I just bought my plane tickets for a little over three months in Europe. Leaving October 6, flying into Dublin, and departing January 13, leaving from Dublin. I know it's going to be cold, etc, but my only other time to go was also in the winter. So. I'm from Michigan, I think I can handle it. Haha.

Anyways, my question is this. I'm backpacking around on a pretty low budget (about $90-$100 a day) and I know I want to see at least six different countries. How much should I plan? I enjoy doing things spontaneously, but I also want to make sure I make it to several different places/countries, such as Prague, Krakow, Bavaria, Italy, Scotland, Croatia, and Amsterdam. In your experience, is it better to have a fairly detailed itinerary (just not making any reservations so it's easy to change) or is it better to just have a rough idea of where you want to go, say Ireland week one, Amsterdam week two, etc, or would anyone recommend just not having any kind of plan and completely flying by the seat of my pants?

The only backpacking experience I have is two weeks in Ireland where I had more of a list of things I wanted to do in no particular order, I just did the most convenient first, so on and so forth. It worked well, but even that seemed like it would be fairly complicated to do for three full months. I don't want to have my entire 98 days planned out down to the last detail, but I do want to know at what point a lack of planning can cause serious problems.

Thanks for you help!

The extent to which I think planning is reasonable is to look at a map and decide what order it makes sense to visit places in. A list of things you're interested in seeing is good, too. A timetable is excessive. Your budget is tight, but certainly doable, and you'll be there in the off season, so there should be some decent deals.

I keep intending to do a winter trip to Europe, but I've never managed to convince myself that it's a better use of my money than going in the summer.

What he said.

There are some places you need to get advance reservations to sleep, to be sure.

Three of these places are Granada in Spain, Amsterdam, and Paris. The best hostels in Prague may be filled as well, though its not as likely in winter. Still, the more I travel, the more I like to make advance reservations at least a week ahead so I know where I'm going TO, especially in Europe.

Granada may NOT be totally full in winter, but it is a major tourist area, and the best hostels may not have room, leaving you with inferior accomodations. I've found that superior accomodations translates to a superior experience.

Trains: If I finally have a departure date, I try and make the reservation a few days before. Sometimes reserved trains of a certain schedule are full. Buses are usually more flexible, but its good to confirm the schedules before you show up at the station. Sometimes the bus schedules are not posted on the internet or hostel BB. You may have to ask the hostel desk to find out for you. Its a lot better if people who speak the language do the enquiring.

The train tables are usually easier to find, but sometimes you can't trust the automated ticket sales centers on the internet in Europe. That's why I like to buy tickets at the stations. I know for a fact this is true in Paris, where an English speaking train clerk told me the SNCF automated system sometimes oversells seats on full trains.

Hints on planning:

1. make a list of the kind of things you'd like to see. Make a list of the places those things are in.

2. Put them all on a map.

3. Determine how much time you have to see all these things.

4. Determine approximate costs per day per leg of the trip. For example, Germany is actually a much cheaper country to travel in than France, especially if you're aiming at Paris.

I managed do fairly well on 50 euros a day in Europe, over all, or about 1500-2000 dollars a month, taking mostly ground transport and staying in Youth Hostels. Most hostels, except maybe Paris and Amsterdam, cost about 20 -25 euros a night per person. If its more, then that's more money for food.

Use the following rules of thumb for all day transport. Igt also works for air travel over a long distance.

Add one day of travel time to any given estimate of voyage equal to or more than one day of estimated voyage time. If its a half day trip, add half aday, which makes up one day of travel once more. This way you account for very early start times and settling in times.

4. Allow at least one 'rest' day out of 6 or 7 days. Even travellers need to do the laundry sometimes, or just hang out in a cafe somewhere. This also gives you leeway to move earlier or later than you intended.

5. Allow two days at the end of a trip that lasts one month, and one day for a shorter trip. Make your going-home departure point a comfortable place to be. Why not tourist in that town a day before you leave? Its always good to have a few days leeway to account for emergencies, and the one trip you can't afford to miss, usually, is your return trip. If that bus of yours runs into trouble and is 6 hours late, that shouldn't affect you making the flight home. You really want the night before you leave for home to be a time to collect items and relax to prepare for the voyage home. Its a time you need to be most alert.

