travel expenses

Berlin

We rented a car in Copenhagen, took a ferry to Germany, and drove to our first stop, in Berlin. We had hoped that by renting a car and doing our own driving we would get to see more of each country, including small towns, countryside and local residents. Unfortunately, we ended up driving primarily on large interstate highways. This made for fast, efficient travel, but it was less picturesque than we had hoped for.

A thatched roof house in the Danish countryside

One of the first places we visited in Berlin was the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. There are 2,711 gray stone blocks of various sizes. A fellow traveler, visiting from Australia, summed it up in one word: Confronting.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Berlin Wall – only a few remnants have been preserved. However, they have installed a walkway throughout the city, marking where the wall formerly stood. There are a lot of reminders all around the city of damage that was caused during the war.

A section of the Berlin Wall that remains standing
Remains of a church in Berlin, damaged by World War II bombs

We found a great café around the block from our AirBnB. The food appeared to be carefully prepared, the atmosphere was relaxed, and the prices were reasonable. We also found a good restaurant for dinner. The menu was available only in German, although the helpful waitress spoke English well. Maricela and I each just selected an item at random from the menu, hoping we would like it. Thankfully it worked out well for both of us. An interesting thing after the meal – we left the helpful waitress a tip of about 15%; she came and talked to us and told us the tip amount was too much. Imagine that happening in the US! (In the end, we convinced her to keep the full amount.)

Traffic and parking were a bit of a challenge, but we survived unscathed.

A two-way street in Berlin near our AirBnB

Copenhagen

One of the European cities participating in the Icelandair fare sale was Copenhagen, Denmark. The good part about this is that Copenhagen was definitely on our “must visit” list, because we have relatives there who just had a baby and we wanted to visit them. The not-as-good part is that the Baltic Sea separates Copenhagen from continental Europe. That means we either had to fly or take a ferry across the Baltic. It’s not a huge problem, it’s just another expense that needed to be included in our budget. And it needed to be accounted for on a round trip basis; since we flew into Copenhagen, we would need to get back there to fly home.

Copenhagen waterfront

Here are my first impressions of Copenhagen:

It appeared to be clean, everywhere we looked. There was no trash or other debris on the streets. The one odd exception is that we found several bicycles tossed into the canals.

A bicycle underwater in a canal

We took the train several times, and it always arrived and departed right on schedule. We are from the San Francisco Bay Area, where we have the BART subway system. The BART trains have conductors piloting the trains. Before leaving a station, the BART conductor will visually look down the platform to make sure no one is still stepping onto the train before closing the doors and departing. In Denmark, the trains are automated with no conductor, so passengers are on their own to avoid the closing doors.

Train crossing in front of a hotel

Strangers on the street were not particularly friendly, at least not very outgoing. However, we stayed at three different AirBnB’s, and all of the hosts were extremely accommodating. All the hosts were warm, inviting and welcoming, with one family inviting us to join them for dinner. We definitely enjoyed our AirBnB experiences in Copenhagen.

This will likely not be a surprise to anyone, but the reports are true, there are bicycles everywhere! I haven’t seen this many bicycles in use since visiting the Santa Barbara and Davis university campuses in California. The good thing is, the cyclists behave in very orderly fashion. At one point we observed a long queue of cyclists lined up waiting for a drawbridge to close – everyone waited patiently, within the lines on their side of the bike lane.

Bicyclists lined up at drawbridge

The cost of living seemed high, even for basic necessities such as food. Our first meal was lunch at a food truck style food court. We ordered a simple, carryout lunch of Mongolian barbecue ribs, curry cauliflower, and one piece of flat bread; the cost, including taxes but not drinks, came to the equivalent of about $36 US. Unlike the US, no tipping is required here. For comparison, we recently had a similar meal in the US; we paid $22, including tax, and added a $4 tip, so $36 vs. $26. I added a small hot chocolate to my Copenhagen meal, and it cost over $7, which is also significantly more than what a similar drink would cost in the US. Likewise, the tax on the purchase of new automobiles is high. It has fluctuated in recent years, but it has been as high as 180%, making a $25,000 vehicle cost $70,000.

We had good food, we enjoyed places such as Tivoli Gardens, and we had a great time visiting relatives. We would love to return to Copenhagen again one day.

A Plan to Visit Europe

As retirees on a fixed income, we generally look for ways to minimize our travel expenses. That is why most of our travel is to places where we can drive rather than having to pay for airfare. It’s also part of the reason why we look for house sits whenever we can.

We had had our eye on visiting Europe for a long time but hadn’t felt we could fit it in to our budget. There were certain places that we were especially interested in seeing and we also had some relatives in Europe who we wanted to visit.

Two things came together that helped us to finally take the leap and go to Europe. First, and most importantly, Icelandair had a sale on airfares between several East Coast cities in the US and a few cities in Europe. Normally we are located in the western US, but due to our recent Massachusetts house sit, we could easily fly out of Boston, which was one of the participating cities. Second, we lined up a couple of house sits in Europe, which would reduce our lodging expenses there.

We organized the trip such that we would travel on our own for about two weeks, then house sit for a week, travel again on our own, house sit for another week, and finish up with some more travel on our own. This would help break up the trip, giving us periods of time when we would be traveling and sightseeing, interspersed with more restful periods when we would spend a full week at someone’s home, taking care of their pets, and washing our laundry.

We haven’t traveled like this before. Stay tuned to see how it works out!