SUGGESTIONS FOR TRAVELING OVERSEAS WITH BOY SCOUTS

BRUCE MCCREA
SCOUTMASTER, TROOP 180
INTERNATIONAL REPRESENTATIVE
CHIEF OKEMOS COUNCIL, LANSING, MICHIGAN

June 2001, Revision

http://www.msu.edu/~rasche/scout/trp180/travel.htm

While many of these suggestions will be useful for any group of Scouts traveling overseas, they are directed towards travel to Europe. Europe is an excellent destination. Air fares from the U.S. to Europe are cheaper than to other parts of the world, health and sanitation standards in Europe are similar to those in the U.S., even in non-English speaking countries in Europe it is usually not difficult to find someone who speaks English, and, unlike South America, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, summers in Europe are the same months as summers in the U.S. and therefore their national camps and jamborees occur during U.S. summer school vacations.

  1. Begin planning your trip early. Two years before your proposed trip is not too early to start. Involve your Scouts in the planning as much as possible.

  2. Work through the International Division of the Boy Scouts of America. They will give you useful advice and help keep you on track, and inform you of the proper procedure for obtaining approval of your council for an international trip and requesting an official invitation to an international Scouting event. If your council has an International Representative, that person can also help.

  3. Work with a reputable travel agent. They will help with much of your planning.

  4. Decide early in your planning how large your group will be. A patrol sized group of six to ten Scouts usually works best. This makes it easy to keep track of everyone while you are touring, doesn't overwhelm a host troop with the size of your group, and means that you will be able to eat as a group in most restaurants.

  5. Set minimum age and rank requirements for your trip. The world jamboree requirement that a Scout be at least 13 and First Class by January 1 of the year of your trip is a good example to follow.

  6. Make sure you screen your participants carefully. Besides observing these Scouts at troop meetings and on campouts, you should find out how extensively they have traveled before, any dietary restrictions they have, what medications they are on, and any possible side effects of those medications. Be sure that potential participants understand that food in other countries will be different than typical American food and they will have to adjust. If you have problems with a Scout in Europe, you can't just call his parents and have them come and get him.

  7. Secure adequate adult leadership. Two adults over 21 is an absolute minimum. A third adult leader, either over 21 or between 18 and 21, can be a big help.

  8. Decide how long you plan to spend on your trip and the approximate dates. The maximum length of your trip will be determined by the time that your adult leaders are willing and able to commit. You should plan for an absolute minimum of 16 to 17 days (two weeks plus a weekend). Three weeks plus a weekend or longer would be much better. Our Troop 180 trips to Europe in 1994 and 1999 were each over five weeks long. Compared to the cost of airfare to and from Europe, the additional cost of adding extra days to our trip was not great. For many Scouts and leaders, a trip to Europe is a once in a lifetime experience. That experience should last as long as your schedule allows.

  9. Decide where you want to go. One factor in determining your destination is the dates and locations of national jamborees and national camps that will be held in different countries the summer you plan to travel. The World Scout Bureau's list of Upcoming International Events can be found at http://www.scout.org/wse/events.html and is updated every six months. There are usually many large camps in different parts of Europe each summer with few Americans participating in any of them.

  10. Make arrangements with the Scout association that is hosting the camp you will attend for a home stay with one of their troops. They will usually be glad to do this. This opportunity to live with Scouts of another country has been a highlight of the trip for our Scouts every time we have traveled. If possible, try to arrange to camp at the national camp as part of the same host troop. This will cement many friendships. If hosting arrangements are made early enough, your Scouts will be able to correspond with their host Scouts before the trip. (We have many Scouts sending email messages to each other who would never have written letters.) Request that your host troop provide you, each of your Scouts, and each host family, with a list showing each of your Scouts and leaders and the name, address, and phone number of the family they will be staying with. Get this list when you are met by the host troop if not before. This is essential in case of emergency.

  11. Make an outline of your schedule. Perhaps you will be participating in a national camp that begins on a Tuesday and ends on the Thursday of the following week. A possible outline for a trip lasting three weeks plus a weekend might be:
  12. At this point, you should talk with your travel agent about what airport(s) in Europe you are able to fly to and what airport(s) you are able to fly home from. Some times you can make arrangements to fly to one city in Europe and fly home from a different city. This expands your sightseeing options.

