One of the things I love about living in Europe is the travel opportunities.
Living in Australia, international travel requires a flight (or a ship). Actually, when talking about travel plans in Australian English, you usually talk either about interstate or overseas. A one hour flight from any of the five major cities is not enough to leave Australian airspace, let alone reach an airport, or indeed land. From Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide or Hobart, the closest international travel destination is New Zealand. While NZ is an independent nation and has been since 1852, the similarities between Australian and New Zealand culture and language are akin to those between U.S. American and Canadian. They're different, but as a visitor, you feel more like you're in a different Australian state than a different country.
As I'm sure you're aware, other continents offer completely different travel situations. Even from the USA, two different countries are accessible by land. European geography takes land travel to a new level, and Germany's location in central Europe means it is the ideal location for a travelophile like me. Germany has nine neighbouring countries: Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic, and Poland. I've been to five of them on short trips, my favourite of which is one memorable weekend in Luxembourg in 2005. In Schengen, the place where the Schengen Agreement that removed most border control between signatory countries was signed, I walked across a bridge from Luxembourg to France, then back to Luxembourg, then down the road to Germany and back into Luxembourg. I even have a photo of my feet in the dirt on the side of the road: one in Germany, one in Luxembourg. I realise this may sound like something a five-year-old would do, but for someone who grew up in an island nation like Australia, this was a novelty, and will probably always be something rather cool.
This past weekend, I took another short international trip - this time, a day trip to Poland with students and colleagues from my language school. The goal was to spend an entire day speaking English, and I am proud to say that our mission was accomplished. We left Berlin at 8am and were in Poland by 9.30am. We went on a city tour in English, cruised around the port with a Polish/English soundtrack, went bowling and billiarding when the weather turned horrible, tried the local cuisine at a food court and a delicious restaurant, and strolled, power walked and jogged from the restaurant toward the station, Polish dumplings and beer churning in our stomachs, culminating in a frantic run down the train platform to our waiting train. The door lights were flashing, the warning bells were sounding, but somehow all 22 of us managed to make it onto the train, and for a few minutes, all of us collapsed into the closest available seats, trying to catch our breath and laughing hysterically. Two hours later, we arrived back in German-speaking Berlin. I woke up in Berlin, spent the day in Poland, and returned to my bed in Berlin that night.
The point of this post? International day trips - love 'em.
