Seven steps to plan an economic, enthralling, and effective European trip.
Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash |
“Euro Trip”,
a term often expressed with much zeal and exhilaration by travel
enthusiasts across the world, has long been an intrinsic part of
everyone’s bucket list. In today’s world, a hefty chunk of our desires
and ambitions are driven by internet, digital media, TV advertisements,
newspapers, celebrity lifestyles, and we don’t cease to fantasize about
all those places and things we are exhibited. One can simply Google
search “Euro Trip” and land up on 1000 pages, travel tips, guidance,
plans, blogs and a lot of businesses and industries thrive on this
trend. We surely have the enthusiasm to plan and set forth on an euro
trip but,
I had my fair share of desires to be on an Euro Trip
and was fortunate enough to be in Europe during a student exchange
program in Berlin, Germany. It was my winter semester and as experts
would suggest, “…winter’s not the ideal time to plan a euro trip, try
for summers, that’s the real deal”. But, did I really care? I had my
opportunity during a winter and I can’t wait for an indeterminate summer
when I would be equally fortunate to take a break from my academics and
get on the ride.
As
it happened, we 2 friends got on with our calendars, maps, laptops,
notebooks, excel sheets and started planning, much excited to explore
Europe during our Christmas break but pretty aimlessly then. Being an
exchange student in Europe, we knew our various limitations and so we
set our focus on this phrase: Time and Money but do More:
with the constraints of time and money we aimed to do more. It was our
first time in Europe and our financial planning had started way back in
October when we were still figuring out expenditures for a livelihood in
Berlin. Nevertheless, our Euro Trip had to happen anytime during that 6
month winter semester.
- But how did we eventually get on with a plan?
Step 01 - Days & Budget
Budget,
often, won’t appear as the first step for most travelers but we
obviously were pretty limited on our budget by our VISA rules, and hence
had to be very economic with our plan. We wanted to visit and explore
as many places as we can, but we also didn’t have a lot of days before
returning to Berlin for Christmas. We checked our calendars and chalked
out 8 days with a budget of approximately 400 EUR/head excluding
personal expenditures, but not really sure if at all this would suffice
our ambitions.
Accommodation ≈ 100–120 €
Travel ≈ 180–200 €
Food ≈ 80–100 €
Step 02 - Countries, Cities & Routes
Google
Map's clutter didn’t really help us in this phase, so we literally drew
out an outline of Europe in our notebook and plotted the major cities
starting with Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, Brussels, Antwerp, Rome,
Milan, Barcelona, Florence, Prague, Copenhagen, London, Vienna, Venice,
Zurich, Bern, Lyon, Munich, Lisbon, Budapest, Dubrovnik, Kraków, etc.
Berlin, our base then, is located pretty centrally on the European map.
As it appeared, it was difficult to travel central, eastern and western
Europe at one go. Fast forward, we soon realized that eastern and
central Europe also ran on different currencies and Foreign Exchange was
a big concern for us. With euros in hand, the focus was more on western
Europe. For the love of Renaissance art and stories of the Roman Empire
from our school days, we were pretty eager to explore Italy and hence
Milan, Venice, Rome, Florence, Naples were the obvious options but
remember “…do More”, and hence added Paris and Amsterdam as well.
But “8 days, 7 cities”,
may sound very thrilling and inspiring, was surely fanciful and
far-fetched. So, the big question was, what goes out of our list? We
listed all places of visit from these cities and after contemplating for
a few days, we sadly compromised on Campania capital Naples and Tuscan capital Florence. “May be another time Mr. Michelangelo”. So our final feasible list had Italy, France and Netherlands, “8 days, 3 countries, 5 cities”, and the route:
Berlin ›› Milan ›› Venice ›› Rome ›› Paris ›› Amsterdam ›› Berlin.
Step 03 - Travel & Stay
Flights/Buses/Trains/1
Day/2 Days/3 Days? The next big thing, how do we go about it? Our short
experience with transportation in Germany was pretty impressive and
naturally we were hopeful about the other countries as well. I must
admit, this phase wouldn’t have succeeded without the likes of
Goeuro[dot]com and Skyscanner[dot]com, which helped us figure out all
possible travel modes and routes.
Considering
the places of visit and our tight schedule, we planned to travel
overnight or early hours of the day to save day time for exploring the
cities but also get adequate rest to refuel ourselves for the following
days. A bit of research led us to roughly decide on how many days we
should devote for each city, just enough to satisfy ourselves. After
some deep speculation, our schedule looked like,
Milan: 1 day,
Venice: 1 day,
Rome: 2 days,
Paris: 2 days,
Amsterdam: 2 days.
— — — — — — — — —
Total = 8 days.
Venice: 1 day,
Rome: 2 days,
Paris: 2 days,
Amsterdam: 2 days.
