Trafalgar European tour: Highlights and mistakes to avoid abroad

News.com.au

a day ago

There are some things you simply shouldn't do when you're in a tour group, with one of the biggest being a last-minute change of mind.
That's according to Paul Wormsbaecher, who's been a tour guide for 23 years. And it's probably fair to say he's seen it all.
Paul works as a travel director at Trafalgar, a company that offers guided trips to nearly 100 countries.
Trafalgar has been around for decades, a way to see lots of sights but also travel in style. After I signed up to its Bohemian highlights tour – 13 days of feasts, sprawling palaces and historical sites in Germany, Poland, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic – I learnt my own mother had also gone on a European Trafalgar trip in the 1990s.
On my trip, there were Aussies, Americans, Canadians and Kiwis (plus one Singaporean couple).
A young Aussie couple had just got engaged while another pair were newly retired. One guy was in his 80s who needed walking sticks and then there was a young guy who runs marathons in his spare time. It was a real mix.
Some of the perks
An iconic Trafalgar-branded bus takes you wherever you need to go (which felt like a second home by the end) and some people didn't even know the names of the hotels we were staying at (although I wouldn't recommend that).
When it comes to luggage – you don't need to carry your bags. Like at all. The only time I ever had to lug my 15kg bag around was to and from the start and end point. You simply put your bag outside your room on a travel day, and it will be loaded into the bus. When you arrive from a destination, porters will take it to your room.
And that's because, as I soon learned, a tour like this is designed to make everything as smooth as possible but still at an affordable price.
'That's the joy. You're being taken with a local specialist, without having to worry about queues, or if there's a problem with the food. It makes the vacation so much easier,' Paul said.
But even though Trafalgar makes it a very smooth, action-packed holiday, Paul says that's no excuse not to make an effort with the locals.
He recommends that 'you know some of the important words, even if you don't remember, it's good to at least try. Even though you might not sound Hungarian. And that goes everywhere in Europe, it goes a long way to say thank you and please.'
What not to do
There was a bit of a social gaffe I learned I'd been making the whole time.
'Don't call a Hungarian an Eastern European. They won't talk to you for a week,' I was eventually warned. Oops.
Another one?
'Don't bring food out of the hotel breakfast,' he said. Oops again.
But by far the biggest mistake Paul has seen on his years of tours is lack of research.
'If you don't want to do the optionals, don't come all this way and be disorganised,' he explained.
Optionals is exactly what it sounds like – Trafalgar has some set activities on each tour, but then you can opt in for some of the extras.
At each city we visited, we had one included group dinner as well as a local expert who took us on a walking tour to the most iconic spots to give us the lay of the land (think East Side Gallery in Berlin, what was left of the Warsaw Ghetto in Warsaw, the Fisherman's Bastion in Budapest).
But there are some bonuses which tour guests have to pay more for, like an all-you-can-eat dinner on a leisurely boat cruise down the Danube River, or visiting the famous Wieliczka Salt Mine deep underground in southern Poland, which some people now use as a wedding venue.
Another highlight I'm pretty sure every person signed up for was a skip the queue ticket to the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna.
But the main mistake people make, according to Paul, is trying to save money and miss out on experiences. He sees it over and over again.
Sometimes guests won't have planned anything else and ask Paul if they can join in the end. He does what he can but said sometimes it's not possible – and the tour attendees have got angry as a result.
I did hear of one couple who ended up staying in their hotel room while the rest of us went and did a trip to a quaint little town outside of Budapest.
Trafalgar likes to add personal touches. During the tour, Paul bought everyone fried cheese dumplings at a Polish market after a long day of travel and had doughnuts waiting for us when we were in minus 1 degree weather.
I later learned that Trafalgar gave Paul an allowance, and it was at his discretion where he wanted to spend it to uplift the trip.
'Trafalgar is good at tweaking things,' Paul added. 'They try not to let things be too stale. They try to keep up to date with trends.'
Paul is also tight-lipped about which nationalities he finds the easiest to tour with, and also was cagey about which European cities he likes the most.
'It's very difficult when people ask what's your favourite,' he said.
'I really enjoy these cities. Every one has something different about them. You have to look beyond the tourist aspect: the cuisine of the place. Or the natural beauty. It might be beautiful scenery.'
A dual German and South African citizen, Paul spends half the year in Europe working for Trafalgar, and the other half in South Africa running his own tours. It's a lifestyle most Australians could only dream of.
But sometimes it's far from an easy job.
'Be considerate of the people around you,' Paul said. 'You're in a group environment. The best way for getting along, is to be all considerate of one another. That makes a huge difference.
'Tour guides are very competitive. We want our guests to have the best time and get our guests in first (to tourist attractions) … So don't be late.'
After introducing himself and explaining how the Bohemian Highlights tour would work, Paul set a pretty clear ground rule.
Don't talk about politics.
Paul said he 'never used to have to do that'. But he felt compelled to because of the 'current political environment'.
'It can get ugly.'
He said on one tour, he had one guest wearing a MAGA cap. 'I went and bought another cap,' Paul said.
Paul has travelled to more than 70 countries, a lot of them through his work, and he even used to run tours in Russia – though he can't do that anymore for obvious reasons.
As a seasoned traveller, I ask Paul for his own travel advice.
'If I have two weeks off (between tours), I cannot sit at home for two weeks,' he said. 'A couple of days before (the new tour starts), I go to a new city.
'I practice what I preach. When I go to a place, I do it all. There's going to be things I don't like.' But he says he tries it anyway.
There's still a few pockets of Europe he hasn't been to, like Macedonia. 'That's on my list,' Paul continued.
He says he likes to make his mind up once he's had a chance to get there.
'I'm pretty organised but I don't do too much research. I like to delve in when I arrive,' he explained.
'I like to talk to the bellboy and the porter. I always say don't send me to where there are 15 million tourists. I want to go where you take your wife.'
When he goes travelling with friends, he invariably ends up parting ways and doing his own thing.
'I get to a point where I have to leave them if they're faffing around,' he said.
In the past there's sometimes been as little as a few days between one tour ending and the next starting. But now he does closer to one tour a month.
The serial traveller got his start in his mid-20s. Paul was bored of working in hotels and spotted an advertisement to become a tour guide for Contiki, a sister company of Trafalgar renowned for being a rite of passage for young Australians.
After eight years of Contiki – and joking he was getting too old for it – Paul nabbed a job in Trafalgar. That was more than a decade ago.
For years, he lived out of a suitcase.
'I felt it would be nice to have a home base eventually,' he said. 'It was too much. I've got boxes of stuff in random places. There comes a point where living in hotels gets too much, then you're not distinguishing between work and rest.'
Only during the Covid-19 lockdowns did Paul catch up on years' worth of rest. He returned to South Africa and ended up meeting his current partner – something he said was near impossible when he was constantly on the move.
They are now engaged.