  13. Once you have determined the location of the camp you will be participating in, the approximate number of days you have available for sightseeing, and your options for the locations of your arrival and departure in Europe, you should start selecting the places you will visit during your sightseeing time. We have found that it works better to spend at least two or three days in each place we visit than to do an "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium" kind of tour. For a first trip overseas for your troop, I would suggest just visiting one or two countries. There will still be plenty of things to see and you won't have to work with many different currencies and different languages. Be sure to read the U.S. State Department's Travel Warnings and Consular Information at http://travel.state.gov/travel_warnings.html for each country you are considering visiting. As you decide which attractions you will visit in different cities, be sure to consult a guidebook to find the days and hours each is open and the admission charge. Many major museums in Europe are closed on Mondays, so you need to plan accordingly.

  14. Mass transit is Europe is excellent. I strongly recommend that you plan to use trains for your long distance travel and buses, trams, and subways for local transportation. If you plan to do this, you should obtain a THOMAS COOK EUROPEAN TIMETABLE at this point in your planning. You can probably borrow one from your travel agent or at the local library. This book will tell you the approximate amount of time it takes to travel from city to city that you plan to visit and what times the trains run. You should try to avoid an itinerary that requires you to spend most of a day on the train. Scouts become bored and it wastes sightseeing time. Either select destinations that are closer together or select destinations that are far enough apart that you can use an overnight train. Scouts do not get a normal amount of sleep on an overnight train, but a trip to Europe is probably the only opportunity they will have to sleep in a couchette (a sleeping car with compartments that have six bunks, three on each side) in a train. It is an experience they will enjoy talking about later.

  15. Once you have outlined your itinerary and have an idea of where you would like to spend each night, you should start looking for overnight accommodations. Possibilities include:
    1. Home Stays with Scouts - This is ideal but will probably only be possible to arrange with your host troop. As you participate in a national camp and make friends with Scout leaders from other countries, be sure to get their names and addresses for your files. If you plan to visit their home city some time in the future, they will probably be glad to arrange home stays for you.
    2. Scout Houses - In many countries in Europe, Scout groups own the buildings they meet in and those buildings have kitchen and toilet facilities. Visiting groups can often make arrangements to spread their sleeping bags out on the floor and use one of these buildings for an overnight stays at a nominal charge. If you plan to visit a city in the country where you will be attending a national camp, the host Scout association might help you find one of these Scout houses.
    3. A Scout Camp - http://www.scout.org/europe/wtsie/index.html is the source for information on camps in the European Scout Centre Network. Many of these camps have bunkhouse type facilities. We stayed at Pfadfingerdorf Zellhof outside of Salzburg, Austria and had a great experience there.
    4. Youth Hostels - There is an excellent system of Youth Hostels in Europe. As a Boy Scout troop, your group qualifies for a free group membership in American Youth Hostels/Hostelling International. Guidebooks like LET'S GO: THE BUDGET GUIDE TO EUROPE and EUROPE ON $50 A DAY will suggest hostels to contact. Make your reservations and confirm them as soon as possible, as some hostels fill early for the summer months. If you have reservations at a hostel, make sure you carry your group's AYH/HI membership card with you. The hostel staff is likely to ask for it.

  16. As you secure your overnight accommodations, have each place you will stay supply you with at least one name and phone number where parents can call in an emergency and leave a message with someone who speaks English for their son to call home.

  17. As soon as you have finalized your itinerary and the makeup of your group, purchase your plane and train tickets and make deposits on your overnight accommodations. For train transportation, I strongly recommend purchasing one second class group train ticket for your entire trip from your travel agent. This is carried by the leader and shows the route that you will travel. It does not require that you take any specific train. For us, this has always been much cheaper than buying rail passes. On European trains, a ticket does not guarantee you a seat. For that, you need a seat reservation. Seat reservations are not available for short trips. Some times it is useful to have the flexibility to opt for an earlier or later train than you originally planned on, but in most cases you will select from THE THOMAS COOK EUROPEAN TIMETABLE the train that you definitely want to be on. You should purchase seat reservations for as many of these train trips as you can from your travel agent when you purchase your group train ticket. Make sure you specify "no smoking" cars. You also need to purchase from your travel agent reservations for couchettes for overnight trips. U.S. travel agents make ticket purchases and seat reservations through either the French or German National Railroad. In some situations, since they are working through just one of those two systems, they will be unable to purchase all the tickets and seat and couchette reservations that you need. In those situations, you should purchase the additional tickets and seat and couchette reservations at a train station as soon as you arrive in Europe. (You will find that rail ticket and reservation prices are lower in Europe than in the USA, but I believe that the certainty of having the tickets purchased and reservations made before you leave is worth the difference.) As soon as you receive your tickets from your travel agent, look them over carefully. If your train ticket between two cities specifies that travel must be via certain other cities or towns, make sure that the route that is specified is the route you plan to take. This is especially important if travel is in more than one country. If the route you take has more kilometers of travel in any country than the route specified on your tickets, the conductors in that country will impose an additional charge.