— — — — — — — — —
Total = 8 days.
A
lot of eyebrows were raised by our European friends, evidently it was a
really stiff schedule, and we probably wont be able to pull it off
satisfactorily. But we were pretty inspired from our Indian experiences
of economic and time-efficient travel plans which virtually convinced us
to believe that our Eurotrip plan is feasible and remember “Time and Money but do More”. We proceeded with this plan but nonetheless, time for some general tip:
- Never book tickets when you are multitasking.
If
you are wandering about this sudden ticketing tip, the story follows
soon. With high hopes, as per our plan of 6 routes (A-F), we were
supposed to fly out of Berlin at dawn of Day 1.
Berlin…
›› A — Milan — B — Venice — C — Rome — D — Paris — E — Amsterdam — F ››
…Berlin
Berlin…
›› A — Milan — B — Venice — C — Rome — D — Paris — E — Amsterdam — F ››
…Berlin
We first started with our flight bookings as prices often tend to be high during pre Christmas season. Basically we chose flights for long distances and surface modes for rest of the routes. First up for flight was Route A:
Route A: Berlin ›› Milan
Ryan Air - 25.99 € /head
Berlin Schönefeld (SXF) TO Milan Bergamo (BGY)
Berlin Schönefeld (SXF) TO Milan Bergamo (BGY)
— — — — — — — — — — —
Story Time 😬
Second flight: Route D for Rome to Paris. We were in a lecture one evening when we thought about booking those tickets. Multiple browser tabs, multiple route suggestions on Goeuro, we navigated to Ryanair website, checked the prices, and surprisingly prices had dropped drastically. All excited we immediately proceeded for payment. Boom! tickets done at weird cheap rates. Both of us happily returned and opened our tickets that night.
“Hang On! What was our Route D: Rome-Paris or Milan-Paris?”
Disaster had struck upon us, those low rates were for an entirely
different route and we booked our flights for Milan to Paris. Wow!
multitasking under excitement screwed us. Non refundable tickets sent us
back to our notebooks, reshuffling, rearranging our routes, days, time,
and we ended up compromising with our comfort hours, re-planned our
schedule to avoid going round & round with 7 routes now:
So, 2 flights were already booked (Route A and new Route E), as our re-planned route looked like this:
Berlin…
›› A — Milan — B — Rome — C — Venice— D — Milan — E — Paris — F — Amsterdam — G ››
…Berlin
Route B: Milan ›› Rome
Flixbus - 19.80 € /head
Milan (Lampugnano bus station) TO Roma Tiburtina (Busbahnhof)
Milan (Lampugnano bus station) TO Roma Tiburtina (Busbahnhof)
Route C: Rome ›› Venice
Baltour Eurolines - 23.00 € /head
Roma Autostazione Tiburtina TO Venezia (Tronchetto Stazione)
Roma Autostazione Tiburtina TO Venezia (Tronchetto Stazione)
Route D: Venice ›› Milan
TrenItalia - 19.25 € /head
Venezia S. Lucia TO Bergamo
Venezia S. Lucia TO Bergamo
Route E: Milan ›› Paris
Ryan Air - 9.99 € /head
Orio al Serio Airport, Bergamo TO Beauvais-Tillé Airport, Beauvais
Orio al Serio Airport, Bergamo TO Beauvais-Tillé Airport, Beauvais
Route F: Paris ›› Amsterdam
Flixbus - 19.80 € /head
Paris (Porte Maillot) TO Amsterdam Sloterdijk
Paris (Porte Maillot) TO Amsterdam Sloterdijk
Route G: Amsterdam — Berlin
Flixbus - 19.80 € /head
Amsterdam Sloterdijk TO Berlin Alexanderplatz
Amsterdam Sloterdijk TO Berlin Alexanderplatz
— — — — — — — — — — — — — -
Travel Total (per head) = 137.64 €
Step 04 - Accommodation
Finding
accommodation while traveling across Europe isn’t really a big
deal unless it’s festive season. While Airbnb helped us with a fairly
sophisticated list of homes, Booking[dot]com and Hostelworld[dot]com
helped us with a lot of good affordable shelters at great
price but we had to be early considering Christmas time. Considering our
shelters were relatively closer to the city centres, major attractions
and also public transits, for Paris and Amsterdam, we opted for Airbnb
listings and for Rome we opted for a booking[dot]com listing. Choosing a
booking[dot]com listing was quite challenging as compared to Airbnb as
we could reach out to the potential POC for the Airbnb home and confirm
our arrival timings and see photos before finalizing but booking[dot]com
was more like a traditional hotel website where well lit up images are
uploaded and can often be misleading.
