By Jeffrey Gangemi

Spring break is a time for relaxing on the beach and sipping margaritas, right? Not for many current MBA students, who are more mature than some of their undergraduate counterparts and are used to squeezing all they can out of their experiences. From thumbing it through Europe to tasting la dolce vita in Italy, MBAs are taking spring break to a whole new level.

Traveling is a way to broaden horizons and learn about other cultures in a way that you can't from textbooks -- and that's never a bad thing for those looking to better understand the burgeoning global economy. "I get a lot of value out of seeing new places and the world from a different perspective," says Chris Fearn, a student at the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School, who is hitchhiking to Morocco during spring break. "It's a win-win-win. I think it's important to push yourself beyond your comfort zone."

Fearn was looking to do something a little wacky during his time off, so the 29-year-old Canadian decided to hitchhike from Oxford to Marrakesh for a good cause. The trip is organized through Link Community Development (LCD), a group that will use the more than $600 in pledges that Fearn has raised to build schools in South Africa, Uganda, Malawi, and Ghana. Thumbing it to Morocco is now tradition. More than 2,500 hitchers have taken the same route to support LCD projects in the past 14 years -- surprisingly, most of them take only four or five days to cover the roughly 1,600 miles from Oxford to Marrakesh.

Practicing the buddy system for safety, Fearn will travel with a female student. The exact path and length of each ride will be affected by the itinerary of the drivers who stop to pick them up. But that's half the fun. "There's nothing preordained," says Fearn. "I'll just take the most direct route I can, and won't get worried if I get off track a bit." If he were worried about taking the fastest route to Morocco, Fearn adds, then he probably wouldn't have chosen hitchhiking as his mode of travel.

"A PERSONAL CONNECTION."  Students at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business are also traveling south in the name of community development. Over spring break, a group of students, spouses, alumni, and administrators from the GSB will travel to Cambodia to attend the opening ceremonies for a series of development projects financed through student fund-raising efforts (see BW Online, 8/17/05, "For the Poor, Help from MBAs").

After the tsunami devastated Asia in December, 2004, Neil Bansal, a second-year student at Chicago's business school, wanted to help those in the affected region. He co-founded the student group Chicago Global Citizens in 2005, with classmate Wes Barnes, and partnered with the nonprofit group Room to Read. The Chicago GSB community has raised $20,000 of the school's $30,000 goal, which is paying for five libraries and a computer lab in Cambodia.

After meeting with those who will reap the rewards of their good deeds, the students will spend a few days navigating the city of Phnom Phen, checking out museums and the remnants of the killing fields. Next, they'll travel to Siem Reap and the ancient temple grounds of Angkor Wat.

For Bansal, the trip is about connecting his school to the projects they helped fund, and experiencing the developing world firsthand. "We wanted to feel a personal connection with those we are assisting in Cambodia," says Bansal. "We wanted people to not only donate, but to learn about international development and to spread the word."

TEST TOUR.  Instead of traveling to a new land, Vanessa DellaPasqua, a 33-year-old first-year student at the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business is going home to Italy. And she's bringing a group of fellow students to sample the culinary delights of her native region of Romagna.

Aside from being the birthplace of such Italian specialties as lasagna and tortellini, the Romagna region on the northeast coast of Italy is the future home of DellaPasqua's business. Along with her family, which runs a successful restaurant and catering company and is now building a cooking-school facility, DellaPasqua plans to organize culinary tours to boost tourism in her home region. This trip will be a chance to test what works and what doesn't with tourists (see BW Online, 3/1/06, "A Food-Lover's Paradise in Paris").

The itinerary will no doubt keep participants busy. They'll learn to cook homemade pasta and sauces during morning cooking classes, and sample the region's specialties during afternoon trips to places like Parma, famous for its Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. In Modena, for example, they'll take a tour of Acetaia Malpighi, a traditional balsamic-vinegar producer.

SMOOTH SAILING.  Sport can be as alluring as food for some students. A group of 30 London Business School students and alumni -- mostly members of the school's sailing club -- are heading to the small Caribbean island of Guadeloupe to sail four boats. For the past six years, LBS sailing-club members have spent spring break on a similar trip. By day, they take to the seas; by night, they taste the food and wine that the island has to offer.

Christophe Haugen, a first-year student from Norway who's president of the sailing club, says the seven-day sojourn is a way for students to get out of the grind of school and get to know each other better. "Everyone wants to get some sun and enjoy the warmer weather," says Haugen. "There's no aggressive sailing -- just a leisurely pace and [time] to enjoy the food."

Whether these students spend their time on the open ocean or the open road, their adventures offer a welcome break from the case studies and classes that await them back at school.