Here, have a post about my potential spring break plans!
Let me preface this by saying my spring break is very long. Obscenely long. It is so long that I really have no idea what to do with it. I have been trying to make plans, since I realized it’s almost March and my spring break starts in March so I had better figure out what to do soon or else I won’t get any cheap tickets.
So, first things first. Where am I going to go? I’m already spending four days in Edinburgh with Heather, but I have a good five weeks of nothing after that. I need to fill that nothing with something, or else I am going to go stir crazy in York.
Ireland is the obvious choice, since I have a pretty huge concentration of family there. Besides, I’m pretty sure everyone would be a little miffed if I spent six months in their neck of the woods and never stopped by. So I did a little snooping at airfare. I have done this before, since Ireland is practically within spitting distance, and couldn’t find anything all that cheap.
Obviously, I had been looking in all the wrong places.
The nearest airport to me is Leeds-Bradford, which is only a short railroad trip away. The nearest airport to the family farm in Ireland is Knock. Apparently, I can get a flight from Leeds to Knock for under £10.
How did I not know this before? I could have visited them already! I didn’t know flights were that cheap!
Granted, it is Ryanair, which means they are very, very strict on baggage size. I will have to stuff all of my clothes in my backpack and bring no extra items when I go, lest I pay their very high checked-baggage rates. But I’m reasonably sure I can manage that. I have skill in packing lots of things in small spaces. After all, that’s how I got here in the first place.
So, where do we go from Ireland? This was the big question. I looked at all of those cool Eastern European cities I would kill to visit, and I do have a wealth of airports in my general vicinity to choose from.
Let’s see:
(Note: where it says “no routes,” I mean “limited, expensive routes to the UK”)
Dubrovnik, Croatia: expensive
Vilnius, Lithuania: no routes
Riga, Latvia: expensive
Bucharest, Romania: no routes
Reykjavik, Iceland: no routes
Moscow, Russia: no routes (my flatmates also expressed concern about me going to Russia alone)
Helsinki, Finland: expensive
Sofia, Bulgaria: expensive
Ukraine in general: no routes
Ljubljana, Slovenia: expensive (also I can’t pronounce “Ljubljana”)
So that just leaves:
Oslo, Norway
Copenhagen, Denmark
Stockholm, Sweden
This is quite exciting, for I would love to visit all of these places. I had a wonderful time in Stockholm when I visited four and a half years ago, and Norway and Denmark sound amazing.
Problem: the flight to Denmark is still a little too expensive, at nearly £60 return. Plus, I’ve heard that Denmark is a very expensive country. So that’s out.
The problems I have with Oslo and Sweden are similar. The airports served by Ryanair (Easyjet does not serve Stockholm or Norway) are over an hour outside of the city centre by bus. They both also don’t use Euros, which I will have after visiting Ireland. Also, like Denmark, they are very expensive countries.
So as I was wallowing in my misery about a lack of places to visit — yes, I could always go to Paris or Amsterdam, but everyone is going there and that’s boring — one of my flatmates gave me a wonderful idea.
Why not holiday in Berlin?
She said she could totally imagine me loving Berlin, since it’s all historical and awesome and German. I was momentarily concerned about not speaking any German — that’s next year — and she said everyone speaks English.
Note how “not speaking the language” didn’t really deter me from Croatia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Iceland, Finland, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Norway, Denmark, or Sweden.
(I can swear in Danish, but I don’t think that counts.)
Well, I have always wanted to go to Germany. That’s part of the reason why I’m taking German next year.
(The other reason is so I can speak all the angry languages.)
The only problem with going to Berlin is that I have to fly out of Dublin, East Midlands, or London. Preferably I would fly out of Dublin, immediately after my visit in Ireland. That would require either a very nice family member driving me cross-country, or throwing me on a coach or train. Alternatively, I could get back to England and throw myself on a train to London (I’m not sure where the East Midlands Airport railway station is, and the website is not helpful).
Either way, I think I’m going to spend a couple of days in Berlin this spring. There are a thousand cheap hostels in the Berlin area, with reasonable approval ratings. Plus, my departure flight from Berlin would be quite late, meaning I get to stay a whole extra day in Berlin after checking out of my hostel. Granted I will have to carry my bag with me, but my bag will be my backpack. No problem.
The problem becomes the return trip. There are two flights from Berlin to London. One is quite early (9am), the other is quite late (10pm). Either of those works for me. The issue is getting from London to York.
Taking the early flight would seem optimal, but I cannot get cheap train tickets from London to York for that price. I get caught up in peak hours, which are always awful. I really don’t want to have to pay over £20 for a train ticket. That becomes about $35, you see, and that is quite a lot of money.
Bizarrely, while I will not be flying into the main airport in Berlin, it seems absurdly easy to get from Berlin-Schoenefeld to anywhere else in Berlin. It is right near a train station! It is so unlike any of the other places I was considering. It is awesome.
So how about spending spring break in Edinburgh, Ireland, and Germany? I think it sounds like the best plan ever.
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