[the grand tour] now a gap year

Way to go in the 1880s

The Grand Tour was really something. Poor transport, impassable Alps, the food question and also:

The Grand Tour was also well known as a chance for its participants to sow their oats as they were "generally young, healthy, wealthy and poorly, if at all supervised". Due to the rampant spread of venereal disease, sexual exploits while abroad were frowned upon by those back home, but regarded as just another aspect of the trip.

And yet it was cultural and the young men did not return wholly ignorant. The 1800s opened up rail travel but the idea of a long tour was still for the rich, such as with the exciting Orient Express, which I've walked past but not been on:

The original route, which first ran on October 4, 1883, was from Paris, Gare de l'Est, to GiurgiuRomania via Munich and Vienna. At Giurgiu, passengers were ferried across the Danube to Rousse in Bulgaria to pick up another train to Varna, from where they completed their journey to Istanbul by ferry.

Incidentally, this excellent article on the various trains bearing the name shows that the Orient Express, in one of it forms, still runs Paris to Istanbul, if you have the money for it.




There's something about those days never to be recaptured, even so. Fast forward to modern times:

... the first 'Gap Years' actually started in the UK in the 1960's when the baby-boomer generation in the midst of the 'Swinging sixties' headed off to India on the infamous Hippie Trails, inventing the 'independent travel market' ...

Now it's become far more mainstream and even desirable to have taken that year:

“It's important to differentiate yourself in today’s competitive graduate job market,” says Paul Lyons, the managing director of recruitment specialist Ambition. “And a gap year lets you do that.”

According to Lyons, apart from helping you stand out from the crowd, a gap year also has the professional advantage of demonstrating your life skills and positive personality traits.

“For example, a self-planned, self-funded year spent canoeing down the Amazon is likely to be better regarded professionally than a structured year, funded by parents, spent learning Spanish in Barcelona.”

I never did it like this - I suppose I was a Bill Bryson type "flashpacker". That pack is sitting under the cupboard here now as I type and it does bring back pleasant memories. But all my travelling was done well after uni days when I was earning my own crust and I confess I was using a first class eurail pass.

Finland was the closest I ever got to being a bona fide backpacker when for one night I stayed at a dreaded hostel and was appalled by the whole scene.

Next day I marched into the info place in Rovaniemi, asked for a billet with a family, hired a bike and tootled across the river and visited the people. They just happened to possess a 25 year old unmarried daughter of nordic beauty who invited me to use her sauna so that was far more my thing.

No need to mention breaking my wrist two days later on the luge.

Of course, it doesn't have to involve travel - there might be other things you'd do. Did any of you have a gap year and what did you do?