Travel within Europe - The Best of Times

And pack light thus avoiding luggage fees.

Incredible information is available at our fingertips and booking desirable accommodations, transportation, and certain attractions is easy for everyone. The days of just showing up and hoping for the best is a faded strategy. I do much more advance booking of all things travel than in the bygone era.

I agree with you that incredible information is available that makes traveling so much easier. But, I think for someone who is not as experienced a traveler and, therefore, not as discerning about the plethora of choices, it can be overwhelming and lead to difficult decision making. This is why this forum is so valuable, we can depend on someone's personal experience to help sort through the tons of information. Information does not necessarily lead to knowledge or wisdom.

I guess I am going to take the contrary view. To me the old days were better. I used to be able to pick up a car and drive until I found something interesting and stay for the night. I could stay longer or leave early. There were enough guide books, including Rick's, to find places to go. Never a problem finding a BB or Hotel. Now I have to pin all my stops down 5 months in advance because everything gets sold out over the internet. Also the crowds were much smaller, in fact in most places you would not even call it a crowd. You could go to the Eiffel Tower and walk up to the ticket window. If the line was two minutes long you complained. For a 30 day trip the only advance reservation I had was for the first night, as after an all night flight I did want to know where I was going to stay that night.

Ahhhh, travel in the days PR (pre Rick). Yes, many fond memories, including far fewer tourists.

... the old days were better
In some respects certainly. With all those internet resources I can - and do - plan my trips in all details. Months in advance I know which hotel I will be sleeping in, and which regional bus I'll take for a nearby attraction. No more endless waiting for a bus and no closed doors because you didn't know the departure time and the opening hours, but at the same time a lot of spontaneity has gone.
That being said, I still enjoy it all, including the pleasure of planning. Did you know there is a hourly direct train from Krems to Rosenburg, from where it looks a nice 45-minute walk tot Stift Altenburg...

Would much rather have everything available to me than finding rooms on the fly and not knowing what they are like. The comfort of booking flights without leaving the house is another great thing.

To me the old days were better.

Agreed with you about these:

• Crowds.
• TSA
• Airline seats and food.
• Safety.

All the new tech and online services won't make up for them.

Another example of what I’ve come to believe is a law of the universe, namely that everything (well almost) has its upside and its downside. On balance, I would have to weigh in on the side of current times being better. We’ve been traveling independently since 1984. It’s SO much easier now to plan. Since I always wanted to know where I was going to lay my head at night, I had to rely on phone calls - -dealing with time and language differences - - or letters and waiting for replies. It was very difficult, almost impossible, to ferret out the small, charming lodgings we now routinely stay at.
There were no intra-European budget airlines. Cars or trains were the choices for getting around. And, while the gps is not fool-proof, we’ve significantly decreased the amount of time we spend being lost.
Crowds are a fact of life in our time, not just when traveling. Anyone who has driven on a freeway in the SF Bay Area, or attended a special exhibition at a local museum will know what I’m taiking about.
Anyway, we can’t travel back in time so there’s no point moaning about what’s over and done.

In what way was "safety" better in the old days?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/04/07/sweden-brussels-terror-attacks-europe/100166076/

In some ways, I liked visiting Europe back in the 70’s more than I do now. It was a lot less crowded and you didn’t need reservations for anything. When I visited Italy back then, I was able to walk into the Sistine Chapel with only a 15 minute wait. That was the only place I had to wait in a line to see anything in Italy. I was able to walk into the Colosseum with no line. In Florence, there wasn’t a line to see David. In Amsterdam, I was able to walk into Anne Frank’s house without a line. In Paris, I was able to go up the Eiffel Tower when I wanted to and was not tied to a reservation. The Eiffel Tower lines were very small. I also didn’t have to worry about hotel reservations as long as I arrived in town before 2:00 pm. Since I didn’t have to worry about being somewhere at a certain day and time, I had more flexibility in my schedule. The Eurail Pass was much easier to use. You just got on a train in the direction you wanted to go. Only in Italy did you have to worry about train reservations for the “higher” speed trains.

Today, if you don’t have a reservation, you are taking a chance of not getting a room or entrance into a site because everyone is making reservations. The flexibility in scheduling is not as easy as you have to be at a certain place on certain day because you made reservations months in advance.

Well, in the "old days" there were terrorist attacks in Europe from various sources. The IRA and other paramilitary groups in the UK and Ireland, the Red Army Faction in Germany, both left and right-wing extremists in Italy (the Bologna station bombing in 1980, now thought to have been by right-wing extremists hoping that left-wing extremists would be blamed, remains one of the five worst in the continent's recent history), ETA in Spain... Google "The Troubles", "Years of Lead" and "German Autumn".

I am glad you pointed that out Philip. Having lived and travelled through the IRA years, RAF, ETA etc. I get a bit irritated with these "is it safe?" posts. And above all the huge amount of military forces and hardware waiting just across the Iron Curtain.
Maybe things didn't got reported across the Atlantic in those days, or people have short memories, or limited sense of proportion. Things always look worse when seen from afar.
And many people choose to forget that the US refused to ban the IRA, and allowed IRA fund-raising; but as soon as 11th September came, they expected all other countries to immediately help them against "terrorism".
(Webmaster, sorry if that is treading over the "No political" rule)

But, the queues and not being able to just walk into museums is annoying.

We recently travelled to England and took a day trip from Bath to Oxford. I was last in Oxford in 1972 and noticed much more commercial development and many more tourists. In an afternoon we met people from Argentina, Bulgaria and Russia. In 1972 one would not have met people traveling from these countries. The rising tide of economic growth, cheap airfares and the fall of the iron curtain have certainly made a difference.

@ Yosemite1....Your post speaks for me!