Sometimes you want to change your plans. I know I liked venezuela so much I changed my flight plans and left two weeks later than previously planned. You can do that too, if you have the money.
It costs money to change return travel plans, usually.

Does this help you out some?

We've just returned from a 4 month road trip around Europe and previously a 12 month round the world trip. The way I plan is research all the places I would want to see including weather conditions and Visa requirements put all the countries/towns/cities/villages on a spreadsheet with a rough idea of the days I think I would need to enjoy the sites, plan into this travelling times and maintenance days. For long haul flights I book accommodation but the rest just book as I go along. the thing is you never know how long you are going to spend in a city, might be a place you want to spend more time in or on the other hand you could hate the place and it's not what you are looking for.
Take ear plugs and don't keep all your money etc in the same place.
Keep safe and don't take drugs.
Best of luck
Jean

Thanks everyone, this is definitely helping me. I'm freaking out a little because of the nearness of my departure date--I had originally planned to leave in February, and had to change it to October at the last minute. So now I'm doing all my planning in a month. Oh well, it'll keep me too busy to get seriously impatient.

So far I think I'm going to land in Dublin, then stay at Paddy's Palace (they have a free shuttle to/from the airport--awesome!!) plus they're right across the street from the bus station. I'll then take a bus up to Belfast, stay there a day or two, take the ferry over to Scotland and take a five day Mac Backpacker tour from Edinburgh. Has anyone done this tour? For five days of transportation plus the hostel reservations are taken care of, it's not a bad deal. Anyhoo, after that I'm thinking of hopping on down to France and chilling in Paris for a few days. I have someone to stay with, so that'll reduce costs considerably.
After that, we'll see. I think I'm going to try and plan a murky kind of places-that-I-want-to-go list, then plan more detail on the road a week or two in advance.

Another question: cell phones? In Ireland I bought a cheap vodaphone, a pay-as-you-go deal, and then local calls were of course cheap since it was a local phone. To call home I used a calling card or they called me using a calling card. This worked out well and it was very handy to have a phone that could call hostels, etc for practically nothing. Could I do the same thing in the rest of Europe? Do vodaphone-type cellphones work only in the country that you bought them, can you buy new SIM cards to put in them to make them work in different countries, etc? I'm having trouble finding this out online and don't want to be there with no plan. Having a cell phone is the one thing that's essential for me. What has everyone else done for a cell phone and what did it cost? Would you recommend it?

The cheap phones one buys in europe usually come without a sim card, and then one buys a sim card to fit the plan you like. So you keep the phone, and in every country, you buy a new sim card for that country. Different plans have different prices. I picked one with a moderate local call cost, but international calls only cost 5 cents a minute, or was it 10 cents a minute. Either way, it was pretty cheap. Be picky about sim cards and plans, they DO differ. The same phone works for almost all sim cards, at least those bought in Europe.

Sounds like you already have a rought idea of where you want to go and what you what to see, so I think you can somewhat fly by the seat of your pants. Have a general plan but be flexible. That way if you get somewhere you can leave early or take more time. It's a great way to go! Some of the places I extended my time were very unlikly canidates for doing so durring the planning stage! You can get some ideas and see pictures of our travels at our blog at : http://www.gadtravel.com

Thank you thank you everyone...
After a ton of research and second guessing myself I think I've decided on my general route.

Dublin - Belfast - Edinburgh (five day Macbacker tour through Scotland) - London - Amsterdam/the Netherlands - Bavaria - Prague/Plzen - Vienna - Croatia - Venice - Paris - Barcelona - Madrid - Dublin.

Around these main cities/areas I'll be making smaller trips, day trips and whatnot, but these are my large journeys. Because it's going to be late fall/winter, I don't think I'll have any problems with overcrowding and am not going to book much in advance. The time I want to spend in each area is also flexible, depending on how much I like the area.

