Hi Black Mambo! Hopefully someone will tell us what interrailing is like. My brother decided it was too expensive and did a two-week tour of a few places in Europe using coaches and couchsurfing, but he's a huge cheapskate so that he thought it wasn't worth it means nothing.

You should definitely do more travelling around Europe if you're moving imminently, I guess it's just unfortunate you'd be doing it at a time when the Euro is strong. That's part of the reason why me and my friend are looking at places outside of the Eurozone.

All I know about Eastern European food is the same as you say, meat and dumplings! But Western Europe is sort of the same; it's usually hard to find vegetarian food in France, for instance. I pretty much coped with finding vegetarian food in Japan, it just meant I couldn't try cool local cuisine. Thanks for the reassurance that I won't starve.

Yes! I would be very excited to go there. You've just reminded me that one of my friends did his year abroad in Prague, I should probably ask him too.

I've been to Prague, Bratislava, Budapest, Slovenia and Croatia. I loved Bratislava, Slovenia is AMAZING and Croatia is beautiful but rather unfunnily expensive. Think London. Central London.

And I've been vegetarian in all of them! Prague was probably the crappiest, but I went ages ago in 2001 and I think they will be better now. In Budapest I only ate one "local" meal which was fried cheese on top of fried rice with three fried mushrooms and it was so greasy I didn't want to eat for several days after. But there are Italians almost everywhere and in Budapest I ate at the Hari Krishna restaurant- vegetarian AND dirt cheap! Slovenia is great because it mixes influences from all the countries around it (because its wee) and it has lovely food and AMAZING ice-cream.

Global interrail pass is probably your best bet because the fares really add up otherwise (although you can always use coaches not trains which are a lot cheaper). It covers the following:

Austria, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, FYR Macedonia, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey.

Won't take you to Chernobyl though. I *really really really* want to go to Chernobyl.

Oh and if you go to Bratislava you MUST go to Čokoládovňa pod Michalom, it has 38 varieties of hot chocolate or something and I had the best hot chocolate of my LIFE there.

I am going to Eastern Europe in summer too and really want to go to Chernobyl but our plans are to go Netherlands - Germany - Czech - Slovakia - Hungary and maybe Romania if we have time. Only going for a month though.

We will hire a car from Slovakia or Hungary.

i've been all over eastern europe.

you should really go on a tropical vacation. i feel like an idiot for not going somewhere with a beautiful beach and crystal blue waters.

that's why im going to Thailand for the month of may .