  18. Have each Scout and leader complete a personal information sheet and send copies of these sheets to each Scout group you will be staying with either by airmail or as e-mail attachments. The forms that we have used can be downloaded (.pdf files - require Acrobat Reader)

  19. As you do your planning, you should begin with a preliminary budget and then fill in the actual numbers as you learn them. Our budgets have had the following components:
  20. Some cities like Copenhagen have cards you can purchase that provide for free admission to most of the tourist sites and unlimited use of mass transit in the city and the surrounding countryside for a specific number of days. These are worthwhile, even if they don't save you money, just for the time they will save in buying tickets.

  21. Estimate your budget items on the high side. It is much better to have money left over than to run out of money. Money left over at the end of the trip can be refunded, donated to the World Friendship Fund, or placed in a troop hosting fund to be used when the troop that hosts you in Europe pays a return visit to your troop in the United States.

  22. Make early plans to travel in full official Boy Scout uniform and make sure all your participants are aware of those plans. We have walked around the streets of Amsterdam, Bratislava, Budapest, Copenhagen, London, Prague, Salzburg, Stockholm, and many other European cities in full B.S.A. uniforms. This slowed us down a little because so many American tourists would stop and talk with us, but I feel it was a very positive part of our group identity, it helped us keep track of Scouts, and it assisted us in getting group rates at places we visited.

  23. Make sure that your Scouts realize that the idea that "Everyone in Europe speaks English" is a myth. They should try to learn at least a few phrases in the language of the country they are visiting including "Do you speak English?" and "Thank you" and expect that Scouts and leaders in their host troop will often talk with each other in their native language. In Denmark, where we have been hosted, Scouts begin English in school in the fifth grade (the same age as our sixth grade). This means that older Scouts were much better at English than younger ones.

  24. Be sure you allow plenty of time for camping with your host troop, either at a large camp or at their summer camp site, and for home hospitality. Some groups are so eager to do as much sightseeing as possible that they shortchange those parts of the trip. This is a real mistake. After returning home from a trip like this, Scouts will invariably say that home hospitality and camping with Scouts from another country were the highlights of their trip.

  25. Don't overschedule your sightseeing. Make sure that you allow plenty of time for activities like changing money, buying stamps, mailing postcards, and shopping. Try to vary your sightseeing from day to day. Scouts will get tired of castles and cathedrals day after day. Each evening of the trip, have your Scouts review the plan for the next day and the timing of the activities.

  26. Plan on about one restaurant meal a day. We would usually purchase breakfast and lunch supplies and eat the evening meal in a restaurant. There were days, however, when it worked out better to eat both lunch and dinner in a restaurant. Carry copies with you of the sections of LET'S GO: THE BUDGET GUIDE TO EUROPE and EUROPE ON $50 A DAY for the cities you plan to visit. This will help you select interesting, low cost restaurants. If you have contacts with local Scouts, ask them to suggest restaurants you might want to try.

  27. When allowing time for shopping, specify that Scouts must stay in at least buddy pairs and must return to a certain location at a specific time. This worked well for us.

  28. Include all camp fees, meals, transportation, lodging, and admissions in your group budget. Collect this money from the Scouts before you leave and have one of your adults act as your group treasurer and pay all those expenses. When in restaurants, look over the menu then specify the maximum amount Scouts are able to spend. Have your group treasurer pay the entire bill at once.