My major concern now is train fares. I'm not buying a Eurail pass as none of them really provide what I need - a two month pass is not sufficient for a three month trip and the 3 month pass is just too expensive for the amount of traveling I'm doing. So I'm buying tickets one at a time - this way, I can also take advantage of cheap easyJet or Ryanair fares. Looking online at Raileurope.com gives me some pretty decent ticket prices, but are these prices the same when I go to buy them at the rail station? Does the price go up, like an airline ticket? Let's say I found fares from Rotterdam to Munich for $98 online. When I go to the train station, how much more expensive will that fare be? I don't want to buy tickets in advance because that limits my freedom - and the cheapest tickets are not refundable or changeable - but if it's a large monetary difference I might have to. The travel portion of my budget is about $3000 for fifteen weeks.

Does anyone have any experience/advice on this, and does that sound like a reasonable itinerary for my travel budget or do I need to move around a bit less - or could I even afford to travel more? I'm on a tight budget so this is pretty important.

Thank you to all of you who are answering my questions so nicely and thoroughly. You're really helping my planning process!

Your itinerary sounds reasonable for 15weeks, and your travel budget should be acceptable.

Sometimes planes are cheaper than trains for a long distance European trek, say, in the Madrid-Dublin leg. Any train through France can be a serious expense if you are forced to take the very pleasant TGV high speed line. Still, the experience of going over 200mph on a train is very interesting and surprisingly smooth.

I've been told that Raileurope was actually more expensive than buying tickets from the station, though some rail systems DO sell lesser priced tickets if you know where to look. The Germans are well known for that.

The only cheap rail country you'll be going through is Italy(Not bad priced) and Croatia.

There will be times when there are cheap advance fares, but they won't be often. Train services tend to keep very stable prices, and their schedules seldom change. Thats why they publish the "trains of Europe" Guide so reliably. Mind you, the book is difficult to use. A better guide is the German railroad guide, though it doesn't give prices for out of Germany travel.

Another great guide for schedules is to find a hostel guest that happens to have a Railpass. They produce an excellent book with all the important routes, without the complications of Trains of Europe.

So, you can be pretty sure you won't be missing out by not booking two weeks in advance in MOST countries you'll be travelling in. Ask at the hostel desks for more details as you go along, and you'll be fine.

It could be that the planes are in the end cheaper in some cases, but often the cost of getting to and fro the cheaper airports makes up for the cheaper flights. For example, try VERY hard to get to Schipol if or when you fly to or from Amsterdam. The other airport where budget airlines fly from is a 3 hour schlep from Amsterdam, and can be expensive if you don't leave enough time to actually get to the airport. Then you have to take a cab from the train station to the airport, a major pain in the neck and also expensive.

So, be careful about these 20 euro ryan air flights. It always works out to more, often much more.
Ryan air tends to charge for every small thing, as does Sky-Europe. Every extra pound in check in or carry on is charged at five euros a kilo, for example.

In the end, I found it easier to take a train, and not much more expensive in many cases. I reserved planes for long distances, because long haul train voyages can take a lot out of you, and cost not a little. I took them because I enjoy train travel, not much more.

1st of all...3 month, how lucky!!

Well, I think there are many ways of traveling so it's quite subjective.
I prefer booking the hotels first, it's one less thing to worry about (imagine arriving and walking miles just to get a good hotel available!) There're many companies that allowed you to book online so check out some. For example, when I traveled to Rome last month I stayed in a Rome B&B and I thanked the lord of having booked in advance because there weren't any space in most of the hotels of the area!

I hope you enjoy your trip!! Post the pics next time!

How much TOTAL do you budget for a trip like this? Also, do you stay in hostels and live semi-cheaply? Just curious because I'd like to start planning something similar.

How much TOTAL do you budget for a trip like this? Also, do you stay in hostels and live semi-cheaply? Just curious because I'd like to start planning something similar.

