Last Carriage

About three years ago, I decided I would go to Bosnia-Herzegovina. At the time – and still, to an extent today, Bosnia invoked mental images of war, bombed out buildings and, more generally, the unknown and disorder. The idea of going there came to me when I’d been listening to an interview with Paddy Ashdown, the UN’s High Representative, on the BBC World Service. He said that his wife felt safer in Sarajevo than she did on the streets of London; it immediately struck me that it would be an interesting place to go.

Still, I wasn’t seriously considering going there. I mentioned my idea to a friend, and we both laughed … but then, it started to grow on me. Within weeks, I was hurriedly planning a trip through the Balkans, although I probably didn’t read up as much as I should. And then, finally, with much trepidation, I boarded an overnight train from Amsterdam to Munich, really wondering what I was getting myself into. Of course, I need not have worried; Bosnia-Herzegovina is a wonderful country, and Lord Ashdown was correct; Sarajevo was very safe.

At other times, my destinations have been very spur of the moment; I once arrived in Hamburg after an overnight train journey from Geneva, and with a day still valid on my Eurail pass, I dumped my backpack in a locker at the station and dashed off for a day trip visit to Berlin (and, of course, one day wasn’t enough, so I then spent more time there after some time in Scandinavia). I later ended up in Barcelona, simply because I’d been travelling in the cold north of Europe and wanted to see some sun.

How do you decide where your next destination is?

Travel planning is rarely easy. When you’re going somewhere you haven’t been before, it’s often hard to know how long you’re going to want to stay there – will you run out of time before seeing everything you want to see? Will you get bored?

There’s nothing worse than finding yourself stuck somewhere that isn’t quite as exciting as you expected. Several years ago, I took a day trip out to the southern Swedish town of Ystad. I’m sure it’s a very nice town, but on my way there, it started pouring with rain. To make it worse, it was a particularly cold and windy day too, so it doesn’t take much of an imagination to work out what it was like once I disembarked the train. In short, I didn’t get to see much of the town at all, because even with an umbrella, I was getting soaked. It’s often a good idea to carry a book with you, and find a pub or cafe, to cater for such occasions.

It gets even more difficult when booking accomodation; should you book to stay for several nights? If you do, and you get bored, you might find yourself hanging around just because you don’t want to waste the money you’ve spent, if your hostel doesn’t let you cancel early. On the other hand, if you only book for a couple of nights and want to stay longer, there might not be any beds available when you decide to extend your stay.

My general rule of thumb is at least three nights – often four – for big cities, and generally two for smaller towns. It’s not always enough – I certainly want to see much, much more of Budapest, which is, admittedly, huge – but even in Sarajevo, which is much smaller, I found that I needed more time to get a good feel for the place. On the occasions I find myself starting to get bored with a city that I’ve got a few more nights in, then it’s generally worth just considering it a base from which I can make daytrips to surrounding towns.

It also helps to pick the right time of year to visit. My trip to Sweden was in April, and there just weren’t many other travellers around at that time of year, so the hostels were either empty, or full of school groups; so there weren’t even people around to socialise with. Once I worked that out, I headed south fairly quickly.

How do you determine how long you should stay in a town?