Appina Travel Offers Low-Cost Tours in Europe

A German tour company called Appina Travel (www.appina-travel.com) has an interesting assortment of tours in Europe, and some seem to be quite reasonable. I found a seven night tour from Berlin of sights connected with the life of the great reformer Martin Luther in Eastern Germany. It included middle class hotels, breakfast and dinner each day and a number of sightseeing tours. The cost for a single room was just $912, and for those sharing a room the price was even lower.

The Martin Luther tours were a feature of travel in East Germany in the days of the DDR, and although I'm not a Lutheran they always sounded appealing--for one thing, they get you out into smaller cities such as Eisleben and Wittenberg. And any tour that provides single rooms in decent hotels and most meals for not much more than $100 per day gets my vote.

The Appina Website is somewhat clunky, and I couldn't find prices for other tours, which mainly cover Central Europe and Italy. For example, one that sounded somewhat unusual was a 10-day voyage from Berlin to Vienna with stops at Warsaw, Krakow and Bratislava. It may be that these tours are aimed at travel agents rather than individuals, but if they are of interest, ask your travel agent about them.

The Website is bilingual, suggesting that the tours are offered in both German and English. Taking a tour in a language other than your native one can be a good way to practice a foreign tongue, provided you know at least the basics. I have taken both a Nile cruise and a day trip by bus in French, and another day trip in German. I didn't understand everything, but it was fun travelling with tourists who were not English-speaking, and it certainly forced me to use the language..