Eurorail vol 2023🇲🇨🇫🇷🇪🇸🇵🇹

Hey everyone! I hope your year has gone very well.

This summer I took some time to explore Europe a bit more and it was amazing.

POLAND, WARSAW

I started the summer off with a trip to Jordan (in another post) soon followed by a trip to Poland with one of my best friends. She met up with me in Hungary when I was living in Italy to celebrate our birthdays so we decided it was time to renew this tradition. We were looking to visit Eastern Europe on a low budget and wanted to visit a place neither of us had visited. We checked out some flight deals and ended up picking Warsaw. I've actually wanted to visit Poland and was super excited to go.

Our whole mission was to eat well and as much as possible and just wander around the city. We both needed a minute away and a chance to relax so that's what we did. We planned nothing in advance, we simply booked this lovely rooftop apartment near the old town centre and explored.

One of the things I love to do is visit the Illusion museums wherever I find them and took up the first opportunity to visit the one in Warsaw. I love these places and would highly recommend going! I had previously visited the one in Vilnius and will hopefully see more of them in the future.

We visited King Jan III's Palace in Wilanow and it was a beautiful day out. It seemed like locals came there a lot to spend a day in the park. I would highly recommend going, there are lots of restaurants and cafes in the park.

We did manage to get a fabulous night out in Warsaw as well and had lots of fun, the nightlife is very vibrant! We just asked around for the best places to go and ended up doing a bar hop.

FRANCE, PARIS

We booked tickets for the Boom festival in Portugal a year ago and wanted to make a little road trip to get there. I had been to Portugal briefly before but was very much looking forward to exploring it further. We found some super cheap flights to Paris so that became our starting point. We went exploring around Paris, visiting museums and the modern art galleries. Of course, we had some French toast and cappuccinos on the terraces and ate some pastries. Overall, a nice short trip to Paris which was great since I had only properly been once before and didn't really enjoy my time there. I went during the Christmas season and while the Christmas markets were lovely, I found the city to be too expensive, and not welcoming and my friends with a too-long bucket list of tourist attractions to tick off. Glad to have some happier, more chilled memories!

SPAIN, BILBAO

We had not planned our road trip in advance at all, we just had a date when we had to show up at Boom and knew that we should be able to get there directly from Porto. We discovered a great, 45-euro night bus from Paris to Bilbao so we decided to head directly to Spain from Paris. We considered stopping in Southern France but all the nice places would have been a little detour away and neither of us was too keen.

Bilbao was maybe the most positively surprising place on this trip. I have a friend who is from there and he never spoke particularly highly of it, but we had a blast. Of course, we visited the Guggenheim, took the cable car to the hills and ate lots. We found the 17th best (awarded) pizza place and Europe and ate there so many times! It really was amazing. We fell in love with the culture of people ordering drinks and snacks from the nearby bars and then just gathering on the streets on the river banks to chill together. Regardless of the day of the week, everyone was outside, you didn't have to buy anything or get a table, people just showed up, brought music and food and chilled together. We met some amazing people and enjoyed good food and company. The Old Town in Bilbao is adorable and the city is packed with cute dogs that people let run free on the hills.

Here's actually a happy laughing photo of me just after I found out that I got the UN job in Bangladesh. The recruitment process was really quick and I was a little shocked to hear back so quickly so I spent the whole night bus to Porto considering my move to Bangladesh. Couldn't ever think of a better company than my nephew to hear and celebrate the good news with.

PORTUGAL, PORTO

Porto is such an adorable place with tasty food, cute alleys and shops and vibrant culture. We visited the Harry Potter bookshop (you must reserve a slot in advance and even though we did the queue looked huge but actually went surprisingly quickly), ate by the river, did a river cruise to see the magnificent bridges, went for Portwine tasting at Calem cellars and did some shopping at the street markets. It was a lovely little breather on our trip where we just laid back and enjoyed ourselves.

We hiked on the hill near Mosteiro de Serra do Pilar where all the locals gather to watch the sunset every night. It was a stunning spot, the sense of community was great and all sorts of vendors were selling snacks and drinks to enable you to enjoy a little evening picnic. Everyone claps their hands when the sun finally sets below the horizon which I loved!

PORTUGAL, BOOM VILLAGE

From Porto, we got a bus to Castello Branco, the closest city to the Boom Village. We thought we would have to hitchhike or wait till the next morning to get the official Boom shuttle bus to the festival area because the information online said that the shuttle buses only start running on the first festival morning. Our friends were arriving from Lissabon and Madrid with the official long-distance Boom buses that are allowed in the festival area the day before (they only run non-stop from these two cities and the tickets cost around 80 euros). However, as we got off the bus in Castello Branco, we discovered that there was a 12-euro shuttle bus to Boom Village leaving in 30 minutes. There isn't much near the bus station so we were just about able to use a half-decent bathroom at a local bar before hopping on the bus. We thought we had all this time there to figure out how to move ahead and buy some food and other necessities for the festival but it was much smoother to hop on the bus.

