So, you’ve made up your mind: your upcoming gap year is going to be the time when you set out and see the world. You’re going to expand your horizons, get a new perspective, embrace new cultures, meet travel buddies who turn into lifelong friends, and so on and so forth.
In fulfilling all these ideals, in practical terms your gap-year travels will probably take the practical form of doing things like visiting cities that are global cultural hotspots; taking in breath-taking architecture, ancient and modern alike, including exquisitely beautiful places of ancient worship; trekking through stunning, rugged natural expanses; sampling exotic cuisine; and discovering the way of life of a rainbow of fascinating peoples and societies.
Now, you could well be thinking that to do all this, your itinerary will probably be along the lines of flying out to Bangkok, before touring around the rest of Thailand and then Cambodia and Vietnam, before perhaps making the hop over to Australia and then New Zealand. Or perhaps you were thinking you’d start out in Buenos Aires, before taking in the great cities of South America and experiencing windswept Patagonia or humid Amazonia.
Well, you might have been thinking that. But what we were thinking was a little different. You see, we reckon that you could scratch all of those same gap-year itches–the friendships, the culture, the sights, the partying–with the first step of your itinerary being no more than a quick pootle across the English Channel.
That’s right, we think that before you decided to go to the other side of the world you should at least consider the majesty, splendour and hedonism on offer right on your doorstep, in Europe.
You want to see astonishing places of worship? Then forget Angkor Wat and go and have a look at the Sagrada Familia, or the Alhambra, or Vatican City. Raucous nights out? Then give Sydney a miss and instead take your pick from Prague, Amsterdam or Madrid. Or is it places that let you live and breathe mankind’s dramatic past that you’re looking for? Then from Pompeii to the Berlin Wall, Europe’s got the whole sweep of human history covered.
When the idea of going no further than Europe is put to British gapistas, their response is often along the lines of “yeah, but why would I go somewhere so close to home?”. It’s funny how something arbitrary like distance affects whether we see something as worth visiting or not. Ask a young American or Australian or Argentinean who’s keen to travel which places they’d most love to visit, and you wouldn’t be surprised to hear them tell you that it’s Europe that they’re looking to jet off to.
And just because something is close to you doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re more likely to go and see it. Think about the tourist attractions within a few dozen miles of where you live, or all the must-see things in other British cities. How many of them have you visited? Probably very few. So just because you could theoretically just get on a Ryanair or Easyjet flight to see all that Europe has to offer over the course of your adult life doesn’t mean that you actually will.
Besides, discounting Europe just because you could hop over and see its jewels during bank-holiday weekends to come throughout your adult life entirely misses the point of what a gap year is all about. It’s the whole package of being away from home for an extended period, meeting new people, and experiencing these amazing places with them. That’s not something you can hope to replicate on a mini-break. And with its rich patchwork of cities, sights and sounds, there’s no better place to have this overall experience than in Europe.
On a practical level organizing a gap-year travel sesh in Europe is a doddle, and probably a lot cheaper than the costs of going further afield. European cities are crammed with great-value accommodation aimed at young travellers, which can easily be booked at a moment’s notice through trustworthy websites such as hostelworld.com. And getting around the continent is a breeze as well. If you want to travel by train, just get a great-value travel pass–which will let you use the train networks of thirty different European countries–from InterRail. Or if you prefer the idea of a mode of transport aimed exclusively at young travellers, then Busabout operate a network of hop-on, hop-off coaches throughout Europe for people such as your good self.