On June 20, Erik Rubinyi and Konstantinos Kochilas, seniors, will be headed for Paris, France, the starting point of their 20-day trip through Europe. Rubinyi and Kochilas will be traveling by themselves from France to Italy and then to Greece with no set plans other than dates and their sleeping arrangements.

Rubinyi and Kochilas plan to spend three or four days in Paris, taking a train south to Toulouse, heading west to the small town of Antibes, and then ending in Marseilles. From there, they will take a train to Italy where they will spend time in Milan, Florence, and Rome. They will then head to Bari on the coast, take a ferry to the island city of Corfu, Greece, and eventually fly into Athens where they will spend the remainder of the trip with Kochilas’ relatives there.

“We had a limited schedule because Erik is working as a camp counselor [for part of the summer], so we had to find the quickest way through the places that we thought would be the most interesting,” Kochilas said.

Besides Athens and Toulouse, where they plan to stay with family friends of Rubinyi, most nights the boys will stay in hostels. Rubinyi and Kochilas made all of the reservations themselves.

“It took a ton of research and comparing each option, and then we kind of picked one at random,” Rubinyi said.

Rubinyi and Kochilas organized all aspects of their trip with minimal help. Planning for the trip has been a lot of responsibility, and being halfway across the globe on their own will require even more, but both Rubinyi and Kochilas say that their parents trust them.

“My sister did a similar trip with her friend in college, and my brother is currently in Bangladesh working for the World Bank, so [my parents] were all for it,” Rubinyi said. “But a lot of [other] parents I’ve talked to [about our trip] seemed very surprised and were worried for us.”

Rubinyi is especially excited to visit France. After studying French throughout high school, he is eager to have a chance to meet real native speakers and utilize the skills he’s learned. However, he recognizes language barriers could be a potential obstacle.

“Konstantinos speaks fluent Greek, and I’m not too worried for France – I can’t speak perfect French but I can at least understand it,” Rubinyi said. “I am worried for Italy, though, because neither of us speak Italian. I tried looking at some of the pronunciations and it’s the complete opposite of French; you pronounce everything instead of pronouncing nothing, so that will be interesting.”

Yet, that degree of uncertainty is exciting to Rubinyi and Kochilas.

“My sister’s major advice was to get the cities planned out but then just get lost and ask people what to see,” Rubinyi said. “So that’s our plan: to get lost in every city.”