  29. There are five options for making purchases in Europe.

    1. Credit Cards - Mastercard and Visa are widely accepted in Europe. Credit card purchases have the advantages that you don't have to handle the local money and you receive the best exchange rate. (In early 1999, some U.S. banks added 1% or 2% surcharges to credit card purchases that are made in other countries, while other banks with "no annual fee" credit cards did not. You should select a credit card that does not impose this surcharge.) We have used credit cards for group purchases of train tickets and seat and couchette reservations and of some restaurant meals. (Many budget restaurants in Europe do not accept credit cards.) Parents of Scouts in your group might consider giving their sons a credit card with a low credit limit to use in buying souvenirs and gifts.
    2. Local Money Obtained from an Automatic Teller Machine (an ATM) - For a small charge (e.g. $1), you can use your ATM card from your bank or credit union in the U.S. to obtain cash in local currency in many European countries. This is convenient, lessens the need to carry cash and traveler's checks, and gives you a very good exchange rate. We found the Cirrus system was the most-widely used in the countries we visited. These machines are not commonly called ATMs in Europe. However, if you describe what you are looking for, someone will usually be able to direct you to one, and you will often spot them on your own. In many European countries, they are as common as in the USA. In a few countries, like Switzerland, the ATMs are not connected to international systems and therefore not usable by Americans.
    3. Local Money Obtained from a Cash Advance on your Credit Card - This usually requires you to pay interest.
    4. Local Currency Obtained from Traveler's Checks - This is safe, but there is often a commission to change U.S. dollar traveler's checks into another country's money (sometimes 10% or more when you are changing small amounts), the exchange rate is not as good as with credit cards and ATMs, and it takes time for a group of Scouts to change their traveler's checks.
    5. Local Currency Obtained by Changing U.S. Dollars in Cash - Carrying large amounts of cash carries with it the possibility of loss or theft. A few $20 bills, however, might be a good idea. There is usually no commission when you change currency. When changing small amounts, this can make a significant difference.

    For group expenses, we carried plenty of traveler's checks, but we utilized credit cards and ATMs as much as possible to avoid commissions, get a better exchange rate, and save time. We cashed in the leftover traveler's checks when we got home.

  30. Look at your guidebook to find the best place to change money in each country. In some countries it is the American Express office, in other countries, the post office or banks. It is never small money change bureaus. Institutions that exchange money will usually display a buy price, a sell price and a commission. If you look next to the symbol for the U.S. dollar, the buy price will tell you the amount of the local money they will pay you for each U.S. dollar and the sell price will tell you the amount of local money they will charge for each U.S. dollar. The buy price will be lower than the sell price. Often, there is also a commission for each transaction. Some change bureaus will only display the sell price. Before you change money, you should ask them for both the buy price and the commission. While it saves money when you find the best exchange rates, searching for the best rates can be time consuming, and it is sometimes better simply to change money at the most convenient location.

  31. Try not to change more money than you will need in a country. The bank makes money when they change dollars into local money and again when they change back to dollars, so you don't get back as much as you started with. Before you leave a country, spend any coins that you don't want to save as souvenirs. Coins can rarely be changed in other countries. In eastern Europe, make sure you keep the receipts for the money you change and convert any money you have left back to hard currencies before you leave the country. In Czech, Hungary, and Slovakia, we had to show the receipts for the dollars we changed into local currency to be able to convert back to dollars. That is probably true of other countries in eastern Europe as well.

  32. Before you leave, give each Scout two copies of your itinerary including all train departure times and all emergency phone numbers. They should carry one copy with them and leave the other copy with their family.

  33. While on the trip, have the group leader carry a small lockable briefcase containing all passports, train and airline tickets, medical forms, medical insurance information, and places each Scout's parents can be reached in case of emergency each day of your trip. Make sure that the medical insurance is acceptable in Europe. Have your second adult carry photocopies of all that material.

  34. Make sure that your Scouts and leaders apply for passports as early as possible. See http://travel.state.gov/passport_services.html for information on obtaining a U.S. passport. Most countries do not require U.S. citizens to obtain visas. See http://travel.state.gov/foreignentryreqs.html to learn if any of the countries you plan to visit require visas and/or immunizations of U.S. citizens.

  35. Consult with the Travelers Health section of the Centers for Disease Control web site at http://www.cdc.gov/travel/ for their recommendations about immunizations and health concerns for the areas you plan to visit.

  36. Check the budget travel guidebooks to see if there are any problems with drinking water in areas you plan to visit. If there are problems, make sure your Scouts use bottled or purified water for activities like brushing teeth as well as for drinking. In such situations, you should bring a small hand pump water filter with you.

  37. Try to arrange to borrow or rent tents and cooking equipment for the camp you will participate in. Their weight and size make them difficult to carry with you.