Europe is pretty easy for budgetting - not a lot of incidentals (no visas, immunizations or other hassles). So it's just daily budget (depends quite a lot on which country, but for the most popular destinations, probably around $90-$100/day - $8100-$9000 for a 3 month trip), plus airfare - $500-$1500 depending on where you're flying from, where you're flying to, what time of year, how far in advance you book, how full the plane is, and a chaos variable. So let's say $10k for three months in Western Europe. If that's unrealistic for you, reevaluate your destinations. Three days in Bulgaria cost about the same as one day in France. Or consider a shorter trip.

The rest is the basics of backpacking. Find reasonably priced accommodations...hostels are the standard, but doing a bit of couchsurfing is rewarding (and cheap) if you can make the arrangements. Consider buying a guidebook for countries that interest you, to get some destination ideas. Book a night or two after your arrival, and then let life take you where it will. Most importantly, just go. If you have the golden triangle of travel (passport, plane ticket and money), the rest will just happen.

2wanderers wrote:

How much TOTAL do you budget for a trip like this? Also, do you stay in hostels and live semi-cheaply? Just curious because I'd like to start planning something similar.

Europe is pretty easy for budgetting - not a lot of incidentals (no visas, immunizations or other hassles). So it's just daily budget (depends quite a lot on which country, but for the most popular destinations, probably around $90-$100/day - $8100-$9000 for a 3 month trip), plus airfare - $500-$1500 depending on where you're flying from, where you're flying to, what time of year, how far in advance you book, how full the plane is, and a chaos variable. So let's say $10k for three months in Western Europe. If that's unrealistic for you, reevaluate your destinations. Three days in Bulgaria cost about the same as one day in France. Or consider a shorter trip.

The rest is the basics of backpacking. Find reasonably priced accommodations...hostels are the standard, but doing a bit of couchsurfing is rewarding (and cheap) if you can make the arrangements. Consider buying a guidebook for countries that interest you, to get some destination ideas. Book a night or two after your arrival, and then let life take you where it will. Most importantly, just go. If you have the golden triangle of travel (passport, plane ticket and money), the rest will just happen.

The itinerary that I'm working on is sort of a hybrid of western/eastern, but focuses mostly on central/eastern europe. The only western country I plan to spend a lot of time in is Spain, and I think I may try to stay there for 2-3 weeks or so.

Right now, the rough path I have planned is (yes, I only have large cities listed bc it's easier to get a sense of where I'm talking about..I'd liek to get off the beaten path a bit though):

Madrid, Sevilla, Barcelona - Spain
Munich, Germany
Vienna, Austria
Bratislava, Slovakia
Prague, Cesky Krumlo - Czech Republic
Ljubljana, Lake Bled- Slovenia... with a couple-day to Rijeka, Croatia
Gdansk, Krakow - Poland
Budapest, Hungary
....I would really like to fit in Bulgaria as well, but I'm having a hard time figuring out a decent way to get there and back since it's a bit out of the way.

I'm actually having trouble figuring out the logistics of traveling to so many different places. Budgeting is giving me trouble too.

By planning you can perhaps save some money along the way. I think Perhaps for me a base country is the best. I.e getting a country that i close to a lot of other interesting countries with good links to them. If you do this you will also be able to rent some where for 3 months saving you a fourtune compared to hotels and even hostels. If your flying into Ireland you can do a few coutries in a week if you want to.. go to dublin belfast , edinburgh ,manchester, london , to be honest apart from London a day will do. perhaps two in london. from london you can catch the train to paris and then youve got france in. I am going to be Biast now .. as i live in Slovenia .. but i would suggest this as a base country Rent is cheap and your central europe. For europe its important i feel to go to west but dont forget the east.. as the east for me is far more genuine and tradtional .. where as most of the west... its amercia with a flu sorry no there is some great cultures in the west just dont forget east europe.

Soooooooooooo From slovenia... you can go to Italy easily , Hungary Eaisly , Crotia easily , Austria easily ( same as germany only nicer )

Are you planning to drive in Europe ?? did you consider just driving around sleeping in the car when you dont get a place .. or knocking on a few farmers doors for a bed ?? Your best beat is a car and if you do you should get a base country as suggested in central europe and do it that way.

Hope it goes good

if you do deiced for Slovenia or never heard of it and want to know a bit more visit www.inyourpocket.si