What I Learned From a Backpack Trip in 1985

~ Laura

Sometime in the spring of 1985, I sat around my bedroom with its yellow flocked wallpaper and planned a backpacking trip to Europe with two friends. With $2,000 that I saved from my summer jobs as a secretary in a Solenoid valve factory, I bought a plane ticket, a Eurail pass, a huge backpack, and six weeks worth of hostels and snacks. 

Our travels took us through England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Switzland, and Italy. I turned twenty in Venice. We were befriended by nuns in Rome who let us sleep in their convent and by a troop of Irish boy scouts on a stomach-churning boat trip to France. We met Australians who extended their European travels for two years, picking carrots when they need more money, and Nonnas from Naples who shared their lunch with us. Without Google Maps, we unfolded paper maps to navigate the spaghetti streets of London and Rome.

It was a transformational trip, where I realized that I could go whereever I wanted and talk to anybody. I learned that I didn’t need a whole lot of money to go places, just good organizational skills and a perky attitude. Over the years, those skills and perky attitude have served me well both in future travels and in life. And we’re boarding a flight to Italy tomorrow evening.

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Published by Laura

19 thoughts on “What I Learned From a Backpack Trip in 1985”

  2. Have loads of fun in your grownup travel. It’s still grownup even if you have your offspring along, if, as you point you, you and your grown up offspring share tastes.

    I was discussing those times of travel (and the European & Australian versions of them) with my kiddo, who just returned from a trip with a friend to Mexico. They planned everything themselves, trying to stay in a budget (which meant they were *not* at an all inclusive resort). But it wasn’t backpack travel in the fin de siecle of the 20th century and I did track him and we spoke three times on a week long trip (because he wanted to share with us — we did not call him). They had to rearrange the trip after a broken finger and I have been pleasantly impressed with the adult planning (so, don’t worry as much about the more frequent contact that is the modern interaction)

    I never did youth hostels even in my youth and don’t regret it at all. As I said to kiddo, I’d rather have, even then, travelled less than travel on the shoestring budget.

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    1. Unemployment is still close to the lowest levels in my lifetime and wages are going up. The economy isn’t bad. The bosses don’t want to pay higher wages or take a loss on their commercial real estate, so they keep trying to scare everyone.

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    2. Wait, we’re not supposed to be taking vacations because of the economy? I’m not seeing it around me. Even though I’m living in a tech area, the hits aren’t happening in our network (I suspect, younger, newer employees are bearing the brunt). Is there something I don’t understand?

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      1. I’m not taking vacations because I have too much work and too many family responsibilities. But that may change if I see a clear week. I want to go see the Rockies again.

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      2. bj wrote, “Wait, we’re not supposed to be taking vacations because of the economy? I’m not seeing it around me. Even though I’m living in a tech area, the hits aren’t happening in our network.”

        My Olympic Peninsula tourist business relatives report that they are having as much business as they can stand, with continuing near-record record numbers. It’s been like that ever since the pandemic started.

        I’m off to England in just over a month. This will be (fingers crossed!) my first trip outside of North America since 1999. I’m going to be visiting some Russian friends (who left Russia in spring 2022) and my cousin who is married into a Scottish family.

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      3. Based on the lively traffic at the Best Western near my parents’ – great pool, where I am hanging out right now- the family road trip is alive and well.

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      4. Both my sister (from New Zealand) and my brother (from London) are on holiday in Rome right now!
        While I’m here in wet (seriously wet – my back garden squelches as I walk across to pick lemons) and cold Auckland.
        I comfort myself (schadenfreude) with accounts of the extreme heat….. And pie-in-the-sky plans for a European autumn (October) holiday….. (which is not going to eventuate).

        Mr 15 is off in 2 weeks, for a month in South Korea – representing NZ as part of the contingent to the international Scout Jamboree.

