With ample humor and humility, Europe by Milk Run uncovers Europe’s greatest treasures.
When an acquaintance of author Rory Moulton declares that traveling Europe “isn’t real travel,” Rory sets out to prove him wrong.
In this hilarious and gripping solo travel memoir, the author rides slow trains, explores off-beat neighborhoods and attractions, eats at restaurants so lost in time he’s amazed they know when to open and befriends unforgettable characters, some of whom actually like him. Rory embarks with little more than a backpack, Eurail Pass and a vague notion of which direction he should be traveling. Along the way, he:
- repels a cat invasion in Amsterdam,
- loses all his money and documents,
- witnesses a magical sunset in a ruined church,
- meets WWII-doubting Kiwis,
- investigates a haunted Spanish prison,
- explores Europe’s most beautiful, albeit abandoned, train station
- and much more…
With ample humor and humility, Europe by Milk Run uncovers Europe’s greatest treasures.
When an acquaintance of author Rory Moulton declares that traveling Europe “isn’t real travel,” Rory sets out to prove him wrong.
In this hilarious and gripping solo travel memoir, the author rides slow trains, explores off-beat neighborhoods and attractions, eats at restaurants so lost in time he’s amazed they know when to open and befriends unforgettable characters, some of whom actually like him. Rory embarks with little more than a backpack, Eurail Pass and a vague notion of which direction he should be traveling. Along the way, he:
- repels a cat invasion in Amsterdam,
- loses all his money and documents,
- witnesses a magical sunset in a ruined church,
- meets WWII-doubting Kiwis,
- investigates a haunted Spanish prison,
- explores Europe’s most beautiful, albeit abandoned, train station
- and much more…
The train trundled into Bayeux’s deserted two-platform country station, stopping fast with a jerk on voie one. The northwest-bound slow route had departed Paris’ Gare Saint-Lazare (Monet’s favorite), snaked through the Seine River Valley and reached the Normandy countryside in four hours. Lost in slow-train and farm-field revelry, I unstuck my forehead from the window, roused myself and realized: This was my stop!
Our sudden arrival caught me savoring Normandy’s pasture-and-apple orchard daydream. I hastily threw my computer and notebook into my green backpack and stuffed my Eurail Pass and creased passport into my blue-canvas document holder. I jumped up, hoisted my pack and leapt off the train just before the doors closed and the TER regional train scampered toward the woodlands of the Cotentin Peninsula. Bayeux station’s parking lot sat empty, and I was the lone disembarking passenger.
I was about halfway through my three-week solo train journey from Copenhagen to Barcelona and finding my travel groove. I had finally struck into the countryside after leaving Paris. This marked my visit to Bayeux. A gorgeous Airbnb room in a 17th-century home awaited me. The sun shone directly overhead with nary a cloud. I had no plans or pressing obligations. Best of all, it was lunchtime, and I was hungry.
Greeted with a smile, I settled into a table beside the River Aure at cozy La Garde Manger, near the Bayeux Cathedral, dripping with Gothic steeples and flying buttresses.
The cheerful waitress left with my order: spring salad, French fries, draft beer and croque-à-cheval—Normandy’s equivalent of the croque madame, a grilled ham and cheese topped with a fried egg. In Normandy, where horses and heifers outnumbered pigs, locals used thinly sliced horse (“cheval”) meat for ham. But as the French penchant for consuming horse waned, they substituted chopped steak. Thankful for the pliable nature of French palates, I patted my stomach expectantly, unzipped my backpack and reorganized my belongings, a jumbled mess after my frenetic dash off the slow train.
I reached in and dug around. Hmm, I touched my clothes, laptop, notebook, toiletries…Everything was in there. Everything except my precious document holder. I pulled the backpack onto my lap and dunked my head, searching for the blue document holder.
It wasn’t there.
My passport, Eurail Pass, credit cards and the vast majority of my cash were now riding a northbound train to Cherbourg, while I sat at a café in Bayeux with a backpack full of dirty clothes.
I sprang from my seat, stumbled toward the door while zipping my backpack and frantically flagged the server in a manner resembling an aircraft marshaller parking a 747 while simultaneously fending off a severe bee attack.
“I’m so, so sorry. I must cancel my order. I left my, uh, my everything—passport, money—on the train.”
“No problem, no problem.” She appeared concerned, my desperate look said everything. “Yes, you go, go.”
I sprinted back to the train station, alone in France without a cent or valid document to my name, my passport now inevitably circulating on the black market. I was a failure. My trip was ruined.
