EF Ultimate Break Review: Italy, Germany, Switzerland

Review of the EF Ultimate Break trip to Italy, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland

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As a somewhat seasoned traveler, I never ever thought I was going to be signing up for a group tour. I had the false confidence where I believe that if I can travel through places where I don’t speak the language, but as I get older and travel more, I find that I’m beginning to doubt myself. Which is odd, as I’ve thrown myself into some pretty unique cultural situations.

I’d always seen the ads for EF Ultimate Break on Instagram, but never paid them any mind. I was expecting to be on a Fulbright back in December 2024, but when I found out I was denied the visa for the country I applied for and was unable to actually go, I ended up booking a trip through EF on a whim.

I originally wanted to go to Brazil and Argentina, but was shocked at the $5,000 sticker price at the time and decided against it. I narrowed it down to Morocco and the Italy, Germany, and Switzerland trip, then decided on a whim again to go to Europe for the first time. I never really had an interest in Europe, as Asia is my home base for traveling, but this was the moment

This was a whirlwind of a trip, that’s for sure. I paid around $4,100 with a payment plan for Black Friday, which was a bit steep for me at the time but I shrugged it off and said I needed to go abroad or I’d go insane by the time May rolled around. I was able to afford it at least, but later on in the trip I learned the prices people paid around the same time were quite varying (up to $1,000 cheaper than what I paid even).

I bought my travel insurance for cheaper through Allianz and picked up an eSim from Holafly, as I wanted unlimited data. In the future, I probably would book my own flights instead of EF, as

Without the travel days, this trip felt like both the longest and shortest trip I’ve ever done. In eight days (we’re not including the two travel days), we went to so many different cities and bused around the Alps. These are some long travel days, but they felt shorter because of how they’re broken up (you take a bus around these areas, which sounds terrible but is actually quite relaxing and full of stunning reviews).

I do think you get your bang for your buck on this trip, and I was happy with the essential hostels (I heard some of the Plus tour members complaining about their rooms, which made some of us more content with the hostels and 4-8 in a room). Only Munich felt a little crowded (that was when we had eight in a room), but the beds had curtains that made it feel more private.

Let’s get into the details of this trip! I don’t want to ramble too much in the introduction.

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You really get to see a lot of the Alps and Europe, and the excursions are great.

For the purposes of this blog post, I’m going to focus on the entire experience. I am going to do little reviews of each city/location (minus Liechtenstein, as we only stopped there for 30 minutes to go to the bathroom, stamp our passports, and pick up food at the grocery store) in separate blog posts, so feel free to check out my blog further if you want to know what we did specifically.

So this trip goes to five different locations: Italy (Venice), Austria (Innsbruck and Salzburg), Germany (Munich and Neuschwanstein), Liechtenstein (Vaduz for thirty minutes), and Switzerland (Lucerne and Engleberg). You begin in Venice, spend a full day there (and an afternoon if your flight gets to the city early enough on the travel day), then you take a bus around the region until you fly out (we were dropped off at the Zurich Airport if you booked through EF).

The areas and cities you go to cross borders and vary wildly, especially comparing Venice to the Alps towns, but I found that you really get a small taste. I wish we had more time in Venice and Switzerland specifically, as those were my favorite places, but Salzburg and Munich (the two towns we stayed overnight in) were pretty but didn’t have much to do.

We were offered three official excursions (alpine slide, Dachau, and Alps trip). Of these, I only booked the Alps trip, but our tour guide offered a cash-only gondola and private boat ride in Venice, as well as a winery tour and dinner. Those combined were 95 euros, and I found them to very much be worth it. I don’t even like wine that much but found myself admiring the prosecco specifically.

The Alps trip was especially worth the money—we went up Mount Titlus early in the morning, before the crowds arrived (lots of Indians specifically come here because a famous Bollywood movie was filmed on the mountain), but there was so much to do. I went tubing for the first time on the mountain, enjoyed the spectacular views, and found my face incredibly burned by the end.

This is a stress-free trip where you might not have to think much about what you have to do or eat.

When I booked this trip, I knew I didn’t want to think about much. I could have definitely done this trip on my own, but having to get together an itinerary and then actually enacting it on my own seemed like too much work at the time. With EF, especially if you book flights through them, they basically do everything for you.

All I had to do was literally show up with my provided flight number and get a taxi at the airport (which was reimbursed; I was the last one in so I didn’t get to ride the EF bus with everyone else). Coming home, they dropped us off at the Zurich Airport and I had time to go to the Migros grocery store in there and pick up some last souvenirs.

Our incredible tour director would drop recommendations on where to eat, shop, or do during our free time, and his suggestions were fantastic. When we had walking tours, we also chatted with the local guides, who told us little hints like go to this cake shop and cafe for sweets in Salzburg, or go to Nymphenburg Palace over Residenz Munich if you had to pick one.

This really simplified the decision making process when we had some free time (and we did have an entire day in Munich, which is when we, the ones who skipped Dachau, went to Nymphenburg), and EF provided all day passes for transportation when we were in Munich and Salzburg.

