Newman’s Europe by Rail experience took place May 15 through June 5. This educational experience allows students to navigate traveling abroad while learning about history and cultures in Europe.
The 2023 group was accompanied by Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program Kelly McFall and Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs Jill Fort.
Read on to hear about Hadassah Umbarger’s firsthand experience while she traveled through Europe by train, accompanied by other Newman classmates.
Written by Hadassah Umbarger
Europe by Rails is a class I’d heard legends about.
It takes a special kind of crazy to decide that it’s a good idea to leave the country for a three-week trip to Europe on the Monday after finals week. But I managed to find myself on a plane with eight other Newman students and two professors doing exactly that.
From left to right, back row to front: Kenneth Huie, Cole Farquhar, Britlynn Lukens, Angelica Rodriguez, Cassandra Moeder, Joshua Dessenberger, Dr. Jill Fort, Iveth DeLoera, Hadassah Umbarger and Emily Maddux
I never really anticipated signing up for it. Between a couple of friends and my mom though, I got talked into it, and it’s definitely going to be a summer I remember for a while.
We visited five major cities — first London, then Vienna, Prague, Berlin and Copenhagen. Everybody asks me my favorite place and I think that’s really an unfair question. Each city had its own flavor, and my nerd brain vibed in each of them in different ways. London was cool because I got to see places like Westminster Abbey and Shakespeare’s Globe. It was a good place to start as baby travelers since everything was in English. Vienna had beautiful scenery, some neat history and a killer kebap. The ice cream a couple blocks away from our hostel was amazing.
The vibe was much more relaxed than London too. Prague was a really pretty city. We visited lots of historical places like Prague Castle, built in the 9th century. Berlin was the most modern feeling, and its history was also rich. The monument commemorating the victims of the Holocaust was hard to experience, but I was grateful for it. Finally, Copenhagen was definitely a tourist city, but I also saw a super cool castle while we were there and ate a lovely crepe, so I’m not complaining. The Little Mermaid statue for Hans Christian Anderson and a random church my friends and I found with a model ship hanging in the middle were also cool.
While each city was different, there were things that they had in common.
The biggest one, at least the biggest aspect that we interacted with, was the public transportation system. In Wichita, we do have city buses, but for the most part, everyone has their own car. While we were overseas we didn’t get in a car once. Sometimes we would take buses, but for the most part, we relied on the subway systems and our own feet to get us where we needed to go.
I’m honestly jealous of the subway systems we used.
It was able to get us within walking distance of everywhere we wanted to go, was cheap enough for nine college students to take advantage of, and was fast and efficient. I can also imagine that it’s much more environmentally friendly — which was something else I noticed about all of the cities we visited. Every once in a while eating out we were given plastic cups, but for the most part, they were paper. Straws were paper, napkins were made of recycled paper, and disposable cutlery was made out of wood. I could eat out and create zero plastic waste. I would love to see more of that come to the states.
This trip was a class, so much (if not all) of the experience was educational, and Dr. Kelly McFall and Dr. Jill Fort made sure to give us plenty of opportunities to explore, ask questions and learn as much as possible.
Part of that meant visiting different parts of the cities and listening to Dr. McFall unpack what we were looking at, part of it was visiting museums about different subjects. Honestly, I want to go back just for the museums; there’s so much I didn’t see in them. We visited museums ranging from the Imperial War Museum and the British Museum in London, to places like the Museum of Communism and Museum of Natural History in Prague. The aquarium in Berlin might not have been educational in the sense of learning more about the city, but I really enjoyed getting to spend the day with the fish.
I don’t regret going, it was an amazing experience that I’ll remember for a long time, and I highly encourage other students to consider it. But I missed Kansas. The week I got home, I was riding through the countryside and we passed a cornfield with a red-winged blackbird flying over it. It might be getting hot here now, but to be back with the sunflowers and hay bales has been lovely. It’s good to be back.
Study abroad opportunities at Newman University
Students are encouraged to participate in Newman University’s overseas study and exchange programs, which contribute to individual and intercultural development.
