Inter-railing round Europe

Last summer, I went inter-railing allover Europe with three other friends.

Although reasonably popular for UKstudents, it is a rather unfamiliar idea inHong Kong. We bought an inter-rail ticket(which allowed us to get on any train atany time in any European country for aspecific time period), packed a hugerucksack (帆布背囊), and off we went! Wethought we'd travel to Eastern Europebecause it was more unconventionalwewanted to explore the "unknown".

Spanning 10 countries in 16 days, thatwas the bud of my travel bug, one smallreason that spurred (激發) my decision totake a gap year.

First stop: Bruges. "Where?" You mightask. Well, we only choseto go there because wewatched a film a week before calledIn Bruges, in which Colin Farrell starred.(Bruges is in Belgium just in case youdidn't know.)

However, before we even leftHeathrow, our trip was already eventful.We started at the very beginning of July,coinciding with the Wimbledon season.

Being a tennis fanatic (狂熱者) and havingjust been to Wimbledon a few daysbefore, running into Novak Djokovic atStarbucks and having a full-blownconversation with him was momentous.

So the trip went off to a thrilling start. AsI was still in awe by the fact that I talked toone of my favourite tennis players, andthat his autograph filled the first page ofmy Inter-rail diary, the cobbled (鋪有大卵石的) streets, historical medieval (中古的)buildings and canals of Bruges remindedme that my first real adventure hadcommenced, and it would be no less thanlife-altering.

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