Gym Cracks By Jim August 10, 2004 TRAVEL BUG BITES AGAIN Northern Europe trip is next, great deals found riding the rails By Jim (Babe) Berryman MissingNebraska.com Let me mention before I start, this is not a paid Rail Europe advertisement. I love to travel. As a youth growing to adulthood in Greeley, Neb. I didn't have the opportunity to do much traveling. This all changed after my graduation from high school. The summer after I graduated from high school, I experienced visiting my first foreign country. I was in the US Army stationed in Fort Bliss, Texas for basic and second-eight weeks specialized training in operating radar equipment. Fort Bliss (El Paso) is located across the Rio Grande River from Juarez, Mexico. Several weekends were spent in the Juarez area. Following my radar training, I was sent to Germany, via New York City. I left El Paso on a troop train with stops in Dallas, Kansas City, Chicago and Philadelphia en route to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. While processing to go to Europe, I was able to obtain a weekend pass to visit the Big Apple. I was in complete awe of this city. Imagine, an 18-year "hayseed" in the middle of the most exciting city in the world. I crossed the Atlantic Ocean for the first time on a troop ship, not exactly the Queen Mary. We docked at Bremerhaven, Germany. The soldiers then embarked on a German train for Zweibrucken where the processing took place. I was then assigned to Camp Pieri near Wiesbaden. I was in a mobile radar unit. The unit traveled throughout Europe providing radar information for artillery gun battalions. We spent considerable time on the Baltic Sea, supporting gun battalions who were on maneuvers. This gave me the opportunity to visit northern Germany cities and one nudist colony. Throughout my 18 months in Germany, I did travel to Copenhagen, Amsterdam, London, Paris and many other locales. Many a Sunday afternoon was spent cruising down the Rhine River taking in all the beauty this river and its surroundings has to offer. In 1983 I decided I had to return to Camp Pieri. It was at this time I became acquainted with the Eurailpass. After reading about this pass, I purchased a 21-day pass from Rail Europe. I traveled from Trondheim, Norway on the north to Rome, Italy on the south. I remember being as far west as Paris, and as far east as Berlin, Germany. I slept on the train most nights, which certainly cut down on the hotel costs. For an example, one night I hopped a train in Switzerland and slept until arriving in northern Italy the next morning. That day I toured Florence, Italy, before taking another night train to another destination. Many train compartments make into sleeping bunks. Rail Europe has many different kinds of passes. They range from a few days to three months. There are flexi-passes and supersavers, etc. There are passes for three, four or five countries. There are individual country passes. One pass covers 17 countries--Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Republic of Ireland, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. For example, a three-month pass to travel at any time in the above mentioned 17 countries can be purchased for $1,654.00, less than $18 a day. Great Britian has its own pass--called a BritPass. Contrast this amount with Amtrak. A round-trip on Amtrak from Hastings, Neb. to Meriden, Connecticut on August 15, returning a week later costs $336.00 and takes nearly 43 hours. If a person elects to sleep one night in a sleeping compartment going to Connecticut and one night returning, the cost escalates to $864.00. On an ICE train (InterCity Express) a person can travel from northern Germany (Hamburg) to central Germany (Frankfurt) in approximately three and one-half hours, or from Hamburg to southern Germany (Munich) in less than six hours. Miss your 8:30 train. Another one will be leaving shortly. During the day most major cities have hourly departures for other major European cities. Fifteen trains leave Hamburg each day for Berlin, Frankfurt and other cities. Most every small town, even so-called burgs, have local passenger trains that stop. I was on a local train one morning going from Kaiserlautern to Wiesbaden. This train stopped in several small villages to pick up students who attended school in a larger community. On another occasion, in the wee hours of the morning, a group of young adults boarded a local train. It soon became evident this group had spent some time in a local bar. After a couple stops, this group exited the train. Certainly safer than attempting to drive home. Thomas Cook Publishing prints a book of train schedules (500 plus pages) for all European countries. If you are going to ride trains in Europe, don't leave home without this book. Later this week two companions and I will fly to Stockholm, Sweden. We have purchased a ten-day Scanrail Pass for $340. We will be able to travel in any of the four northern countries--Norway, Denmark, Sweden or Finland. We intend to spend two nights on trains and two nights on ferries. One overnight trip will be from Helsinki to Rovaniemi, Finland. The three of us will sleep on a couchette for approximately $20 each for this 600-mile trip. The next day we are bound for Lapland (Ivari, Finland) 68 degrees Latitude. We are already considering going to France next summer to follow the Tour de France via rail. A person could do this quite easily. With you Eurailpass you can board anywhere and jump off anywhere. Hey, if you're considering traveling in Europe, the Eurailpass may be the way to go. 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