A Train Came in the Mail Yesterday...

We are less than four days away from getting on a plane and flying 5,437 miles (Oops, 8,750 km for you Metric Nerds) to London to begin our trip across Europe. As we continue to pack up our life into a tiny, 5'x10' storage space, more than a few emotions are running through our brain...

What I look like before packing up several boxes of my life.

"Are we bringing everything we need?"

"Are we bringing too much?"

"Don't stand on that!"

"Can we afford to leave all our volumes of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind manga behind?!"

...

In any case, there are emotions. Moving can be a daunting task in itself, let alone storing all your belongings, moving AND not coming back for over 3 months. However, if we can make it work, anyone can. The real trick is to compartmentalize (aka - have a wife/husband who is meticulous and loves to organize). Take your packing in stages. Consolidate, consolidate, consolidate. The closer you get to an empty apartment (or efficiently full backpack), the more accomplished you'll feel.

What I look like after the job is done - complete with VISOR and 80's cardigan.

Sufficed to say, there are days where the task ahead can overwhelm you and this post is about the little bauble we received in the mail that made Vicky giddy as a school girl and me giddy... as another school girl...

Our Eurail Pass arrived!

This pass gives us access to 24 European countries via rail and allows us to do so over 10 travel days in a span of two months! There are various tiers of the Eurail Pass, but the specific one we chose is best suited for a trip of our length and ambition. We are avid train-goers and are excited at the prospect of taking long train trips through the European countryside and the romance of coming to a halt in cities with literally millennia of history.

BAM! TRAVEL.

London, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Munich, Prague, Salzburg, Venice, Rome, Milan, Barcelona, Madrid... A whirlwind tour of history, romance, intrigue and above all, food. Getting this little train pass in the mail was another step in our preparation that made this trip feel that much more real. This is happening. This. Is. HAPPENING!

Granted, the Eurail Pass won't be the end-all, be-all of our travel, but it will take care of our country to country travel. For intracity travel, we will be using the local networks such as the London Underground, the Paris Metro or the Berlin Urban Rail to name a few. I'm sure we'll be posting more on those at a later date. Right now, before our trip has begun, we were just stoked to see that our travel between countries has been taken care of.

As our journey evolves, we'll post more about our travels between specific countries and how our 'wingin-it' itinerary shapes up. For now, we'll cope with the USA Olympic Hockey losses to our brothers and sisters to the north (Damn you, Canada! Eh?) and rejoice in the fact that we are proud Eurail Pass owners!