Youth Hostels

For any one who is travelling / backpacking across europe then one of the cheapest ways to stay is living in Youth Hostels. These are nice dormitories, where one can stay for around 15 Euro per day, and many times breakfats is also included. Apart from this they also have kitchens which allow you to cook and thus save on eating out.

Though you have to sleep in cramped bunk beds, and 8-16 people in one room, wiht poor lighting, i sure would reccomend that over living in a hotel. (Even if yo ucan afford it, thoug hfor me its a no brainer, no money so cant afford hotels). This is because apart from just being cheap accomodation, they are also great points for socialising, especially for people like me, who get to know a lot more about the European way of life.

We students and i guess Indians in particular rarely ever think about taking a year off only for travel. We just open the Lonely planet guide and rush from one tourist spot to another and try and rush through seeing the maximum number of places in the minimum number of days. (Something like the maximum efficiency funda, maximise input by output)

Whereas the europeans when they travel it is like for a month or couple of months or a year or so. They soak in the atmosphere, live for a week in each city and explore even the non traditional spots. Some of them go camping and live in tents on the camping grounds.
Whereas i just travel on weekends and i guess because of te indian system, which doesnot like breaks in ones career, it is expected that one always works 12 months a year. If ou take a holiday its for just 2 weeks where in you pack in so much of travel that after the vacation you are more weary than when you started out.

And apart from all this it is also a place for getting to know various cultures (even for europeans) it also acts as a mating ground, ( Yeah after seeing some of the scenes in the kitchen close to midnight, i dout some else would ever think it to be anything else) where you interact with many intersting people, who may have similar travel plans and then may be back pack together.

Yeah anyways now tommorow i leave for Norway, to Bergen and see the Fjords. (The Lonely planet Travel guide describes the train journey from Oslo to Bergen as the one which will ruin all your future rail travel as nothing can ever match that)

Hope this is too fun filled. Will surely write about it and post the pics as well

So i will blog next tuesday. Good Bye till then.