It must be the full moon and longer nights...or perhaps my recent acquisition of a first-edition Anne Rice novel...or my reading about a tour company specializing in tours to Transylvania (did you know there was a Transylvanian Society of Dracula?)....but my mind has been ruminating on travel in Europe. It was a haunting thought. If you had a few days, where would you go and how would you go there? There are so many travel resources on the service, and I thought I'd apply them to this fantasy tour. While air travel will take many to Europe, the rail system moves everyone around effectively from town to town, country to country. In addition, there are savings and bargains to be had by planning with online resources. For example EUROPE.SAV in the Europe library of the Travel Forum, lists various offers and discounts.
Begin with Trains and Planes
London's dark side brings forth visions of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (even though the story may have taken place in Robert Louis Stevenson's hometown of Edinburgh!), Jack the Ripper, and the Tower of London and its beheadings and prisons! But where could I find out more, from my comfortable surroundings? Ahh...I thought. Surely this is a great opportunity to surf some of the services on CIS. Only a few days ago, I had read on the Travel Forum of a great fare to London from the east coast of the United States, around $348!! One could really take advantage of a low fare, a bargain B&B or hotel and enjoy spooky London!
Find a Hotel
Accomodation reviews on CIS are everywhere. On the Travel Forum (GO TRAVSIG), I found files with CIS members' first-hand reviews of all sorts of accommodations. On the UK Forum (GO UKFORUM), hotel owners can list and describe their hotels. GO UKTRAVEL gets me to a database of accommodation (AA ACCOMMODATIONS). The Europe Forum (GO EURFOR) also had some files on London accommodations.
Plan an Itinerary
But how could I experience London's darker side? The answer was in a file on the UK Forum called LONWAL.TXT. It's a brochure listing the walking tours provided by Original London Walks. I entertained myself, reading the descriptions of some of the walks: London's Secret Village, Ghosts of the Old City, Jack the Ripper Haunts, and Ghosts of the West End! Yes! Checking out Travel Britain Online (GO TBONLINE), and clicking on "Special Holiday Breaks" under "Travel Britain News", I not only found more news of ghost walks and tours in London and elsewhere, but found information on Ghostly Nottingham. I was torn now. I had heard Warwick Castle described as the best medieval castle in England. I found a GIF picture of the Warwick Castle Knight on the UK Forum (KNIGH.GIF) and an intriguing picture of Lord Leycester Hospital in Warwick (HOSPTL.GIF). But the best picture of Warwick Castle was found on the Graphics Corner Forum (GO GRAPHICS). It's a fabulous aerial view of the whole castle (TRAV09.GIF in the Landmarks Library).
I decided on travel to ghostly Nottingham after all! Checking out THE GOOD PUB GUIDE under UK Travel (GO UKTRAVEL), I found a few pubs to check out in Nottingham. Then going to the AA Accommodation Guide, also on UK Travel, I found a small, five-bedroom inn, dating from 1680, called The Willow Tree Inn. It's located in Newark in Nottinghamshire. Boy, 1680! There ought to be a few ghosts there! At 20 GBP for a single, it was reasonable. How did I know? I checked the foreign exchange rates under APONLINE. Under the BUSINESS menu, you can find the daily Foreign Exchange rates. One GBP equaled about $1.55, making the room about $30a night.
Getting from London to Nottingham
The next puzzle was how to get from London to Nottingham and Newark. Enjoying train travel as much as I do, I checked the rail timetables on CIS at GO RAILWAY. Trains seemed to run frequently for the two-hour journey, with one change of trains. If I wanted to travel through more of the UK, I would probably consider a Britrail pass. A comprehensive list of railpasses is in the Travel Forum's Rail library (RAILPA.95) and includes all the Britrail passes. If I wanted to drive on the wrong side of the road, Auto-Europe offers the forum members an additional discount. I was told that a three-day rental of an economy car with the CIS discount was $68.85...including the 17 percent VAT tax! If I wanted to keep it a week...it was only $114.75. And for the off-season, there are free upgrades..
Off to the Continent
But Transylvania, now. I had checked on the Euro Rail Schedules and knew that I could take a train from London to Brasov, the region in Romania linked to the Dracula legends. It would take me through Ramsgate, Ostend, Belgium, Aachen and Linz in Germany, Budapest and arrive--finally--a day and half after I had left London. With the knowledge that that might be a bit more train travel than I had time for, I explored on in the service. On the Travel Forum (GO TRAVSIG), I found an abundance of practical files on traveling to Romania, where Transylvania is located. There was even a especially interesting one about driving around Romania in search of old monasteries. But nothing on Transylvania.
Next, I visited the Literature Forum (GO LITFORUM). Surely I would find something on vampires there! Well, did I ever! There is a whole section and library on vampire literature. They even hold vampire conferences twice a month! But alas, no concrete information to help plan a haunted travel quest.
I hit pay dirt in the Europe Forum (GO EURFOR). I found the file DRACULA.TXT in the Travel to Europe library. This article chronicled a visit to Romania by two writers in search of Dracula. I was able to discover that the area best known for Dracula was located outside of the city of Brasov.
Solo or Tour Company?
I found a great fare from London to Bucharest on British Airways for 315 GBP round-trip, and learned that on the European Railways I can travel right through from London to Brasov. However, after reading through the U.S. State Department files on Romania and the practical files on the Travel Forum, I was able to surmise that Romania was not a country that I wanted to drive through alone, nor were there "quaint" B and Bs to find. For this part of my Halloween trip, I would need a good tour company, at least for a first visit! To learn a bit more, I contacted the Romanian Tourist Office in New York (their contact information, along with other European Tourist Offices located in the US, can be found in the file EUROPE.TO on the Europe Forum). From the staff, I learned of a tour company, Bravo Group, approved by the Transylvania Society of Dracula, which specializes in tours covering both the real Vlad and the fictional count. Since the tour company originally started doing tours as initiation trips for members of the Transylvania Society of Dracula, its tours are cultural and adventuresome.
Customizing a trip using CompuServe resources is a great way to ensure that when you travel, you have an experience unlike any other in the world. There is definitely spirit in service!
Mimi Petit is the owner of Petit Travel Consultants/European Railpass Service. An "Independent European-Travel" consultant specializing in railpasses, rail tickets and car rentals, she is also a sysop on Travel Forum and Europe Forum.