Was this the end? Would my wife have to wire me money, so I could slink home? My stomach turned over, my once-growling belly now gurgled with despair. I felt so dumb, so disappointed in myself that I dry-heaved in the parking lot. Which reminded me how hungry I still was.
As I knocked on the station manager’s office door, consigned to a new life stuck in Bayeux, probably washing dishes or laboring as an orchard hand for my room and board, I wondered how I had even managed to get this far from Copenhagen without any other major mishaps. The simple act of stepping off a train had sent my whole trip into a tailspin.
***
A few weeks before leaving for Europe, my wife and I attended a dinner party hosted by two new arrivals to our little mountain town. We pulled our Ford pickup into the crescent-shaped driveway. A foot of snow covered the yard and unplowed driveway as steady snowfall filled the spindly branches of lodgepole pines. The headlights bounced off the ivory snow, illuminating two matching black Audi SUVs we’d parked behind.
“Ugh,” moaned my wife as we stared at their house.
Like most recent transplants to our little mountain town, our dinner hosts were well-heeled professionals who cashed out their suburban equity and relocated to the mountains with remote jobs. And like those other recent arrivals, they’d bought a home with insufficient square footage, windows, granite and stainless steel, so a contractor’s trailer sat next to a half-finished addition under a green tarp, awaiting the spring thaw.
Our hosts had recently completed a one-year, round-the-world trip. We sat around their massive dining-room table as dinner was served and prodded them for advice and stories. We began with Europe, their jumping-off point.
“We started in Ireland and then traveled down through the UK, France, Switzerland, Italy and Greece. But, ah, Europe doesn’t feel like real traveling to me,” the husband said.
“Oh?” I asked.
“Yeah, I don’t know. It’s just, I guess, so easy. Feels contrived. But after Europe we went to Africa.” He grinned. “Have you been there? It’s uh-mazing…”
The pork tenderloin was Death Valley dry. I gnawed my first bite and gulped it down with water and a big smile. “It’s delicious,” I lied.
In bed that night, I thought about what our host had said. (And the overcooked pork.) In fact, it wasn’t the first time I’d heard the criticism. Europe had always been “soft” travel compared to the developing world. Sure. Had the modern conveniences, immense crowds and amusement-park infrastructure ruined it? Had the Continent gone so delicate that it no longer counted as “real” travel?
(Also: Why were such culinary injustices inflicted upon that innocent tenderloin?)
I fretted over whether Europe’s commodification had really destroyed it. Surely, the Europe of old was out there. I’d find it and prove naysayers like the dinner host wrong. But finding it, I reasoned, might require a fresh approach. A little of something new and something old. It sounded like a worthy challenge.
I rolled out of bed with a determination bordering on obsession. I grabbed my bedside notebook and jotted down:
Go solo.
Ride slow trains. Or walk.
Eat at markets, small cafés.
Find Airbnbs and guesthouses owned by locals.
Be spontaneous.
Take setbacks in stride.
The next day, I reviewed my late-night diatribe and realized something was missing. I sorted through my dusty travel souvenirs—photos, back when photos were actual physical objects, retired guidebooks and old train and museum tickets. About halfway down my steam trunk of memories, I found it. The stapled white interior pages had yellowed long ago. The rumpled edges had been partially torn, but there was no mistaking it for anything other than my first and only Eurail Pass, circa 2000.
Over two glorious months, I woke up and decided where to go next, flashing my Eurail and swinging between storybook European towns. I’d ask locals and other travelers for recommendations, then check the timetables. Sometimes I’d go alone; other times I had companions.
My mission crystallized: With a Eurail Pass and the Airbnb app, I’d ride slowly but steadily across Western Europe. Using a low-key and low-planning approach, I’d experience the journey on local and regional trains included with my Eurail Pass. I’d secure scant reservations, scour off-beat places, up-and-coming neighborhoods, and travel at ground level where the locals are, eschewing tourist traps. At night, I’d ditch restaurant apps for walking around, reading menus and judging the atmosphere.
Easy, right? After all, it’d be a leisurely milk run, from A to B with minimal fuss. Yet, as the trip’s outline fell into place and the departure date grew closer, concern gnawed at me: In tourist-soaked Europe, would hyper-organized 100-person tour groups covering 12 countries in five days and social-media rock stars with their fingers on the pulse run roughshod over me, outpace me, leave me scrambling for their leftovers?
I choked down the thought. Worrying what influencers or massive tour groups did was the wrong mindset, I reassured myself. Getting outpaced by selfie sticks and sun hats is exactly the thing I should want to happen.
Beyond the ground-level “Europe by milk run” experiment, I also harbored an ulterior motive. This would be my first solo trip in a decade. I love my world revolving around my wife and son, but I missed my carefree travel days and the restless tug of solo travel had recently returned. I wondered if a few weeks would sate the desire.
