Europe planning

Well for anyone who actually bothers to follow this blog (Although I hate to admit it, but really I think no one reads all my crap), you'll would know that I'll be going to travel Europe for my grad trip. After the initial planning, I've come to realise that this is going to be a luxury backpacking trip. Initially we had estimated the entire cost to come to about 6k, but from the looks of things, I'm raising the estimated cost to about 7k. Well I guess the group that I'm going with is not really a live hard group. I have some experience in backpacking (sort of) during my time in China, so I know what it like is to live in less that comfortable situations just to save some cash but this group don’t seem to think that way. Saving the bits and pieces are of utmost importance when backpacking, especially when we're going to an expensive place like Europe and when we'll be there for close to 50 days. Below I shall analysis some things that I think can be done better. Of course when I try to voice out a little of my experience, they had their reasons for doing otherwise. So you can say that my suggestions were put to rest and the consequence is of course higher cost.

One of the problems that I have is the choice of booking all the hostels now. The reasons they gave was that because the time that we are going is considered a peak period, so they were worried that we would not be able to find a place to stay there if we didn’t book the hostels now. Can you imagine booking a month’s worth of hostels at this time. This is not the wisest thing to do during backpacking, the reason being that our schedules will all be locked by the hostel bookings. I can imagine ourselves rushing to each hostel to make sure that we manage to check in (because we’ve paid the deposit). Being foreign to that country, sometimes we have no idea how much we would want to see a country and we do not know if something urgent might crop up. So basically with all the hostels booked, we’ll have to make 100% sure that we follow the dates at the hostels accurately or else if one goes wrong, the entire schedule will break down. My suggestion, which was shot down, was to book the first week’s hostels, then we book the rest of the hostels while we are travelling there ie book as we travel. This gives us more flexibility and it will make things easier for us.

Another problem that I have is the fact that they didn’t book any overnight train rides. . This is the ultimate sin for backpacking. The reasons they gave for this is because we do not have enough time to check the train schedules and that we might have to change trains along the way, so if we miss a stop we might not know where we end up. This is just crap. They told me that they have decided that we will be taking the plane for any train ride that is more than 4 hrs to save time, wah!!! Because the plane ride is only 20 pounds as compared to the 36 pounds for the train ride. Excuse me, if you do your maths correctly, the 36 pounds includes your lodging (which is about S$50 a night) + transport. Getting on overnight trains not only saves on the lodging fees, you’ll also save a lot on travelling time. Already we have to make sure that we get to the hostels on time, which also means that we will probably have to take day train rides. Can you just see how much time will be wasted traveling? I can only imagine us rushing from place to place when we’re there, it will not be easy to take in a lot from this trip.

I guess I have a certain expectation of backpacking, and from my experience this is not really considered backpacking. Backpacking is not just about taking a few train rides to experience it and staying in hostels, it is a lot about have flexibility to enjoy the country and experience how people in a different country live during that short span of time there. Flying around in planes and rushing to get to hostels is definitely not backpacking, in fact its far from it, which is why I’m not expecting much from this trip this time. Initially I thought that DY will have much better idea of backpacking because he had been to Shanghai for GIP as well, and that he’s pretty well travelled. Well it seems that all the while they had been luxury travelers that this is probably the first they are trying out something like this. You can say that I’m a little disappointed, but what to do, everything is booked already, I know that I have not been heavily involved in the planning because I was busy with my report then (and because they always meet in school, which is so far away from me). Well I can’t change whatever has been set, I can only try to make the best of it. Hopefully we’ll be able to get something good out of this. One thing for sure, this trip is going to be fun. Going for a trip with friends is always a fun thing, I mean its not always that we’ll be able to do things like this. So here’s wishing us a great trip ahead!