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  5. I did a trip like Laura’s in 1991 using the Eurail youth pass and staying in hostels. I learned similar things and met a lot of people since I was traveling alone. I called my mom once a week for the four weeks of my trip, and my roommate once during a brief attack of homesickness.
    I did have sympathy for Parisian grumpyness with travelers as I live in San Francisco and we had our share of tourists. I think that helped me because a lot of people told me I was not “like typical Americans” even though my language skills were non existent.
    I found hostels to be nice for solo travelers as I could more easily meet people than when I stayed in actual hotels. Not sure I would stay in hostels now unless they were “elder hostels” – do those still exist? Since I don’t plan to party in the hostel courtyard late into the night.

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      1. Have had a series of post-retirement friends (so 65+) holiday around Europe staying in Convents and Monasteries – which pretty much seem to be ‘elder hostels’.
        Great deal for them. Clean, quiet, safe, central (to both attractions and public transport), and reasonably priced. The ‘downside’ (strict curfew and couples have to be married) – really isn’t a downside for people past their wild partying years….

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  6. I have a goal in life of staying away from cruise ships. I do regret that a friend wasn’t able to pull off a wedding on a cruise ship in Czechoslovakia. That would have been a fin de siècle experience. At least I have the stamp in an expired passport.

    Friends and relatives have enjoyed cruises immensely, so feel free to ignore me.

    I think social media has created too many tourists, to the extent that there is talk of limiting tourism.

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    1. My mother enjoys cruises a lot, and that is the one thing that might get me on one. She likes the social interactions, the variety of food, doing things without having to navigate unfamiliar spaces, planned excursions (a highlight, underwater exploration with helmet breathing tubes w/ individual guides (like snuba, but more support), something she would not have been able to do any other way).

      I hate all those things as well as the kind of tourism that cruises encourage, with shallow interaction with the tourism target. I stayed in Venice before the cruise ships, and even then, the day trippers changed the experience of the place entirely but it was possible when staying there to experience Venice in the early and late hours without the masses of people (who were not, then, trying to get the instagram picture).

      I am now immersed in the tensions about tourism in Hawaii, after their brief experience without the tourists during the pandemic. Tourism is vital to Hawaii’s economy, and residents have fantasies about the kind of tourism that they think would benefit them and not just deplete their island, but also unrealistic dreams where they get to live in paradise without tourists. Hawaii has started reservations systems for a number of popular attractions, private providers have “resident” only days, and there are demands for restrictions on travel to Hawaii (though how those would be implemented are pretty difficult to imagine).

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      1. We have much the same tensions over tourism in NZ, as you’re reporting in Hawaii.
        Tourism is one of our biggest foreign exchange earners (after agriculture) – and large sectors of our economy run on it.
        Tourists are starting to return to NZ – after being frightened off by the snap Covid lockdowns.
        However, we have historic low unemployment: basically everyone who wants a job, and can hold down employment (i.e. not a criminal, drug addicted, or an invalid) – has their pick of relatively well-paying jobs. Unsurprisingly, few want to work in low-paid hospitality jobs.
        This is combined with a cost-of-living crisis, and seriously unaffordable housing.

        Backpackers were traditionally the group that picked up the slack of these low-end jobs in tourist hotspots (working for a couple of weeks waiting tables, or cleaning rooms, to fund the next stage of their journey). However, backpackers are also the group which contribute least to the foreign exchange coffers.

        No idea how this is going to play out….

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  7. My oldest kid is suddenly interested in learning Polish (her father’s first language). Since we have the time, we’re doing a sort of Polish language camp this summer. It’s not intensive. It’s just whenever we have a free morning, we do a 15-minute lesson, either with their dad or with Monika on youtube. I did a Duolingo Polish test yesterday to see if it would work for oldest and now I’m on the Duolingo train. I think it might be a good option for independent study when we can’t study together anymore.

    The option that I’ve floated to oldest is that she could go do a summer Polish course in Poland, maybe even next year. I’ve bravely offered to go with her.

    https://www.kul.pl/programs-for-2023-24,21646.html

    You can do anywhere from 2-8 weeks in the summer, either semi-intensive, intensive, or highly intensive. The two-week semi-intensive course is under 700 Euros, including room and board and field trips.

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