A reader contacted us with concerns about her 15-year-old daughter’s upcoming school trip to Amsterdam, Austria and the Czech Republic. She wanted to know if it is safe to drink the tap water and to eat foods such as fruit and salads.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website, it’s generally safe to drink the water and eat raw foods in Northern and Western Europe, which includes Amsterdam and Austria. They do recommend, however, sticking to bottled or boiled water in the Czech Republic and to avoid food from street vendors in that country. (As someone who has lived in Austria, I would implore people to not skip the street food in that fastidiously sanitary part of the world; the Kaesekrainer — or cheese dog — kicks the skin off anything Oscar Mayer could muster.)

That said, it’s not uncommon for travelers, particularly children and teens, to have some tummy troubles when they are introduced to new foods. Travelers should bring diarrhea medicine (Pepto-Bismol, Imodium AD) to treat themselves for mild cases.

If you have a travel question, post it here or e-mail it to travel@startribune.com.

Of course Switzerland is well known for downhill skiing, but one of the country’s classic winter activities is little known to tourists. It’s called Schlittenfahren (sledging, in English) and involves sleds and mountain-long tobaggan runs that serve up equal amounts of laughs and crashes. Sledging is dangerous enough that it would never fly in the lawsuit happy U.S. But the Swiss seem to take it all in stride: Old men smoke as they whoosh past hairpin curves; babies in polar fleece Snuglis are strapped down in front of their parents for the ride.

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In three weeks, I’m going to Germany for the holidays. My wife’s relatives are scattered across Europe’s biggest country. Up on the North Sea in what used to be East Germany, we’ll visit her father’s side of the family. In the south, not far from the border with Austria, we’ll visit her mother’s side. We’re looking forward to the Christmas Markets, the holiday foods and the chance to reconnect (or connect for the first time, in my case) with cousins and aunts and uncles. But we decided that two weeks in cold, dark Germany was enough. If possibile, we wanted to take a few days somewhere a little warmer. So we looked into the possibilities. They narrowed quickly to Ryanair, the budget airline that has revolutionized weekend travel on the Continent. We found fares to Rome for as low as 40 euros one way from Frankfurt with no charge for the return. (No charge for the return: Not kidding). We’d already determined that trainfare from Rostock (on the North Sea) to Frankfurt would cost more than 100 euros for two. Once we started working on the booking, the prognosis was not quite so rosy, but still pretty good. The roundtrip tickets, with all fees and taxes included, came to 240 euros, or about $150 each. Anyone else have experiences, good or bad, on Ryanair? I’ll report back on the trip in January.