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Rome ››
Booking[dot]com
30 € for 2D-2N
30 € for 2D-2N
Paris ››
Airbnb[dot]com
33.10 € for 2D-2N
33.10 € for 2D-2N
Amsterdam ››
Airbnb[dot]com
11.84 € for 2D-1N
11.84 € for 2D-1N
— — — — — — — — — — — — — -
Accommodation Total (per head) = 73.94 €
Step 05 - Connectivity
Internet connectivity isn’t supposed to be a major hindrance in today’s world but around Europe things are slightly different. Cellular services aren’t as affordable as we find it in India, roaming and data charges are exorbitantly high. We checked around Berlin to find service providers which provide cheaper cellular services but to no avail and hence we just activated roaming services on our O2 sim cards. It’s quite difficult to live without map services today and quite a mandate when we are ourselves planning our travel. However, one good thing is free/cheap WiFi services are omnipresent in most parts of the cities like at bus stops, airports, railway stations, Starbucks, McDonald’s, at some tourist spots, and definitely at our accommodations. So we decided to use Google Offline Maps for each city.
The idea was to pre download the map of a city before setting forth for that city. Like we downloaded the map of Rome when we were in Berlin, and before we set for Venice, we deleted Rome’s map and downloaded map of Venice, and henceforth for other cities.
Irrespective
of whatever research or planning one does for any city, it will prove
insufficient and hence it is really useful to make use of the free
airport internet services to just start the day. As a backup, we kept
some balance in our sim cards to access internet in dire situations.
Travel light is the universal mantra for all travel enthusiasts. To avoid the burden of check-in luggage at airports and various terms and conditions with these low cost airlines, we opted to travel very light. Also, weight of our luggage was bound to increase along the trip and hence we chose buses for most of the routes. We concentrated primarily on winter wears (jackets, gloves, skullcaps, mufflers, thermals, socks, shoes) as we will spend a lot of time on the roads or without accommodation. Carry medicines as traveling during winters can prove very difficult at times. Scads of Snickers and chocolate bars for those sudden hunger attacks. Find small packs of basic grooming material. An umbrella might prove handy during the winter as it’s a damp season with intermittent rains all around.
Step 06 - Exploring a City
One
of the most challenging aspects of our trip has been planning our days
in any city, commuting around the city, selecting places of interests,
finding eateries. One great thing about any European city is the concept
of a Travel Pass for going around a city in public transports without
much headache about using a wrong ticket. Most of these cities are
driven hugely by tourism and hence this concept is immensely useful for
newcomers. Though information about these day passes weren’t so easily
available at the transit points but we were aware of this concept during
our stay in Berlin. Depending on the time of stay, one can take a 1-Day
Pass, 2-Day Pass, 3-Day Pass, 7-Day Pass for using local transportation
and why not when the public transport network is top notch and mostly
reliable across most European cities.
We referred a lot of online blogs and websites for listing out places of interest but we primarily used Google Trips for planning our routes. But easier said than done, by default Google Trip provides multiple routes for one to go around and cover a certain set of attractions and is quite efficiently sorted. But in respect of our interest and time in a city, we didn’t want to visit each and every place on the list. We checked the various locations on the map and accordingly selected certain spots and then referred Google Trips to make our own routes with one eye on the time of commute. Tiresome indeed but definitely efficient and flexible because the suggested Google routes will surely cross each other.
We referred a lot of online blogs and websites for listing out places of interest but we primarily used Google Trips for planning our routes. But easier said than done, by default Google Trip provides multiple routes for one to go around and cover a certain set of attractions and is quite efficiently sorted. But in respect of our interest and time in a city, we didn’t want to visit each and every place on the list. We checked the various locations on the map and accordingly selected certain spots and then referred Google Trips to make our own routes with one eye on the time of commute. Tiresome indeed but definitely efficient and flexible because the suggested Google routes will surely cross each other.
Shot in Sony Xperia XA |
Step 07 - Pack Your Bags
Travel light is the universal mantra for all travel enthusiasts. To avoid the burden of check-in luggage at airports and various terms and conditions with these low cost airlines, we opted to travel very light. Also, weight of our luggage was bound to increase along the trip and hence we chose buses for most of the routes. We concentrated primarily on winter wears (jackets, gloves, skullcaps, mufflers, thermals, socks, shoes) as we will spend a lot of time on the roads or without accommodation. Carry medicines as traveling during winters can prove very difficult at times. Scads of Snickers and chocolate bars for those sudden hunger attacks. Find small packs of basic grooming material. An umbrella might prove handy during the winter as it’s a damp season with intermittent rains all around.
Photo by Alice Donovan Rouse on Unsplash |
Once done, Get, Set & Go!
