Destination Europe: A Five-Week Sabbatical Adventure
I’ve been at NerdWallet for a bit over five years now. Interestingly enough, we have a program called “Five for Five” — after five years, we’re eligible for a five week (paid) sabbatical1. I don’t think I really expected to last this long when I first started at NerdWallet, but here we are.
I had been thinking about what I wanted to do for that sabbatical for the last two years now, and as the date finally passed (July 2024), I changed everything. Gabby expressed interest in taking an unpaid sabbatical from her company, and with that many more options opened up — we could do something together, rather than me figuring out how to spend five weeks alone.
We decided to “Backpack” Europe.
In our minds, backpacking was going to mean “travel with just the minimal, feel the vibe of the locations and locals rather than just the tourist attractions, and do it cheaply.” In particular, immersing ourselves in the local culture (especially with food!) is paramount.
With five weeks, of course it will be a pretty compressed trip, and “Europe” will end up being a lot smaller than the actual continent. We decided to focus more so to Central Europe for our first trip (this is actually my first time leaving the continent; Gabby’s second. She’s been to Hungary for a week before).
With that in mind, our itinerary became:
- (Various), Italy ~ 2 weeks
- Interlaken, Switzerland ~ 1 week
- Munich, Germany ~ 4 days 2
- Salzburg, Austria ~ 4 days
- Prague, Czech Republic ~ 4 days
- Amsterdam, Netherlands ~ 4 days
- Highlands, Scotland ~ 4 days
We planned to stay at a few hostels, AirBnBs, and hotels — whatever was cheaper (and where reviews didn’t say the word “bug” too often).
Our trip managed to look like:
Over the next few weeks, I’ll cover our trip in more detail. Our first stop will be Naples, Italy Newark, New Jersey!