Travelling to Europe has changed as we have aged. Photo / Getty Images
It’s not just technology that’s rapidly changed our travel plans over the course of 30 years; the most dramatic transformations can be found in ourselves, writes Leonie Jarrett.
My boyfriend, Andrew, was asked to attend a conference in Dublin in February 1991. I was due to finish university in November 1990 and start my first job in March 1991. We decided to buy backpacks and head to Europe for a 10-week adventure, culminating with the conference. We were 22.
Fast forward to 2024. Andrew and I have been married for 32 years and we have four adult children. After trips to Europe with our children as a young family and trips where our children were teenagers, we have now come full circle to travelling as a couple again. We are still wide-eyed and full of enthusiasm and energy but we now want to treat ourselves to a higher standard of accommodation, to better meals and to a more leisurely travel style. We no longer feel that we have to “see everything.” We would rather see less but have time to appreciate it more.
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We have just returned from an amazing nine-week trip to Southern Europe where we stayed in a combination of Airbnbs and hotels and finished with a 10-day Azamara cruise. For two, fabulous weeks, we even hosted our four adult kids and their partners in Puglia.
When we planned our first backpacking trip, we used paper guidebooks and paper maps, we stayed in strangers’ houses and went off in their cars (before Uber was ever invented), we wrote blue Aerogrammes home to our parents and postcards to our friends and we carried travellers’ cheques and multiple currencies. Thank goodness for the Euro.
Now, everything is online from our maps to our accommodation and car hire bookings to our boarding passes and train tickets, walking tours and day trips. With smartphone in hand, we can manage the whole trip and communicate with family and friends in real time. Postcards that arrive after you arrive home? Not anymore – now, we send a photo via our phone and have an instant text or video chat about it across the other side of the world.
I can remember planning our first backpacking trip. We bought Frommer’s, Europe on $50 a day. We devoured it and treated it as a sacred text. We also used Fodor and Lonely Planet guides but Frommer’s was our North Star as it was budget-driven.
As a uni student, I had no ability to spend more than the money I had saved so $50 a day (after we paid for our airfares and Eurail passes) was the unalterable budget. We tried for $10 a night (per person) accommodation and, if that wasn’t possible, then something else that day was sacrificed. We never sank as far as the Aussie couple we met sharing a tin of fruit cocktail for dinner but we kept a tight control on the budget.
We started by staying in budget hotels located near to the central train station. As the budget grew grimmer, we stayed in some youth hostels. In mixed dorms where we could. In Vienna, we hit the jackpot and had a room to ourselves with an en suite.
Also in Vienna, I remember having a massive fight about what direction we were walking in and telling Andrew that I had had enough and that I would see him later in the hostel. He was doubtful that I knew how to get there (my sense of direction is famously dreadful). I managed to find my way and the few hours apart did us the world of good.
That’s a lesson we have learnt travelling together. Sometimes, living in each others’ pockets 24/7 wears thin and you each need a bit of space. And that’s okay.
On that first trip, we took some overnight, sleeper trains. Six bunks to a cabin with passport checks at all times of the day and night. After three such experiences in a row, I remember cracking it, “Enough,” I said. “I need a shower.” I probably needed a decent sleep even more.
When I look back, staying with strangers who greeted us at train platforms and going off in their cars was probably a little risky. We were young and innocent and thought nothing of it although I do remember feeling that the owner of the Prague apartment was a little creepy.
Conversely, I remember staying with a young family in Budapest and the Mum being our host. The family had English news on the TV which was how our host practised her English for her tourist business. She directed us to a local restaurant and we had a dinner that we still talk about.
Communication has changed a lot, too. On our first backpacking trip, we would use a pay phone to call our parents once a week so that they would know we were still alive. We would reverse the charges (we were poor) and often just get their answering machines. Now, with WhatsApp, iMessage and Messenger, we are almost never unable to be contacted. When our adult children travel, my “rule” is that they send me one photo a day so that I can follow their travels but also know that they are safe. Our poor parents had to worry for a week at a time.
It’s a wonder that Andrew and I are still together given how many times I have navigated for him (not my strength) with paper maps. I can still remember the joy and wonderment when we bought our first TomTom satellite navigation device with preloaded maps. No more tears of frustration as I tried to plot our route or find the freeway exit. The TomTom is now superseded by Apple and Google Maps and any frustration can be directed at the Maps lady as she tells us, “To make (yet another) U-turn when possible”.
When we travelled as a younger family, we would usually self-drive and stay at farmhouses out of the cities. That way, we had a bit of space and we could self-cater for breakfast and dinner. Andrew’s pre-trip job in those years was to print a “Bible” which had all our travel bookings in date order. I was always terrified of losing that “Bible” as how would we know where we were staying next?? Now, all our bookings are stored conveniently on our iPhone apps.
Our kids obsess about online reviews. Us, not so much although we certainly do pore over reviews before making accommodation bookings. Reviews are usually a lot more honest than host photos. Checking reviews was taken to an extreme (I thought anyway) when one of our kids would look for the highest-rated gelateria when we were in Puglia together. Life’s too short to eat bad gelati apparently.
There was something spontaneous and free about not always being connected; about not always having the answer to everything at your fingertips. But technological advancement stops for no one. And there is nothing stopping any of us disconnecting for a while, meandering for meandering’s sake, maybe even strolling whilst deliciously lost…
There is no right way to travel. No best Europe trip either. I am grateful for each and every trip. Memories seared forever of Andrew and I at 22, with our children at different ages and stages and now just us again but at 56.
Bring on more trips and fewer instances where I have to navigate anywhere.
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