Or was I being selfish? A married, employed parent leaves a burden behind when they carve out three weeks for a solo jaunt through Europe. Don’t they?
For my all-too-understanding yet skeptical wife and wonderful son, justification was necessarily necessary. When I first pitched the idea, they rightly and smartly demanded two weeks as a family in Germany and Denmark. I proposed the final plan one night at our favorite restaurant (naturally)—leading with the bit about Denmark and Germany (naturally). The log-cabin restaurant’s fireplace roared as I said things like Eurail Pass, castles, trains, pastries, quality time and “Legoland” (the boy’s ears perked). Then, I pitched my solo trip.
After years working as an editor behind the scenes at a travel website, I told them I’d use the trip to re-hone my ground-level writing chops. I’d make a little money selling articles while testing my Europe-is-still-cool-so-shut-your-dry-pork-filled-mouth thesis (working title). Oh, and might as well scratch that solo-travel itch, I suppose.
“Make…exactly…how little money?” asked my wife, flipping her blonde hair. Her job as a nurse practitioner is hard, much harder than mine. Yet, because of society’s cruel misplaced priorities, we earn about the same. This disparity in effort-to-income ratio was never discussed, yet always present, lingering long in any discussion on household finances.
I stirred the sausage rigatoni, swimming in rosé sauce, and locked on two sets of pleading eyes eagerly awaiting my financial forecast.
My son chimed in, grinning with precocious pride, ever his mother’s tiny echo. “Yeah, Dad. How much are you gonna make us? You gonna bring home the bacon or what?”
“Well, um, I’m not sure exactly how much I’ll make.” I forked the slippery rigatoni as I contemplated very complex algebraic equations. “I’ll sell a couple articles on spec and snag a couple assignments.” I chewed and swallowed a rigatoni, pausing for dramatic effect. “Maybe I’ll write a book.”
“Will you make enough to cover your expenses?” she asked between bites of pecan-encrusted halibut.
“Yes, yes, I think so. Maybe more.”
Of course, I had no idea. The likelihood of breaking even, let alone profiting, seemed fanciful. But that satisfied them. At least enough to buy my Eurail Pass and the cheapest flight home I could find, Icelandair from Barcelona. Cope to Barca. That seemed a sufficient distance for 21 days.
Despite what countless memoirs and digital nomads preached, we’d never go whole-hog, sell the farm and travel the world. My wife’s career demanded too much. Financial matters settled, however, we reached an agreement.
I couldn’t shake the doubts, though. With tourist hordes mucking about, high-speed trains zipping across time zones and influencers swinging selfie-sticks, was Europe “real” enough for a ground-level adventure?
Let’s find out.
How refreshing to find a travel book that is not only fun, but is very well researched and happily, well edited. When American journalist Rory Moulton takes on the task of finding the ‘real’ Europe as opposed to the somewhat bland Europe of the regular tours, he embarks on some carefully chosen destinations.
Although he says he sets out without much of a plan, he is in fact meticulous about describing some of Europe’s great sights – from railway stations, those magnificent edifices that were built as temples to modern travel, to ‘lost’ places that must have taken some careful planning to find and to detail.
Somewhat surprisingly Rory not only loves his food and knows his architecture, but is quick to find the best places to get good cannabis – Amsterdam excelled itself in this and in its beer, partying and its infamous roof cats that invaded his room when he foolishly left the shutters open. And in Brussels he managed a whole magnum of beer – a pretty gargantuan effort in the limited time he had.
The descriptions of different foods and wonderful meals are a pleasure. Not only does he appreciate local, but he has a delightful way of describing even fairly commonplace things like eating crepes, called galettes in Brittany, where “the Bretons are more British than the Britons!” And when he gets to Spain, where in Pamplona the Tapas are called Pintxos, he makes one salivate at the descriptions of these delicious little dishes.
In between the wonderful beers, wines and food are of course the people. Some are simply eccentric, others fun and many very interesting with their local knowledge and culture. Rory puts in almost too much detail at times when he is describing the history of different places. His in-depth study of the railway line to Canfranc and its almost-derelict station that was built as a monument to co-operation between Spain and France, is carefully crafted and immensely detailed.
As a one-time tourist to Barcelona I smiled at his lamentation of how the tourists have almost overrun his favourite market, the Boquerra on Las Rambles. If it is of any comfort, as a tourist who stumbled upon it, I was in awe and spent the better part of a morning wandering the stalls, gawping at the fish, sea foods, meat, fruits and much more.