Our Experience
In one word, amazing. Yes, challenging indeed but eventually we were pretty happy with our execution and learnt a lot. A bag full of experiences to talk about but sharing a few highlights:
Take a Stroll - At any time, just take a walk down the numerous alleys, city centres, marketplatz, listen to the music, sit and watch, and just feel the throb of the city. Its always a joyous and relaxing experience, lest not tired.
Search for Food - Getting good, reliable food proved quite challenging at times because fine dining is expensive across Europe, and eateries weren’t available at all places. Also the prices overshoot our expectations because food in Berlin apparently is much cheaper and we often didn’t know how much budget to allocate for food. We relied mostly on street food, known eatery brands, and primarily on McDonald’s in the city centres for cheap, reliable food (also for free internet), we couldn’t miss fine dining at Venice and Rome. If Berlin ever proved expensive, trust me, it’s the best and worthiest of all the mega cities in terms of value for money.
Foot Voyage - We stayed for around 12–14 hours in Venice, a smaller city running primarily on water transport, and hence we opted to explore the city on our foot, walking through the criss-crossed alleys, crossing numerous bridges, capturing photos at those narrow corners, traversing through the markets. It was windy and cold and we often looked for a place to rest, but nevertheless the experience of Venice on foot was unparalleled.
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Our Verdict
Our biggest learning has been in terms of time. Since things often don’t happen as per plan, it is better to have some buffer and not leave unsatisfied, which naturally means more budget.
Plan atleast 3 full days for Rome - The city is full of life. Great food, great places, great eateries, great people and the country of Vatican City. Apparently, the first place in Europe, we visited in our 3 months, which we felt is the closest to our Indian city buzz. Though we didn’t return unsatisfied but 3 days is a must to feel completed.
Plan atleast 3 full days for Paris - Its huge. Going around the city traffic, crowd, commute, takes away a lot of time and if you are a museum lover, note down that it is next to impossible to complete “Musée du Louvre” in one day. And if you are a student under 25, you are lucky, its free, I wasn’t.
Don’t over-trust public transport - Trains in Italy apparently weren’t as reliable as in Germany. In Germany, you can go from city A to city B changing 2/3 different trains with 2 minutes intermediate exchange time and still not rush because the schedule is very reliable. We expected the same for our train from Venice to Milan which was automatically routed by Trenitalia into 3 trains when booked but none of the trains were on time and we were stranded at some intermediate station in Italy for some hours at midnight with no internet. With the barrier of local language and trains not running after 12 AM, we couldn’t find much help and were really scared of missing our flights. Thankfully, 3 mid-aged Italians (who were in the same situation) could help us find an alternative.
Very cheap flight is a trap — Airports with cheap flight tickets apparently are very tricky which came as a big learning for us. Low cost airlines like Ryanair, Easyjet, give tickets at very low fares which is always inviting. When we landed at Milan Bergamo airport, it took 7€/head for us to reach Milan city centre. When we landed at Paris Beauvais airport, it took 10€/head for us to reach Paris central. Eventually it becomes a mandatory expenditure, and our effective travel tickets proved quite higher. We weren’t really aware of this practice but it’s seemed a common setup in Europe to have 2/3 airports around one city. So always cross check the airport locations.
Google Trips is reliable enough — Though we mixed and matched our routes around a city quite rigorously, but if one doesn’t want to take the hassle of planning the routes, Google Trips was sufficiently reliable. On the contrary, I’m sure one won’t like to visit all attractions in a city at one go and might have to opt out of some.
Our budget of 400€/head didn’t overshoot by much and was fairly economic at the end. So, the phrase: Time and Money but do More, and we indeed did more with some compromise on time. Mission Accomplished!
Apart from this trip I did visit Frankfurt, Dessau, Dresden, Barcelona, Keil, Prague, Brussels, Copenhagen, Liverpool, at different timelines over the next few months of my stay, but I must admit, this article though long, is the most concise report one can share, as there’s a lot more to see, experience and talk about, and I hope to go back for more of it.
TL;DR
Step 01 — Days & Budget
Step 02 — Countries, Cities & Routes
Step 03 — Travel & Stay
Step 04 — Accommodation
Step 05 — Connectivity
Step 06 — Exploring a City
Step 07 — Pack Your Bags
Step 02 — Countries, Cities & Routes
Step 03 — Travel & Stay
Step 04 — Accommodation
Step 05 — Connectivity
Step 06 — Exploring a City
Step 07 — Pack Your Bags
Thank you for reading through this long post and sharing your views. While its entirely based on our experience of Europe and things must have changed since our visit, it may not be equally sufficient or similar for someone else but I hope these guidelines help one plan their much anticipated Euro Trip. Thanks to Atul Kumar for preserving the notes and records from our planning phase. Cheers! 😄
BTW, you might just wish to stay awake on early morning flights for this view of the alps: 😍
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