Come with me if you want to live: Thoughts on traveling in Austria and Europe and some tips we have learned

Hello friends. I wanted to make a “small” post that is a little different. I wanted to take a small moment to talk about how we have planned our different trips. This is mainly meant for other Erasmus students in Graz or if you want to visit Graz later, some of the sources might be handy. Hope there is something worthwhile in this. I added some images from our bus ride home from Venice, just so there are some images to the post as well.

Usually when planning trips around I have used Google maps as a main tool, but in Graz and around Europe we noticed that Maps doesn’t know all the options. Especially in Graz and in Austria Maps has been lacking. When we have been in Austria, we have relied on Busbahnbim app which works similarly to Maps, but it knows the public transports in Austria much better. One frustrating thing is that the app was brought up rather late in the welcome material and that made us take some bad bus routes and pay a little extra in the first few weeks in Graz. Busbahnbim also works with lots of the smaller attractions around Graz. We have plenty of them planned for our final weeks in Graz. Will post about some of them in the future.

For the larger trips we have used other sites like Travelinho to look at different possibilities from traveling. Flights we also compared with Skyscanner when flying to Milan to start off our Italy trip. We are also planning our trip back home using these apps to look at different options we have. Our return from Venice was with Flixbus which is a nice rather cheap bus company and students in Graz can get discount codes to it from the ESN student offices to save a few extra euros.

For other exchange students, current or future, the student organization ESN arranges many different trips around Austria, and they are worth being a part of. We have taken part in two trips so far in Maribor and Puntigamer brewery, but also attended smaller events in Graz like their monthly movie night. We are also planning to take part in at least two more trips while we are here. These trips are good deals with their prices and you always spare the time in planning.

The places we have stayed have mainly been through Airbnb. Hotels are just too expensive for students, unless you stay at a hostel. All our Airbnb apartments and hosts have luckily been really welcoming and helpful, even if language has been a slight issue at some places, we always have managed by signing or using translator apps or showing pictures of what we need from our phone. Later method is usually helpful in stores or when buying tickets to something and the seller does not bother to even try talking English, it has happened a few times.

Hope there is some help out of this to someone. We have really enjoyed Graz and the whole exchange. We have less than 50 days before we head back home and there is still plenty of exploring and schoolwork to be done. More on those in later posts. Have a good day my friends. Later.