Vacation in Wintry Europe

I have always wanted to visit Europe sometime in life. It is like

a rare celestical event when Vacation time, money, interets to

travel unchartered territory aligns in a line. It happened for me

and I didn't blink a second. My friend was working in Enschede

Netherlands. With christmas holidays conviniently lined up, I

kick started a long process of planning Euro trip. After several

rounds of chat, we decided to visit Germany in addition to actual

destination The Netherlands.

Planning Euro trip can be daunting for anyone. Making a trip

without any plan is a disaster. Luckily, there are several tools

to assist one in the process. Travel Guides.

There are lots of travel guides available (city specific/country

specific etc). I borrowed several Travel Guides from local library

to evaluate which is better:

1. Rick Steve's guide on "Europe through Back door"

2. Lets go Germany on budget

3. Fyodor's Germany

Rick Steeve's guide on "Europe through Back door" offered lots

of interesting suggestions on planning the trip. I would recommend

it to anyone planning to go to Europe to first read the book. Though

Rick Steeve's travel guide on Germany is popular, I just wanted to

try other guides.

I settled for "Let's go Germany on budget" for my travel. It offered

lots of interesting tips on saving money while travelling.

Here are some tips that I missed while reading and figured out the

importance of the tips while traveling:

1. Never exchange money from where you are starting your travel

2. Do not forget to get PIN number of your credit card for use in

    Europe

Apply for visa a month prior to travel.  With hotel reservations taken

care  by my friend, I was all set to go.

I arrived at Amsterdam on a christmas day. Amsterdam-Schipol is one

of the well engineered airports I had ever come across. The inter-city

trains stop right inside the airport. It is fairly straight forward for anyone

to find their way to hop on a train to any destination of their choice.

I realized the hard way that I forgot to note down the PIN number for using credit cards in the automated ticket vending kiosks. The practice of using

credit card just by swiping is virtually non-existent in Europe. This fact needs

to well emphasized in all travel guides. I was lucky that the Ticket service counter was open on that day. Eventually hopped on a train to Enschede.

For non-dutch speaking traveler (which is the case of any tourist), traveling

in train can be daunting. All announcements are in dutch. It is a good idea

to pick up a cup of coffee, a train map to stay alert to get off at the

intended station. Lucky for me...Enschede was the last station for the train. So I allowed the jet lag to kick in....:D

After 2 hours it was ....Hallo Enschede!!!!

Stay tuned...