll probably not stay a single night in a room that we pay for. And while our itinerary is precise, we have no plans for what we're doing at each place we visit. That can unfold as it occurs.
So the cars are hired. The flights are booked. Only thing left is the packing and the going. Here's the breakdown:
PART 1: DENMARK
June 17 - depart Orlando
June 18 - arrive Copenhagen, rent car, drive to Hals, Denmark to visit Marion and family (German friends on vacation in Denmark)
June 22 - drive to Vordingborg, Denmark to visit Trine and family (Danish-American friends)
June 25 - return car in Copenhagen, fly to London
PART 2: UNITED KINGDOM
June 25 - arrive in London, stay with Couchsurfing hosts (TBD)
June 27 - rent (sorry, hire) a car, drive to Liverpool, stay with Couchsurfing hosts (TBD)
June 29 - arrive in Edinburgh, Scotland, settle in with Steve and family
July 1 - tour Scotland while we still have a car
July 4 - return car in Edinburgh
July 10 - fly to Switzerland
PART 3: SWITZERLAND
July 10 - arrive in Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg (technically France, but who's counting). Rent a car in Freiburg, Germany, drive to Langenthal, Switzerland (Elisabeth and family)
July 16 - drive to Lenk im Simmental, Switzerland to visit Karin and family
July 21 - return car in Freiburg, rent another car in Freiburg (it's an insurance thing)
PART 4: GERMANY
July 21 - spend a few days in Frankfurt with Couchsurfing hosts
July 24 - spend a few days in Blomberg with Marion and family
July 27 - drive to Hamburg, stay at Martin's flat (one of our previous couchsurfing guests)July 28 - return car in Hamburg, I fly to Copenhagen, rent car, drive back to Hamburg
July 29 - drive to Aarhus, visit with Ida and family
PART 5: DENMARK
July 29 - visit with Ida and family
August 8 - drive to Nykobing Falster, decompress at Trine's house
August 11 - return car in Copenhagen
August 12 - depart for Orlando
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