Vinayak Hegde

Some notes on Preparing for the Europe trip. Posting on my blog for helping out people plan out their trip.

Currency and Transportation
Easily the most important of the three if you are planning a long trip is your budget. Check the cost of living in each country, that you plan to live and then add maybe 50% because you have enough safety margin in case you get things wrong or the information online or in the guidebooks is outdated.

If you are travelling across several european countries then I recommend something like Thomas Cook Global Money card (also known as “Eurocard”). It’s way better to get money in local currency than traveller cheques. There are ATMs anywhere in Europe and once you load this prepaid card with money, you can go to pretty much any ATM (with Mastercard/Visa) and withdraw money. I used this across 7 countries and never had an issue. Also the transaction charges are pretty reasonable, the exchange rates are good and you don’t waste time hunting around for the best rates. Also you can use it at most places for purchases.

I used a variety of transportation for traveling as seen in my earlier post. Other than the air tickets I had bought the Eurail Pass online. It works out well if you are doing long journeys on certain days. Also there are some other benefits as you get discounts on ferries and bus journeys as well in some places. The Eurail pass enables you to travel on your chosen days no matter how many train journeys you do. This is a good way to travel especially as many of the train journeys are scenic as well as the comfortable. There is also the added benefit that most railways stations are in the city centre and along side local transportation hubs unlike many airports which are outside the city limits. The only downside is that rail travel in Europe is expensive but I felt it was well worth the extra cost. Also it is great for flexibility as train tickets (and reservations) are often easier to get at the last minute.

Equipment
I bought a Quechua Backpack (70Lt) and Sleeping bag (ultralight version) from Decathlon Store from Esteem Mall in Hebbal. Quechua Backpacks and the sleeping bags were of good quality. I was frankly disappointed with the quality of the backpacks (both in terms of material used and the design) from Wildcraft and Adventure one. I found that both of them did not have good back supports as well (which matters a lot if you plan to carry your backpack around for a long time – I carried my 15kg backpack + 7kg in another sling handbag long enough to qualify for a sherpa certification ). If you plan to do any serious trekking and want your backpacks to last and last I would highly recommend them. I later found that Quechua (and the North Face) are pretty popular brands in Europe as well.

In addition, I had a DSLR camera – Nikon D80 and accessories – A backup battery and a backup 8GB memory card as I shoot in RAW, a sturdy tripod by Velbon, A IR remote and two filters (A Circular Polariser and a UV filter – Hoya Brand). I had a backup battery for my laptop as well which was useful in longer journeys.

Research
I generally read about the places I visit – Culture, History, Transportation systems and Food – so that when I travel I have atleast a rough idea of what to expect and what to do. While this might seem obvious to do, I have found several travellers do not do this and are stranded or get sick by not eating the right food and rub locals the wrong way. In this respect, I did not have much choice but to do it as my schedule was pretty punishing and as I was backpacking solo, I could not afford to get sick. I found the following sites extremely helpful for for my research

1. Wikitravel and World 66 – This was really useful in planning my trip with short articles about many obscure places
2. Lonely Planet Thorntree Forums – Extremely helpful travelers here.
3. Couchsurfing Travel Forums – for accommodation and local help – simply indispensable for travel in Europe.
4. Hostel sites for cheap accommodation – in order of preference – Youth Hostels , Hostelworld , Hostel bookers , Hostels.com – if you have a YHAI card you will get discounts in Youth Hostels as well as others. Just ask.
5. Flickr – Weird as it might seem, I found a lot of offbeat places just searching (using the “interesting” parameter) for the cities and countries that I planned to visit. Some of the places were surprisingly not even known to the locals.
6. Seat 61 – If you want to plan your route using rail travel, Seat 61 is an invaluable website with loads of information.

Also I have heard BootsnAll is a good site for researching for international travel but I did not use it. For travel within India, Indiamike is another site which is extremely helpful for travel related research.

Travel within in Europe is both easier and more difficult now as most European countries have moved to the Schengen Visa. It is difficult to get the Schengen Visa due to the large amount of documentation that you need to produce but once you get the visa you can travel within any country within the Schengen area without any border controls.