TBA Trip to Poland, Prague, Bratislava & Budapest

register for the full trip here
Register for the Single Week Option Here!
Watch the Informational Zoom

There are a handful of spaces still available to join our TBA Eastern European trip!
Registration remains available for the full trip and Week 1 and Week 2.
$1,000 (non-refundable) deposit required. Make sure to have your passport number and expiration date ready in order to register.

The price for participating in the full trip is $5900/person (single supplement $2150), the price for participating in only Week 1 or Week 2 is $3530/person, assuming double occupancy. Single supplement is $1200.

Those interested in the first week only would need to arrive to Warsaw by late afternoon, June 23. The Poland component would end Monday morning, June 30, as the rest of the trip continues on to Prague.

Those interested in the second week would need to arrive to Warsaw by Monday morning, June 30, to join our bus ride to Prague, or perhaps meet us in Prague that afternoon/evening. The trip ends Monday morning July 7, Budapest, so flights home should be scheduled accordingly.

Dear Friends,

With great excitement, I formally announce/share the itinerary/pricing for the TBA Travel experience for 2025, spending a week in Poland, and then moving on to Prague/Bratislava/Budapest for the second week. The trip begins in Warsaw on Monday afternoon, June 23, and concludes in Budapest on Monday morning, July 7. Look below to peruse the basic itinerary and pricing.

We are profoundly honored that TBA’s own Rabbi Dr. Michael Berenbaum will be our scholar-in-residence for our week in Poland, along with Monika Karp, who is known as one of Poland’s most exemplary tour guides, especially with respect to itineraries like ours.

You can view the Zoom session recorded on August 1 here, where I walked through the itinerary and answered preliminary questions about the trip.

Itinerary
Click on the link below to download

Revised-Itinerary-Pricing-July-18-Internal.pdf (205 downloads )

Some FAQs:

 

  1. Why is this trip so much more expensive than previous TBA travel trips? Good question, with good answers. First, this part of Europe is just more expensive than is the Balkans and Morocco, which were our previous 3 international destinations. Second, our previous TBA trips were not during high tourist season, so prices were relatively lower. We are doing this trip at the height of tourist season for these countries, in order to have it coincide with the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow. This adds meaningful cost. Third, while the cost is indeed higher than previous years, it is markedly lower than I think you would find for a similar-length trip you would find advertised most places in the US. In continuing to work with our wonderful tour operators, based in Greece and Bulgaria, we are getting more local pricing than we would if we went through an American company. By comparison, the initial pricing for a 6-day trip to Israel we are hoping to do with Pressman parents in December (which is not even heavy tourist season) is close to $3500 per person. As you will see, our trip to Poland/Prague/Budapest is a full 14-day trip, with nicer accommodations than the Israel trip will have, a Scholar-in-Residence with us in addition to local tour guides, and the pricing is $5900. Much less than twice what a December Israel trip will cost for more than twice the experience in length. Travel is expensive. We feel confident we are offering incredible value for this price, again thanks to using local tour operators.
  2. Can I sign up just for the Poland part? We are hoping to fill the bus with those who are coming for the entire trip. If after registration is open it seems we have a few seats left for those interested in just the Poland part, we may explore opening up that registration, and thus announcing pricing for just that week. But, again, we are creating this trip assuming everyone will participate in the full 2-week program.
  3. Will it be hot? Yes. Likely. Much hotter than our previous March/April trips. We could get lucky and have cooler stretches with temps in the high ‘70s/low ‘80s. And we could be hit with a heat wave, which may impact how much time we spend on walking tours. As I write this today, it is 80 degrees in Prague, 78 in Krakow and 88 in Budapest. We will have plenty of water available on the bus, and will be, of course, sensitive to the heat. But those who come on this trip should be prepared for pretty long/full days, in what could be hot weather. And on the days we are going, say, to concentration camps, we will spend the same amount of time there as we would even if it were cooler.