The bus took us directly to the Village an hour bus ride away and we managed to Obrilliantly surprise our friends by finding our camp a night before everyone thought we would arrive! Our whole company was quite well versed in these week-long raves (I was trying to prepare for it like Afrikaburn) so they were all well prepared with hammocks (a must), warm clothes for the night, sunblock, decorations and little lights for the camp and on us, cash, good water bottles, powerbanks etc. Remember to get some excellent DJ earplugs, ear covers for the night (like over-the-ear headphones) and an eye cover to sleep. I would recommend a hammock and then your group brings a tent to store your things in.

Boom is quite different from Afrikaburn: in Portugal, the Village is by a lake where you spend most of your days, there are shops and restaurants which are mostly vegan and organic or at least eco-friendly, and there are places to charge your phone (but only if you want to wait around for it to charge), the music plays basically non-stop for 8 days and you can shop for more party gear at the market. Your phone should be able to get service but don't rely on it to find your friends. The festival area is huge! And I think there were about eight stages playing different types of music. I actually quite enjoyed the Sacred Fire stage which introduced a variety of live performers and rare instruments in a magical setup.

We had a blast, with 8 days of the festival, you can easily pick and choose your moments and energies and participate in the programme. I also managed to chill in a hammock and on the beach mulling over my decision on whether to move to Bangladesh or not.

Boom isn't really a festival where people are drunk which was super lovely! Everyone is very relaxed, and openly themselves, and there's a lot of skin on display as people live their nudist dreams, it's open and inclusive and you really see how people shed off the usual norms in life and just are. We ran into some Finns and they said I don't look like a lawyer. I was lying on a beach with just bottoms on so I found the comment hilarious especially since most of our gang was lawyers. It's definitely a bubble where people are in their own euphoria, but also they let you freely enjoy the festival as you see fit which differs from drunken raves. I was sober for the whole festival and no one questioned anything or pushed or offered anything to change that. We witnessed this group of half-naked dudes doing some sort of a tribal dance in a small circle dancing to their hearts' content, they really reminded me of hobbits gathering to take acid and doing some sort of a rain dance. It's impossible to describe, but seeing their determination and happiness was one of the funniest things to witness.

We had flights to Finland booked from Malaga four days after the end of the festival. A friend of mine lives in Malaga so we planned to take a bus and hitchhike there, spend a few days with her and then fly home. We soon discovered that there were no buses from Boom or Castello Branco that crossed the border to Spain: you would have to go further west towards Lissabon or all the way there to get a bus that crosses the Portugal-Spain border. This felt like a huge waste of time for us. We also didn't want to take the Boom bus to Madrid to take a bus from there down to Malaga (it was also sold out).

We packed up our camp and wandered around asking people if they were heading to Spain and if they could drop us anywhere on the other side of the border, most likely to Badajoz where we could take a domestic bus down to Malaga. We had just stopped to grab a pizza for lunch when the dude we were lounging next to asked where in Spain we were planning on going. He was heading down to Granada alone! We couldn't believe our luck and were very keen on jumping into his car.

Essentially he then went to run off to deal with some departure errands and we waited. He came back and said we would probably not fit into the car because he had his plants and lots of stuff in the car already. The lift was simply too good to pass because it would be nearly all the way to Malaga so we told him we really wanted to try and didn't mind being uncomfortable in the car. We waited for him to pack up his things and did the long walk to the car while he was still trying to talk us out of this lift but we were quite determined. We basically completely took over his car, packed it to the rim and squeezed into the back convincing him that he could absolutely drive with a car that full.

The drive to the Spanish border is just over half an hour. We had driven for about 15 minutes when he hit the curb a couple of times. I asked him if something was wrong and he said he was dozing off and that he was in no shape to drive the car so I had to jump behind the wheel. I was very surprised but he pulled to a local gas station and we got some coffee and then I jumped behind the wheel. Both of the boys were busy snoring in the backseat and I drove us the first six hours. We stopped at a small cafe somewhere in rural Spain at midnight to get something to eat and my nephew drove the final two hours. I told him in Finnish that since we had now essentially commandeered this car and gone through this whole ordeal we are definitely driving the car all the way to Malaga.

SPAIN, MALAGA

We arrived in Malaga and our travelling buddy was more than happy with the solution. While being rather unique in many ways, he was a very sweet guy. He said he was going to park at the beach, grab his sleeping bag from the car and sleep there since he couldn't be bothered to drive further. Interesting experience overall but that's what he wanted and he was more than grateful that we had driven him so far so everyone was pleased with the outcome.

We arrived at my friend's flat smelling like shit and so exhausted so I was very happy I didn't have to meet her new boyfriend (fast asleep already) in that condition. I washed off twice before collapsing straight to bed. After a good sleep in cool air, we had four super chilled, peaceful days in Malaga and I got to chill with my favourite puppy. She technically isn't allowed on the beds, but who was I to say no when I loved every second of it.

This was a beautiful finish to our holiday and I am so glad about how everything worked out. Considering nothing was preplanned, we couldn't have had smoother transitions and better luck.

I wouldn't have changed a single thing!

Best,

Mira