Places that are popular tourist stops are also popular with pickpockets. A pair of small Asian women in Barcelona, Spain, stood next to me on the metro car that had just arrived for us and a lot of other tourists. We were in a crowd of people who had descended from the city’s popular funicular ride to the top of a hill with a picture-worthy view. It was standing room only.
I stood near John, holding onto a post as the metro revved up. One of the small women reached over my head and grabbed the same post I was holding onto. How curious, I thought, that one so little would reach so high.
But at the same instant, I felt busy fingers working away at the Velcro-zipped travel pouch I had slung over one shoulder and under the other arm. I don’t keep money in this pouch (the money was safely in a flat money belt under my shirt), but the pouch did contain our passports, charge cards and Eurail pass.
It seemed as if everything moved into slow-motion. I looked at each of the two women, both of whom made eye-contact with me, and I clutched the travel pouch tighter. The Velcro did its job.
In the middle of this attempted theft, I said to John, “She’s trying to pickpocket me!” At that moment, the two slid away and slipped through the exit just before the doors closed.
It unnerved me. They escaped. But so did I.

Hostels aren’t what they used to be; they’re so much more.
We remember hostels that frowned on anyone over 26 years old, sold bed space in rooms with four or more stacks of bunk beds, forbade alcohol on the premises, and kicked everyone out between midmorning and late afternoon.
Furthermore, they were often in out-of-the-way locations and filled with backpackers. You could save money and you could meet some nice people. But there was no drinking, no loitering, no privacy.
Then one day in a small town on Lago de Como in northern Italy, we happened upon a hostel with a machine in the lobby that dispensed beer for sale. It was the first time we had found a hostel that did not frown on alcohol.
A couple of Irish kids, dead drunk, were sprawled in the lobby in midafternoon. They welcomed us with open arms and asked if we had any coins they could borrow.
We moved on.
In Mennagio, Italy, late that afternoon we discovered a wonderful old inn, a former convent, with quiet monastic rooms that had walls 20 feet high and windows whose shutters blacked out the brightest daylight. Best of all, there was privacy, and there was peace.
But on our most recent trip, with a decision to stay mostly in two-star hotels (with an occasional splurge for luxury lodgings), we learned to add hostels, along with former convents, to our list of potential accommodations.
The main reason was that we discovered many now have private rooms along with the usual dormitory accommodations.
Hostels are still full of young travelers, but older travelers are just as welcome. Many hostels have a bar and some have their own restaurants on the premises. The secret for those of us looking for a place to sleep — and not necessarily a place to mix and mingle — is to ask for a private room well away from the bar scene. Sometimes you might even get a room with its own bathroom. The cost is relatively low, there’s no lockout period, and many are in good downtown locations, close to restaurants, museums and other attractions.
One of our favorite hostels on this trip was in the heart of Berlin: Citystay Hostel, Rosenstrasse 16, Berlin-Mitte (52 euros a night for a double room (cash only, payable in advance). Free Internet access in the lobby.
The window of our private second-floor room opened onto a central garden. We were within walking distance to many attractions, and next to a bus stop for other parts of town.
Another hostel I can recommend is the Bauhaus Hostel in Bruges, Belgium, $73 a night. Internet access in the lobby.
This hostel was party central, with an active bar and big restaurant, but our double room was on the top floor in the building next door and was blissfully quiet. Our window opened onto a sprawl of red tile roofs and beyond that church steeples and sunsets. And the Bauhaus location, in the Old Town, is within easy walking distance to the plaza at the heart of the town with its many attractions.
We ran into two other couples “of a certain age” at the Bruges hostel, both on extended European tours, as we were, and happy to save money on lodging. Both couples were from Australia.
We older travelers weren’t so very different from the mobs of youths swirling all around us. But they talked a lot about paying off college loans or joining the Peace Corps or which towns have the best party scene, while we “veterans” traded travel stories and showed each other pictures of our grown kids.

John and I traveled around Europe for two wonderful months without ever getting behind the wheel of a car.

I loved it every time we strolled along a street so narrow that a car would be a handicap, every time a hotel added 15 euros for parking and it didn’t apply to us, and every time a public bus in its dedicated lane passed a few hundred cars stalled in a traffic jam and we were on the bus.

Okay, okay, there were a few times it would have been nice to have a car — when we wanted to visit a little town off the beaten path, or when it would have been fun to buy a big souvenir and put it in the trunk, rather than reluctantly pass it by because we didn’t want to carry it around for the rest of the trip. (I know, we could ship something home, but we’re not big spenders anyway.)

Then John would remind me about the friends who had parked their rental car next to a garbage bin behind their hotel, and the bin was set on fire, and their rental car was burned to a crisp.

And I would remind him about the time we bumbled around England in a rental car, knocking off a mirror on one side and ruining a tire on the other side before we got the hang of driving on the left.

In my current opinion, trains, trams, buses, metros and taxis are a great way to go. Maybe this is just an interim stage between the adventure of driving yourself and the security of having a tour operator take care of transportation and just about everything else.

