Tag: EURail

A Review Of Travel Costs From A Trip Across Europe.

Now that I’ve had a little time to decompress from the last European trip, it’s probably time to get back to the blogosphere and continue talking about the wandering around. I’m going to do this first part by a quick discussion of cost. The actual cost vs what I thought it was going to cost when I left America. It can be summed up as “Yes, I spent too much. But, I had a good time!”

The Upfront Cost.

I spent a bunch of money getting ready to take the trip. Most all of the expense proved out to be the usual.

The upfront cost included my intercontinental plane ticket from Austin to London. I chose London simply because it was the cheapest ticket I could find at the time. I purchased two Eurail Passes; both multi-day, multi-country passes. There were two passes needed based upon my initial travel plans. I bought a ticket for the 2019 Austrian Grand Prix, as I planned on attending the race. I also bought a festival ticket for Ultra Europe that was eventually tossed in the trash, as I changed travel plans along the way, but that happens.

The logistics of getting around and where to stay were all figured out on-the-fly. I work best that way. Airfare, train tickets, festival ticket, and race ticket combined cost me $2100.00. It went something like Airfare (Delta) $605.00 for roundtrip ticket, rail passes at $1,175.00, $130.00 for the festival ticket, and $190.00 (with shipping) for the race ticket. I like to remove the upfront costs from the travelling money. It allows me to reduce my daily math (am I running out of money math). Let’s look at that now.

The Travel Money.

The amount of travel money available basically came the remains of the budgeted money minus the upfront costs. I started my travel plan with $19,000.00, which was supposed to last for four months of travel. factoring out the $2,100.00 already spent, the budget planned worked out somewhat like the following.

beginning: $19,000.00

Upfront Costs: $2,100.00

40 Days walking the Camino de Santiago (40×50.00/day): $2,000.00

89 Days backpacking around Europe (89×150.00/day): $13,350.00

Buffer: $1,550.00

Obviously, this was a best-case scenario, based upon my math skills and extremely optimistic sense of humor. Now, let’s continue.

The Achilles Heel.

My optimistic plan was based upon my desire to see and do numerous things while in Europe. It was also based upon the idea that I was going to do what I said I was going to do. (If you’re an active reader of this blog then you already know my plan goes out he window. LOL!!)

The first weak link in my plan is in the planning. I planned to walk the Camino Pilgrimage at the beginning due to weather conditions and its low cost per day. I understood in doing this that, if I did not use all of the Camino days actually on the Camino, this would shorten my overall travel time. It would also mean that the cost per day would go up before I planned on it doing so.

The second weak link was in the travel path and lodging. The path laid out beyond the Camino was based upon getting to where I wanted to go with the lowest possible cost of travel. And, once there, Finding the cheapest lodging available wherever I happened to be. This plan involved extensive use of the rail passes, and limited low-cost air carriers for plane tickets. Lodging was going to be in the form of Air BNB, low budget hotels and some nights on the train. This, if used properly, would allow me to budget my money.

Truth vs Fiction.

I had a well thought-out plan, and a fist full of money. I was ready to be off on a grand adventure. Well, that was what I thought. What I really had was a adequately assembled bad idea, and enough money to get out of the country. Okay, it wasn’t as bad as all that. Let’s just say that things went off-plan.

It took about nine days for things to come apart. It took two days to travel from Austin, to London, to Madrid, to Pamplona, to start the Camino de Santiago. It took seven days of walking the Camino for me to decide that it wasn’t for me. 9 days into 60 days, and the plan had gone astray. (I don’t call this blog the I-Stray-Blog for no reason at all!) Going into the backpacking section of the trip automatically adjusted the path of the remaining section of the trip. It also shortened the total time dramatically.

The next thing that went wide was lodging. Instead of heavily utilizing Air BNB and lowest-cost budget hotels, I booked in at the lowest ‘decent’ hotel on booking.com. This slight change in decision making did a good job of increasing cost. Also, due to the change in travel path brought on by the change in schedule, more legs went from train travel to airline travel. This added unplanned airfare costs to the overall budget. (Yes, I already possessed the rail tickets.)

So, what happened? Well, I used the Austrian Grand Prix as my new end date, and dumped everything that came along afterward. Why? Mainly, I really wanted to go to the race. This changed the end date from 4 September to about 5 July.

The effect? Sixty days on the Camino and 89 days backpacking turned into 9 days on the Camino and 57 days of backpacking. One small change and a few loose money spending decisions changed the plan greatly. The real summer trip around Europe looked something like this:

Beginning: $19,000.00

Upfront Costs: $2,100.00

9 Days on the Camino (9x$50.00/day): $450.00

57 Days of backpacking (57x$231.57/day): $13,200.00

Leftover money: $1,900.00

Thoughts About The Plan.

