This summer, Herr Schoppert and Mrs. Antonakos will be offering at non-school sponsored trip for any interested student or parent to travel to France, Germany and the Alps.
International travel may be in the future for many students at Bel Air High School. In the summer of 2014, with the help of a company called Education First Tours, students will be offered the opportunity to travel to France, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany and Austria over a ten day excursion. The departure date is still being finalized, but they will depart sometime between June 6th and July 4th.
The group will fly overnight to France from Washington DC, and then spend three days in Paris with an expert tour exploring famous landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, the Notre Dame Cathedral, and the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. Then, they will travel through Burgundy to Lucerne where you can climb to the Mount Pilatus in a cable car. On their 7th day, they will make a stop in Liechtenstein and Neuschwanstein to visit the Neuschwanstein Castle, the castle that Cinderella’s castle was modeled after, and then continue on to Munich. A day will be spent in Munich visiting the Olympic Stadium, Dachau Concentration Camp, and a walking tour of Munich by the group’s tour director. Then, the students will visit Salzburg where they can explore salt mines and Mozart’s birth place, then continue onto Berlin on the night train. After a tour of Berlin, the Berlin Wall, and the Brandenburg gate the students will depart for home.
The trip will cost $3,895 for students. Payments are due at the end of May and are made in increments of $475 and month. This price will include your round trip tickets for flights, a full time Tour Director, a motor coach, seven overnight stays at hotels with private bathrooms, breakfast and dinner every day, four sight-seeing tours led by experts, and entrance fees to major attractions. There will also be a 155 dollar insurance fee in case the trip is cancelled, or to pay for any type of emergency while you are over-seas. Passport fees and personal spending money are not included in this fee.
Even though the price may be a bit steep for a high school student but Herr Schoppert, who teaches German and French, promises an experience that is once in a life time, “As language teachers, this is what we teach. We teach something that is almost not real to the students, and travelling makes it real. Students will see how other cultures live day to day life in other countries and that not everybody is like us. They will get a different perspective on the world.”
This trip is not affiliated with the school, and is facilitated through a program called Education First Tours. They provide the trip with a Tour Director who schedules flights, books hotels and assigns tour guides for the variety of stops. This was the same program that was used last year of Mrs. Antonakos’ trip to Spain.
Even though this trip is not school sponsored, there is no limit to what students will learn while abroad. “They will get to hear what the language is really supposed to sound like, and hear native speakers. It is a neat experience for them to use the language they have learned and communicate with someone else without being able to fall back on English. They will never forget the experience, and will learn life lessons and understand different ways of life.” Mrs. Antonakos said, one of the trip’s chaperones, who teaches Spanish and French.
To sign up for the trip or learn more about it, visit etours.com/1452674YA or email Herr Schoppert at [email protected]