TEENAGE KICKS: Inter Railing is a sightseeing holiday with a bit of spontaneity thrown in - Europe is your playground, writes Hugh Farrell.
Now this is a room with a view. The Mediterranean Sea lapping against the beach, the sun beating down and the temperature 35 degrees with a light breeze. I'm somewhere between Monaco and Nice, neither in a penthouse suite nor a private villa. I'm sitting on a train in a six-seat compartment. There are five of us packed in here with backpacks, guitars, bread, cheese and a few obligatory warm beers.
We are Inter Railing. This means we are sweaty, dirty, grossly over-budget, a little malnourished and battling sleep deprivation to the point that David Blaine would be proud. In other words, we're having the time of our lives.
We had a plan in so far as we flew into Rome and knew we were flying out of Barcelona. Other than that, Europe was our playground. Usually we'd pick our next city the day before, sometimes half an hour before the train left. Or we'd choose the Mystery Train and end up somewhere completely unexpected.
Inter Railing is a sight-seeing holiday with a difference in that you tend to see a lot of the sights at peculiar times. The Coliseum, for example, is way more spectacular at 3.30am when it's lit up, all the tourists are gone and no one's hassling you to buy a statue of the Eiffel Tower. You can sit beside the Trevi Fountain and nobody is there to complain when you go for a paddle.
On our first day in Rome we went to see the 12th-century church of St Clemente, built over a fourth-century church which is in turn built over an old Roman temple to Mithras; a house of sorts, with running water.
After seeing that, we joined the workers for a siesta in a nearby park, in the shade just outside Nero's house. Two hours later we power-walked Rome and took in most of the sites. The Wedding Cake, The Forum, The Pantheon, some ice-cream, the Trevi Fountain again - because we'd no coins the night before - and an exhibition of Bryan Adams's photography.
Versatile man, that Mr Adams.
Nights out are an unpredictable event for the Inter Railer. With no plans whatsoever, if someone hands you a flyer for a pub crawl it's a start, especially when you get a free T-shirt and you're running low on clean clothes. It's on nights like this that you meet the most interesting people, like the Danish fella who knew the words to Wild Rover better than I did. ("And it's no nay never, no nay never no more" - ah the memories.) Some more sight-seeing after the "alehouses" close and that's pretty much the gist of a day of Inter Railing.
Accommodation is always an issue. Someone advised us before we left not to accept offers from people at the train station. We were glad we ignored this advice. In stations both in Florence and Barcelona, people offered us accommodation. The former turned out to be a B&B run by a husband and wife who cooked us breakfast in the morning, gave us a room that slept five, never told us to leave in the morning, gave us no curfew and only charged us €25 each. The latter gave us an apartment that slept five with air-conditioning and we only slightly stretched the budget to €27 each.
The luggage situation is a tough one. You always pack more than you need and always regret it. Carrying the rucksack is a pain in the back but you only carry it for about an hour and only on the days that you're travelling. It also doubles up as a seat on the train or a bed if you can borrow someone else's.
I brought a guitar and it was at times a little annoying to carry around. It did provide some great nights, though. In Florence we drew a crowd of Italians, Americans and Irish lads that we'd met a few weeks before at a Bob Dylan concert in Kilkenny. We started playing at midnight and left at sunrise, having earned €2.30 for our troubles, €2 of which was given to us by a homeless man who enjoyed I'll Tell Me Ma so much he felt the urge to dance like Michael Flatley on acid. Nights like that made the guitar worth it.
I could go on and on with hilarious little anecdotes of what happened to us on our trip but you really had to be there. You'd be better off going yourself and coming back with your own tall tales.
More mature Irish Times readers might feel they're too old for such a trip, but Inter Rail also has a ticket for over-26-year-olds.
When I do it again - and I will - I'll go for longer and take a longer route. In homage to my Danish friend I say, "no nay never, no nay never no more' . . . will I go on a package holiday. Inter Railing is the only way to go.