Krause Travels

Our traveling life together started in the early 80s with one of those whirlwind If-It’s-Tuesday-This-Must-Be-Belgium backpacking tours of Europe where freedom is long and money is short. Kelly had been living in Valencia, Spain, studying Spanish, and at the end of the school year she met up with Robin, her brother Kirby, and mutual friend Scott in Germany to cram as much travel as four poor students could manage in a month.

With the budget student’s travel bible Let’s Go Europe to guide us, we got around mostly by trains using a Eurail pass. In those days, it granted 30 days of unlimited train travel in second class as well as free passage on several ferries. It felt like a golden ticket, and we planned to take the “unlimited” to heart to see as much as we could cram into a short time. Our trip motto was, “We can sleep when we get home.”

That bravado didn’t last long. Looking back, we could legitimately boast that we squeezed the most from our passes and saw a lot of cool places. But we also slept. On park steps recovering from jet lag. In a train station at 4 a.m. waiting for a train to leave Venice. In a thin sleeping bag inside a sagging pup tent.

We never let up. Starting in Germany, we visited Heidelberg and Munich, saw Austria only long enough to change trains, spent a night freezing in Lichtenstein, and then headed to Pisa and Venice to check Italy off our list. After an early morning departure from the Venice train station, we landed in France headed to the beaches at Menton and Nice. Then on to Spain’s east coast to visit Valencia, Kelly’s home for the previous nine months. From there we visited Madrid for a couple of days and then took an overnight train to Paris. A few days later saw us on another train to Le Havre on France’s west coast where we hopped an overnight ferry to Ireland. After hitchhiking most of the way to Dublin, we stayed a few days before saying goodbye to Scott who ferried back to Germany where his sister and brother-in-law were stationed at a U.S. Air Force base. We took another ferry to Wales, stayed overnight in a camper in someone’s back yard, and finally ended in London. We parted ways there with Kelly flying back to Valencia to prepare for her return trip to the U.S. and Robin and Kirby leaving from Heathrow.

When we got back home, we realized that, despite the hardships we experienced, mostly as a result of being young, dumb, and poor, traveling was something we really enjoyed. Our biggest rookie mistake was letting the allure of our unlimited train passes lead us into covering too much ground. On the other hand, our inaugural trip enticed us to go back for a deeper look. That’s why, two years later, Kelly and Robin headed back to Ireland with bikes in tow for another month-long adventure.