  38. Be aware that many Scout groups in Europe have boys and girls camping together and that beer is often available, even in Scout camps, to anyone over 18. Smoking and drinking ages are typically much lower in Europe than in the U.S. In Germany, for example, the smoking age is 14 and the drinking age is 16. Your Scouts might encounter smoking and drinking in their host families and host troops at ages at which such behavior would be unacceptable in the U.S. Make sure you establish rules of conduct for those situations and give some thought to the actions you might take if those rules are violated by one or more of your Scouts.

  39. Suggest that Scouts bring along badges for swopping and as friendship gifts, but tell them not to expect European badges to be as large as American ones. One badge that is very popular with European Scouts is the American flag badge worn on our Scout uniform (#S00103). European Scouts wear neckerchieves a lot. If you have troop neckerchieves, take some along as gifts or to exchange.

  40. Carry gifts with you for your host troops. We have presented host troops with American flags that we purchased through our U.S. Representative's office. That way, we could present each troop with a certificate stating that the flag was flown over the U.S. Capitol especially for their troop. To accompany the flag and for presentation to other groups that were helpful to us, we used the CSP plaque (#S17535) from the BSA catalog. This is ideal because you can add your council strip and have the plaque engraved "THANKS FROM TROOP ___" The plaques are small and light enough that it is no problem to carry them with you.

  41. Make sure that Scouts and their parents have written copies of what each Scout needs to bring. The list that we give to each Scout participating in one of our trips is below.

    42. PAPERWORK YOU MUST HAVE FOR THE TRIP

    WHEN WE MEET AT THE AIRPORT, YOU SHOULD:

    PERSONAL EQUIPMENT LIST FOR SCOUT TRIP TO EUROPE

  42. Use a web site like the Cheat Sheet for Travelers at http://www.oanda.com/convert/cheatsheet to print currency conversion charts for your Scouts and leaders for all the countries you will be visiting.

  43. Check with the airline for maximum sizes for the duffel bags and carry-on bags. Our Scouts have found duffel bags with wheels very useful (some would say a necessity!) when walking back and forth between train stations and our overnight accommodations. Wheels are not indestructible, so these bags should be carried up and down stairs in train stations. Large school book backpacks or similar bags can be used as carry-ons.

  44. Be sure to take your troop flag and a U.S. flag with you to display in your campsite. Your state flag and historical American flags can make your campsite more attractive.

  45. Especially if you are participating in a national camp, take display items about your city, state, and region. The National Geographic Society sells plastic coated maps of the U.S. and of different regions of the U.S. at very reasonable prices. These maps make good campsite display items. Your state travel bureau will probably help with other items.

  46. Travel brochures with lots of pictures are good items for Scouts to take to their host families. Each Scout and leader should also take a small thank you gift for their host family. perhaps representative of the area you come from. To avoid a situation in which Scouts who are staying with the same host family brought the same gift, each Scout should take different host family gifts.

  47. Public restrooms are much more common in large European cities than they are in the U.S. Public water fountains, however, are very rare. In some places you have to pay to use the public restrooms and some were not as clean as we would have liked. While doing walking tours of large cities, we would sometimes stop for a soft drink at a McDonalds or other American fast food restaurant and then use the free restrooms there. (In some countries there is a charge to use the restrooms even at McDonalds.)

  48. Emphasize to your Scouts that they must use the buddy system at all times, even when they are just going to a public restroom.

  49. Establish a policy before you depart on the use of items like CD players and electronic games. You might decide to prohibit them entirely or to allow their use only on planes, trains, and buses, and in Scout houses. If you will be camping jointly with a troop from another country, make sure your policy concerning these items is consistent with the policy that your host troop has established for their Scouts.

  50. Be sure that Scouts and their parents are aware of the time difference between Europe and your home state so that phone calls can be placed at appropriate times. If Scouts plan to phone home frequently, they should investigate the possibility of purchasing prepaid phone cards that work in the countries you will be visiting. Major U.S. long distance companies have access numbers that can be used in some countries in combination with a credit card to save money on long distance phone calls.

  51. Make sure that Scouts and their parents understand that if a Scout has to return home early because of an accident, illness, or emergency at home, a plan must be developed for his trip home that takes into account the needs of the Scout and his family, the needs of the rest of the touring group, and BSA Youth Protection Guidelines.

  52. Be sure to keep your local newspaper informed about your trip.

  53. Make sure that your National Tour Permit application is filled out correctly and turned in with plenty of time to spare.

Last revised: June 11, 2001

If you have any suggestions or comments contact bmccrea@lansing.cc.mi.us

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