Getting on a train in Europe and heading for the next place we wanted to go was a pleasure. The seats in both first- and second-class were always comfortable — hugely more comfortable than any airplane seat in economy class. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the train departed and arrived right on schedule.

On most overnight trains in Europe there is the option of a two-person compartment with clean and comfortable bunk beds. (That, however, does cost a substantial extra fee. More on Eurail’s “extra” fees next time.)

Every metropolitan area we visited made me realize what a difference there is between American and European approaches to public transportation.

In America we build roads, try to keep them in reasonable repair, and encourage people to buy cars and drive them everywhere. Is there really an “American love affair with the automobile” or is it that our other choices are few and far between? In Europe, public transportation is plentiful, convenient, low-cost and well used by local people.

Gasoline costs more there, too. Somewhere between the high price of gasoline and the narrow winding streets probably lies the reason Europeans drive smaller cars. 

Our biggest transportation hassle was figuring out the different systems in each place: read a metro map, find the route, determine the cost, check whether to pay for a ticket in a kiosk or a machine or on the tram or the bus, and so on. It’s not an overwhelming problem, but it does take time. Still, it’s not all bad. You meet a lot of helpful strangers this way.

In these tough economic times, what’s a traveler to do? Stay home to save money? Or hang the cost, and take that trip?

There’s another option. You can count pennies just as well overseas as you can at home. Here was one experienced traveler’s experience: a month-long trip across the Atlantic, to three popular destinations, for a grand total of less than $4,000.

Jinny Webber of Santa Barbara, California, used up a lot of frequent-flier miles for her round-trip ticket from Los Angeles to London. She had other places she wanted to visit, but she waited until she got to London to purchase those airline tickets. That was so she could take advantage of the bargain-basement “bucket shops” that specialize in low-cost international air fares to and from London, as advertised in the local newspapers. She was able to purchase a round-trip ticket to Ireland for one long weekend (Ryan Air from Gatwick Airport to Dublin for $36) and one to Morocco for a week (Atlas Blue from Gatwick to Marrakesh for $150).

During her stay in London, Jinny often got around by walking from one place to another, and on the days when her plans took her greater distances, she bought a travel pass for about $20 a day, providing unlimited transportation by subway and bus.

An avid traveler, Jinny has been to London many times, and she has friends there, eager to host her, as she has opened her California home to them as well. Her travel expenses included generous gifts for the friends she visited. On some of the days in London and nearby locales, she stayed in relatively inexpensive bed-and-breakfast places.

Her entertainment included lingering afternoon strolls through free museums, checking out art gallery openings, and going to several plays at the National Theater and other venues when inexpensive tickets were available for performances that night.

Dinners in restaurants (expensive) were interspersed with late-evening snacks in pubs. One of her favorites consisted of a mug of beer with roasted potato wedges with cheese and “leaves,” a pile of undressed lettuce - low-cost, satisfying and fairly healthy.

“I wouldn’t do that very often,” she said, “but it was both satisfying and relatively cheap.”

In Marrakesh, she and a companion stayed at a small hotel in the heart of the old town - Riad Les Oliviers - for about $40 per person for a double room.

She and two other friends also saved money by hiring a cab for a daylong outing to the Atlas mountains rather than taking an organized tour.

“That was cheaper for the three of us, and we had control over our itinerary, including a long hike,” she said.

In the coastal town of Essaouria, they had accommodations in Riad Watier that cost $60 per person, including breakfast on the roof-garden. A two-bedroom suite in the old walled city of Tangier cost $60 as well.

Travel between towns was by “Super Tours” bus, about two hours, $7 each way.

The week in Morocco, including accommodations, meals and shopping, cost Jinny about $900. For London and Dublin her cost was around $3,000, including house gifts for the friends who hosted her.

There are so many places John and I want to visit in Europe, we decided to spend two months there. We made that decision last October, before the market really melted down, but we’re going anyway.

We decided to buy a Eurail pass to use in April and May. We already have our plane tickets in hand, too. And John’s son is going to house-sit for us. All set!

Making the big-ticket purchases early freed our minds for the fun part of getting ready — getting in touch with friends we might visit and deciding which places we really don’t want to miss. And I rationalize that some of the money would be gone by now anyway, due to the economic downturn.

At the Internet site www.Eurail.com you buy directly from Eurail. The user-friendly website promises “lowest price and free shipping.”

We selected unlimited first-class train travel for two months. The cost for two or more traveling together was $1,329 each, plus $12 for insurance in case a pass is lost.

(If you’re 25 or younger, the cost was $1,019; if you’re 26 or older and traveling alone, the cost was $1,569. Other time frames and more limited passes are also on sale. Prices in dollars change at least monthly, depending on the exchange rate.)

There’s another popular website, www.RailEurope.com, which was recommended by a travel agent.

“But I don’t buy off websites myself,” she said. “I prefer to telephone a live human and deal directly.”