Our tour guide showed us how to use the subway and buses, and then we were off on our own. My group had great synergy, and our tour guide also hung out with us, so we would all go to dinner together so no one had to eat alone if they didn’t want to. Most of us were solo travelers, too, so the structure helped with adjusting to everything going on and the constant stimulation of being in new countries and hopping borders.

Your group can either make or break the trip.

I was coming into this as a solo traveler, which was a bit nerve wracking because of how I didn’t know who anyone was going to be going into this. My group with EF consisted of 23 people and our tour guide, but our guide told us during the busy season he could have groups up to 40 people. I personally would not like this at all, as I feel it ends up making friends so much harder than it actually is.

What I realized pretty quickly on this trip is that if you’re alone, then the group dynamics are really going to make or break the trip if you’re looking to make friends. If you’re planning to do stuff all by yourself, then this point might be entirely moot for you.

For my group, we had no issues or cliques really. There were some people who came together that didn’t hang out as much, but the people in my group were literally going to the club all together at night or dropping their plans in the WhatsApp chat we had to see what people were up to and if we wanted to join.

People were even chatting about all going on another trip together at the end, with or without EF, so I would say my group was a little special in the fact we really bonded. We were all older (22-34) in the sense no one was still in college, so that might have helped with maturity and getting to know each other in some ways.

However, I can imagine if you were in a clique-driven group, there might be drama or resentment brewing among some people, or you might want to be able to learn to go off on your own or find your own group.

It can be a little expensive if you crunch all of the numbers.

I paid $4,100 upfront for this trip, $150 for travel insurance, $32 for an eSim for Holafly, $100 for the add-on excursions in Venice, and then another $600 while I was in Europe. That’s a pretty chunk of change for a trip, although I will say that the trip got more expensive in Munich and Switzerland.

You could do it cheaper than I did if you just didn’t do any of the excursions and find things to do in the city, or don’t buy souvenirs. That was half of the $600 I spent right there, as things got really expensive once we entered Switzerland (like $30-$40 a meal expensive if you wanted to eat in a sit down restaurant).

There’s also some unplanned expenses if you’re not anticipating them: you have to tip the local guides in each city (like coins/1-2 euros each), you have to tip your tour guide like $100 by the end of the trip, or you might be like me and have to buy an adapter in the London airport because you left yours at home.

Obviously, if you did everything on your own, you wouldn’t be paying this much. You’re really paying for convenience and that aspect of not needing to really think about anything, as EF does so much for you on the trip. They do all of the legwork and if you want to just relax, you can do just that.

I thought that the money was worth it because of the nature of this trip (you truly get to see so much, and taking the bus around is an experience in itself), and I was even exhausted at times because there was so much crammed into a day. Someone else commented that it felt rushed to them, so if you want intimate time in each city, then this money might not be well spent for you.

The views are breathtaking, but some of the locations might not offer a ton of activities to do.

One of the biggest highlights of this trip are definitely the views. Even on the bus rides throughout the Alps, you’re going to be craning your neck out the window and seeing what waterfalls are cascading down the mountain, or how everything is so pretty that you won’t believe that this exists right outside the bus.

Munich was my least favorite part of the trip personally, as there’s not a ton to do there, especially if it’s raining. We went to Nymphenburg Palace, which was an hour from the hostel on public transport and walking, and then it started raining. There wasn’t much else we could do from that point on, as the English Garden was all outside and we didn’t want to do Residenz Munich or the other museums.

A common theme throughout each location was that it was just kind of relaxing. There isn’t a ton to do in Salzburg, or Engleberg. But you can pick up a beer and sit outside, looking at how stunning the views are. In Engleberg, everything shut down at 6 PM, even the grocery stores, so you were forced to slow down and relax after a long, tiring trip.

This might not be a pro for some. This is a tiring trip for sure—I passed out at 11 PM each night, although some people were out in the night life until 2 AM. They were the exhausted people running on Red Bulls each day, as we were walking up to 25,000 steps some days.

But if you want locations with endless things to do, this might not be the trip for you. A more major city like London or Paris would be ideal for that, as I feel we had just the right amount of time in some of these cities because of the lack of things to do.

There’s a little something for everyone on this specific trip.

Even if you’re more of someone who likes urban settings, I think this trip has a good mix of natural and urban. Venice, despite how crowded it is, is somewhere that has a lot of history and architectural details that’ll have you gasping at how beautiful it is, while Munich is a modern metropolis with a lot of history to boot.

All in all, if you couldn’t tell from my tone reading this, I did genuinely enjoy this trip a lot. I made a lot of new friends, saw some gorgeous views, and thought it was worth the money. If you’re more budget conscious though, you might want to find an alternative, as it can get a little pricy once things start adding up here and there.

I would do another EF trip in the future, but I’m not sure if I would do it in Europe. I’d do it more for somewhere like Morocco or Egypt rather than Europe, as I don’t feel comfortable going to those places as a solo female traveler. Maybe I will one day, but right now my Arabic is a little too elementary for that.

I hope this article helped! There wasn’t a ton out there about this specific trip when I was researching EF, so I hope someone out there found this useful.

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