Back home. And back to work.

My whirlwind tour of Europe is over. I left Scotland two days after my contract ended, and I was back in the office three days after touching down back in Glasgow. (Fortunately for me, a lack of suitable flights on Saturday the 30th meant I flew instead to Prestwick on the 29th thus avoiding the scare at Glasgow Airport, though it did mean I missed the inimitable John Smeaton prior to his 15 minutes of fame.)

The trip was astoundingly good. My final itinerary was: Rome, Florence, Pisa, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki; while this sounds like rather a lot to fit into my time available, Pisa was a half-day trip and I didn’t stay in Hamburg for long at all. In most places, I stayed 3 or 4 nights, and made good use of sleeper services between some of them. I find 3 or 4 nights to be a comfortable amount of time: just enough to get a feeling for a city, indulge in some sightseeing, sample various forms of local cuisine, possibly explore a little of the nightlife, etc, etc. Then, as you’re getting comfortable, you move on and start all over again. Very much fun indeed.

Some destinations I found particularly relaxed (Rome, Florence, Copenhagen), and others a bit more lively (Munich, Berlin, Stockholm, Helsinki). The key difference being how I spent my time, which depended mainly on who I met (or who I was meeting) at each location. And while Berlin probably had the most varied nightlife of the lot, the friendlier nature of cities such as Munich and Helsinki made these smaller locations much more agreeable for me. If you’re wondering, probably my favourite stop was Munich.

I had only a couple of schedule blips: it would be interesting to see Hamburg on a day when it’s open, as I happened to visit on a Sunday, and I found myself in Stockholm for midsummers which saw various celebrations and festivities muffled somewhat by the rain. In fact, it rained most days from Hamburg onward — something of a primer for my return home, I figured…

To my slight surprise, I found that living out of a backpack in a variety of hostels for the better part of a month wasn’t actually even remotely uncomfortable. I was also rather pleased that I didn’t feel the need to check work email or my feed reader once while I was away. I did use hostelworld.com a few times to book up accommodation a little in advance, mainly because space was limited in a few cities I was visiting, and I checked the news back home two or three times. Otherwise, it was good to be largely disconnected. I’d definitely travel again. The only real question mark is “when?” The “where?” I can figure out when I have that first question answered…

All in all, I’d certainly encourage anybody who wanted to take on a similar trip. It was pretty good to get away from everything for a while. It was excellent fun to step out of daily life and meet loads of random people. And while it’s good to be back, the trip has left me with a bit of a desire to figure out what information we provide to incoming tourists. Some countries I visited really had things pinned down with free maps, excessive tourist information, simple public transport tickets, and so forth. I’m curious to know if we do anything similar.

Over time, I’ll be adding photos to my photostreams on Flickr and Zooomr. I took many photos, so it’ll take a while to dig through them and find the decent ones…