Now, if you noticed that real per-day number and wondered WTH? So did I.

Did I have a great time? Absolutely! Did I see what I wanted to see? At all of the places I managed to go to, Yes! Was it all worth it? Hell Yes! But, did I waste a bunch of money? Well, that depends on how you define waste. The money spent does line up directly with the amount of fantastic times I had travelling, so I say that it was all money well-spent.

This math experiment did force me to consider how I travel in the future. Knowing that I spent more money per-day than I thought I would is important information. Next time, I’ll plan more money upfront. more money upfront will give more of a buffer when things go sideways. It will also allow me to stay. Because, well, I’m probably going to stray.

Following this, I’m going to get back to travel. We will talk about the trip, the stops, and the times had along the way.

Now, go. Get out there. Have great adventures!

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A Quick Run Through European Rail Passes.

Where I’m not averse to rental cars, I like to use public transportation when traveling in Europe. There are two big reasons for this. One, things in Europe are closer together than they are in America. You can get from place to place in a practical manner. Two, the train system goes almost everywhere. If you add a bus and a plane, here and there, you can get around pretty easy.

Types of Tail Passes.

You can buy your train tickets each time you want to travel or you can invest in a rail pass. Rail passes save you considerable money and effort, but they need to be purchased before you leave the USA to travel. This will require a little planning.

As far as type, there are a lot of them. There are single country passes, multiple country passes, and (basically) all of Europe passes. They also encompass all different number of day options. There are many forms, from two to three day continuous use tickets, to fifteen days or more scattered over a couple months. Once again choosing the right one will require a little preplanning.

All of that being said, there are really two different vendors to choose from for US based tourists. They are EURail, and Raile Europe. They both have pluses and minuses. They both can also help with planning and rail reservations.

I suggest you look at both. I have used both. As a rule, I use EURail. I like the service they provide, and have had good luck using them. Also, they have a great timetable app.

What You Get in Your Pass Package.

Your (multiple country) rail pass will come with three main items.

My current rail pass that I’m using to travel around Europe. It’s an EURail pass for 2019.

First, the ticket. It’s two piece and will need to be filled out as you go.

Second, you get a rail guide. The guide explains how to read the rail pass, and what different terms means. Importantly, it also tells you what rail companies in each country are included in your pass. Not all rail companies in an included country are always included. It will depend on the country you’re traveling in.

Third, you get a rail system map of Europe. It gives you basic touring information. At this point in technology, it’s really just an addition to the timetable app.

Rail passes used to come with a timetable booklet that allowed you to figure out if you could get from one destination to another. To be honest, the app is incredibly easier to use, and just better. It also updates with changes, where the printed book did not.

How to Use It.

The ticket will Need to be validated before you can take your first trip. You can have it validated when it is sent to you or you can just get it validation stamped at the train station you happen to be at, when you’re ready. The ticket needs to be validated for use within a certain amount of time after purchase. I believe it’s six months. You should check before you purchase your pass.

Now that you’re ready to go, the ticket has boxes for the first use day and for the last use day. Fill these out as appropriate. There are also boxes for each travel day (if it’s a five day ticket, then there will be five day of use boxes).

Attached to the ticket is trip worksheet to show each individual trip you take during a travel day. It’s important to remember that a day is 24 hours. Once you start a day, you can travel as many times as you want during that day. You just need to annotate each trip BEFORE you get on the train. The ticket voucher needs to be filled out to be valid.

A Thought About Reservations.

The major routes (busiest) and high speed rail systems (fastest lines) among others require an addition reservation from the train station before you travel. This is basically done to make sure they don’t oversell seats on the heavy routes.

Reservations require an addition charge on top of the rail pass. They should also be handled in advance of when you want to travel. Once all seats/sleeper sections are reserved, that’s it. Reservations on popular routes do and will run out. If you wait until when you want to travel to get your reservation, you may not be traveling that day. This has happened to me in more than one occasion. (When reservation start to go, they cascade from one time to the next, and soon there are none for a whole day. When you’re standing at the station with your bag and this happens, it sucks.)

The app will allow you to only see options that don’t require a reservation. This can be very helpful, if you’re a spontaneous person. Keep in mind that these options usually take longer to get where you want to go.

I hope that this may have helped to answer any questions kicking around. If you have a specific question, drop it in the comments and I’ll take a run at it. Some time on the internet will also help. The EURail.com website is super easy to navigate and understand.

Now, get out there and explore! Oh, and try and enjoy yourself while you do it. That really is the point of it all.