Budget travel. Part 1 (Patreon)

I'll start with a question about the budget. When I first went on a trip with a friend, I had 400 € for 5 countries for 16 days, namely Poland, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and France. Initially, we wanted to visit more, but it is good that we and 5 countries traveled. The first trip was not so budget. We bought ourselves everything we wanted and what we needed. In Germany, we could let go to a restaurant. In Holland, try the weed. In France, rent the night in a hostel (For me, hostels are very expensive there. For comparison, you can rent a very good hotel in Kyiv for this money). In Belgium, I allowed a lot to buy a lot of sweets and fly by plane. By the way, the plane cost 90 €. Even then, I thought that I can deny yourself something, and travel more.

With that in mind, I went on my second trip. This time I had only 100 € for 4 countries for a period of 12 days: Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia. When I was on the road, I thought to buy in large supermarkets and cook for myself. When I was in Belarus, I changed my 15 € to their currency (rubles) and lived quietly on them for 4 days. It was enough for me to go to McDonald's a couple of times and buy food for the future. When I was in Vilnius, I was offered to buy tickets back on a plane. Then I found a good option for myself for 10 €. I did not travel with a large backpack, so I had enough hand luggage. When I was in Riga, I didn’t buy anything much, because I knew that everything would be expensive in Tallinn, but I still didn’t forbid myself anything. In Tallinn, I was surprised by the prices. When going by trams and buses for 2 € (but I still didn’t pay), I realized that I need to monitor my wallet.

The third time I didn’t have a clear plan for my trip. I thought to go to Hungary, Slovakia, and Austria. My girlfriend made up the company. We had 200 € for two and another 100 € for an emergency. We traveled to 5 countries for a period of 14 days, namely Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Poland. This trip was different in that I took instant food with me, and we ate it when we were on the road. And when they were in big cities, we ate normally. In each country we tried traditional dishes, we did not refuse sweets and entertainments. In Vienna, we went to the store to buy things for replacement. When we were on our way home from 200 € we had another 60 €. On which we bought ourselves, sweets, home.

For the fourth time, I tried not to deny myself much, go with a girl to Paris and Madrid. I specifically looked for all the tickets at an affordable price and found: a Kyiv-Stuttgart plane 10 euro/person; bus Stuttgart-Strasbourg 3.5 euro/person; bus Strasbourg-Paris 10 euro/person We also bought tickets back, Madrid-Kyiv plane 30 euro/person. I don’t know if it was luck, or the prices are always like that, but it turned out not so expensive to travel. I took 200 euros with me, and the 200 for my girl. It seems that there may be problems, this time there is more money, but the expenses are the same. Yes, cities are not cheap, but there should be enough. But the problem is when you take more, you spend more. It works like this in your head like this: “Now I can afford it, now I have more money” so that no matter how much you take, there will be more money to be missed. We did not rent hotels or hostels, did not allow ourselves to try traditional cuisine. Only at McDonald's, we ate.

How do I do it? First, you need to prioritize what you want to get more out of your trip. Do you want a comfortable and budget trip? Then you better go to a travel agency and visit only 1 country and 1 city. Comfortable and budgetary, these are two incompatible words. If you want to go around many countries, then you need to sacrifice something. Sometimes, you need to sacrifice both comfort and budget in order to get a satisfactory result.

Next, I will talk about ways of moving and living. Also his advice, and personal experience.