We had a conference call, the travel agent, the live human at Rail Europe, and I.

“Why buy at Rail Europe instead of Eurail?”

“We are based in the United States,” the live human said. “And you can make reservations on our website, too.”

She wanted a list of the countries we plan to visit. (Eurail didn’t ask. Its website simply listed the 21 countries the pass covers.)

We want to play it light and loose, and we don’t have an itinerary pinned down yet. All we have decided for sure is that we want to take the plane to Frankfurt, Germany, make our way south to Spain, and then meander through several countries, all the way north to the fjords of Norway, then back to Frankfurt and home.

Conversations with John are like this:

Let’s head for the sun, and save the northern countries for the end of the trip.

Sounds good. How about stopping off in Italy first, and visit the caves of Parma? Remember that article about Parmesan cheese?

And don’t forget Bologna, for the fabulous restaurants. And Florence, for the incomparable collections of art.

Shouldn’t we go directly to Spain, because of the weather in early April? The farther south the better, don’t you think?
Should we stop off in Paris for a few days?

On our way north, let’s take a side trip to Ukraine, to see friends who were in the Peace Corps with us in Russia and now have those great jobs in Kiev.

But that’s so far east. And it’s not on the 21-countries list.

Let’s do it anyway; we’ll have time.

Let’s talk about it later.

Meanwhile, how much for the RailEurope tickets?

The RailEurope.com website was not as user-friendly as the Eurail.com website, and it was hard to figure what the actual cost for a comparable pass would be. The live human said the cost would be $1,668 each if we made the purchase at their website, plus $14 each for the insurance. That price might be lower by now, as the exchange rate has changed.
How much for buying the Rail Europe passes through the travel agent? The same, but with the travel agent’s add-on fee. The advantage? None, that I could see.

The travel agent cheerfully said she couldn’t see any advantage either, and suggested I buy the passes myself from Eurail.com.

I took the leap, while there was still spendable money left in our IRAs, and bought directly from the Eurail.com website. The Eurail pass was hand-delivered the next day, complete with voucher, insurance, maps, train timetables. We are ready!
We’re still debating Ukraine.

       Time is not money, and nowadays that’s a good thought to keep in mind. If you really want to go to Europe, and you have the time, go for it!
       That was the attitude of Toy Story, of Fort Collins, Colorado. She put a fairly large dent in her fairly small fortune, and doesn’t regret it for a minute.
       “I don’t enjoy flying,” she said. She doesn’t like jet lag, she doesn’t like airports, and she’d rather take her time getting there.
       So she took Amtrak from Colorado to New York and booked passage on the Queen Mary – a six-day crossing from New York to England, paying $2,500 for the outbound voyage and $1,700 for the return.
       Toy, who’s 76, had learned of a biking-and-museum-hopping tour of The Netherlands, and the timing coincided with the voyage, so she signed up. But as luck would have it, that tour didn’t attract enough people, so it was canceled. The tour operator offered instead a one-week bike-and-barge tour that covered 50 miles a day and featured gourmet meals on the barge every evening.
       “I’m not a helmet and gel seat person at all,” she said. “But I kept up with the others just fine.” 
       After that, armed with a one-month Eurail pass good for 10 trips, she headed for Paris, spent a day there doing the galleries, and boarded an overnight express train for the beautiful coastal villages of Cinque Terre on the Italian coastline.
       “Getting a Eurail pass was the one thing I wouldn’t do again,” she said. “I spent a thousand dollars for it, and I didn’t get my money’s worth.” (That was because she used several days of her pass to take short train rides to cities near where she was staying, which otherwise would have been relatively inexpensive.)  
       Upon arriving at Cinque Terre’s westernmost village, Monterrosso al More, Toy followed an information sign to an office where a friendly clerk found her a beautiful, inexpensive room in an old remodeled villa, in the center of town.          While waiting for her friend to join her, she spent several days, hiking, exploring the area, and soaking up the sun, along with those all-day excursions.
       The friend was not content with anything less than a four-star hotel, so when she arrived, Toy moved with her into a four-star accommodation “far up in the hills, remote, a terrible choice I would not have made. But she’s a princess.”
       Then it was on to Venice for three spectacular days of walking, sightseeing, concerts and perfect weather, to Milano for shopping, and to Prague, which Toy found to be a “big, fat bore,” with its high prices and Art Deco architecture: “Not my favorite place.”
       Trip highlights? The brilliantly restored marble buildings of classic Italian cities, and the free concerts in churches and concert halls in several places. Even aboard the Queen Mary, some members of the Boston Symphony gave three concerts to delighted passengers.
       Total trip cost – Amtrak train to New York, the voyage to Europe and back, the Eurail pass, a month’s worth of hotel accommodatons, meals and all the usual extras: about $10,000. 
       Was it worth it? “Of course!” Toy said. “I’ve wanted to do this for so long.” There’s a whole world to explore, and now is the time.