studentsineurope

I’ve arrived back in Cagliari after my trip to Groningen and Florence, and I have to say it’s nice to come home. It’s also funny to realize that I think of Cagliari as home. I guess almost any apartment would feel like home after youth hostels and couch surfing, but I’m also enjoying how nice [...]

The best part of my recent trip to Florence was simply wandering the streets. It’s amazing just how much egregious beauty there is in la bella Firenze.
One mesmerizing sight was the chalk artists who recreate masterpieces on the Florentine streets. It was amazing to watch the artists’ speed and skill as they picked through their [...]

I’m always on the lookout for a great new cocktail, and cocktails are hard to find in Europe. European cocktail culture is quite different than American cocktail culture. There are fewer cocktails and most of them combine a maximum of two ingredients (think gin and tonic, which is the quintessential European cocktail). Sometimes you’ll find [...]

Florence can be overwhelming. In a city dedicated to beautiful things, from churches to palaces to designer shoes, student travelers can have hard time knowing where to go to take home a piece of the loveliness at a student-friendly price. One of the best options is to head to the city’s largest market, the market [...]

We’ve all run into that kind of tourist. The one who’s so intent on doing the city that they spend more time looking at their guidebook than the monuments, the ones who can only admire a beautiful view from from behind a camera lens. Done-it-all tourists are a pain once they get back home. You’re [...]

Jessica Sprenkel, a current senior at Rhodes College in Memphis, spent last semester studying abroad at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. She found her study abroad program through IES Abroad, a non-profit acadmeic consortium that provides study abroad opportunities to more than 200 colleges and universities in the US.
Jessica is now only days away from [...]

I love English. English has elegantly simple grammar paired with a lexicon as decadent as a pre-industrial monarchy. English has a subtle and variable cadence. Much as I love speaking Italian, you’ll never convince me that Romance languages are more “musical” than English: English is like jazz while Italian is like opera.
But when I’m abroad, [...]

Finding Internet abroad isn’t as much of a problem as it used to be. Airports are usually equipped with WiFi (though you generally have to pay for it), youth hostels and budget hotels advertise their Internet hook-ups to attract backpackers, and even small cities have Internet cafes. The train I took from Groningen to Amsterdam [...]

Never get bored while traveling again. These games will keep you entertained during long layovers, help you meet friends in your hostel and also act as pretty darn good drinking games.  Think of this as a comprehensive guide to the best board, card and electronic games for your next adventures in Europe.
Dutch Blitz:
Dutch Blitz is [...]

Most of the time when you’re backpacking, you have your itinerary planned. You know which cities you want to visit, you know how many days you’re going to spend in each, and you’ve planned which sites you most want to see. Perhaps most importantly, you have a guidebook or a map.
Sometimes, though, you find yourself [...]