me and a friend r planning to travel to europe in hopefully a year. obviously saving up. i was thinking of flying to ireland/london and perhaps staying for a while and work there then go to a different country . Perhaps doing a 3-4 month stay? definately wanting to g to italy germany austria switzerland. Like pay as you go. staying in hostles. geting a eurorail pass. the thing is how would i plan this on a budget? i have looked going thru serves (servas??). i also know its gonna be around $5k???? sooo if anyone has suggestions. please let me know!Travel to europe suggestions?
"they steal people over there"??????? What are you talking about???
Where are you from? What passport do you have? If you are British, this will be alot easier than if you are American or Australian for example. Getting a job legally in Europe will not be easy without some kind of work permit.
A Eurail pass will only make sense if you are traveling around a great deal. But since your plan is to try to get a job (if possible?), you probably will not be traveling too intensively.
Best way to travel will probably be using discount airlines. If you plan on staying a long time in one place, you will probably not save much money with Eurail passes. But you can find some amazing bargains in Europe with discount airlines:
http://www.travelswise.com/discountairli鈥?/a>
Hostels are definately a good way to sleep cheap. However, also look into Couch Surfing:
http://www.couchsurfing.com/
$5K will not be alot of money for 3 or 4 months. That will give you only about $50/day. I am not saying it is impossible, only difficult.
Definately do it. It is a great experience. But you will have your challenges. Reconsider the "working" idea. Maybe you can find somethings (house cleaning, baby sittting, etc) but probably not easily.
I would put together your budget by costing out the big ticket items:
* Travel to Europe= $1000 (?)
* Sleeping = $40/day
* Food = $/day
* Entertainment (nightlife, tours, etc) $/day
* Travel within Europe= $200/trip
Put values for all of those things and then add a percentage for error.....then you will have an idea of your budget.
If you are from the USA as you said, working in Europe is out of the question. No way you can do it legally, hard to find illegal work if you are on the go, too many legal people to do any kind of work. And big fines for employers who hire illegals.
All countries you name are expensive, traveling there will be more expensive than traveling in the USA is now.
You can stay in those countries 3 months without getting visa, but can not stay longer than that in the whole Schengen zone.
The countries that you name are mostly in the Schengen zone and so is much more of continental Europe.
In eastern Europe there are still a few countries not in, and so are the UK and Ireland.
Eastern Europe, the former communist countries, are much cheaper, but even there you will have problems to make it on a budget of no more than $US 5000.
You might get by with a budget of $ 7000, but that will be bare minimum, eating the cheapest supermarket foods, sleeping in the cheapest hostels and doing your sightseeing on foot, walking around the famous buildings because you have no money to pay for entry.
I think a budget of $10 000 each is more realistic.
And an Eurail pass is not automatically the cheapest option to travel. If you do mainly short distance rides, you will be better of just buying the tickets when you want to travel.
If you want to do long haul travel, you might want to consider buses, specially if you are on a tight budget, or book well in advance, getting cheaper rates of the trains.Travel to europe suggestions?
yes you must be remember that staying (mostly western europe places such as uk, france and holland) is more than twice as dear than the us.
so just kind of set that amount of money out, basically 2 days in the us = same price as one day in europe.
and yes working will not be easy unless you are willing to do it unprofessionaly.
Insted of getting the rail pass i also just recomend flying as it is very cheap in europe comapred to america (its cheaper than train or the bus). For example to fly from Ediburgh to Dublin is usually only costs 拢1, Glasgow to paris can cost 拢10.
So flying is the best i say but the cheapest airlines are wizz air and ryanair.
london is really good, but be sure not to but a hotel just rent a house..it's cheaper
depends when are you gonna visit Europe..i think that if it is in the summertime you 'd probably like to visit the southern countries ,such as Italy, Spain, Greece so you ll have the chance either to work there -in a tourist shop camping- and also spend a good time after midnight. Specially in Greece you can visit an island ,like Crete,Mykonos or Santorini, work there and accommodation is offered by the company you work for.
Here's how you do it...first of all, work is near impossible in Europe these days. Legal work involves a visa that you will not be likely to get. Illegal work is pretty slim to nonexistent.
Train travel, which is best if your stops are close together, is better (now do your research to be sure, but) to just buy the tickets as you go. Especially since you must buy your Eurrail in the States, and then, once you start it, you need to continue travelling to make it worthwhile. Stopping for a month to work after two weeks of travel, well, just a waste. Also, more and more, you HAVE to buy seats, and you HAVE to pay supplementary charges, and when you put that all together, the two main benefits of the Eurrail are gone: the hop on hop off feature doesn't exist if you still have to buy seats and extra fees, and they add up to the same or more than you would pay for the tickets individually. Just not the same.
But you can go to any travel site and figure out about how much your airfare will be. Make sure you make note of the TOTAL price...including taxes and transfers, etc., because the published price is much lower to hook you.
Go to RailEurope.com or Eurrail websites, to find out how much the train pass would cost, and then add up all the tickets, using sites that get you the individual ticket prices, (RENFE for Spain, SNCF for France, Britrail for Britain, etc. you can find all the names, if you can't get the prices off RailEurope). compare and decide which way would be most beneficial.
Then check the cities you want to go to. Just go to any website for any city, say Paris, and you'll get a list of sites that advertise on one side or on the bottom. You'll find lodging there. OR you could put "lodging Paris" or "hostels Paris" into the search engine, and you'll find the cheapest places. http://www.international-youth-hostels.c鈥?/a> will get you the International Youth Hostesl...you buy your memebership card at the first one, but some cities don't have one. Paris, for example, used to charge as much as cheap accomodation, but it''s like 20 minutes out of the city, so I stayed in the city in a little boarding house. Five minutes walk to Notre Dame, less to the Metro station, and ten minutes to any monument in the city from there.
As for food, you have to decide what you want to do. So you plan to eat in nice places? caf茅s? picnic from the markets/grocery stores? or, as many people do, just carry a hunk of bread from the closest bread store, a chunk of cheese, and a bottle of water, and eat when you have time or are hungry. (cheapest method). You supplement that with a halfway decent dinner in the youth hostel, that you cook yourself, while swapping tips with the people who have just come from where you are going, and the ones who are going where you just came from. Great places to meet TONS of cool people!
Once you come up with a number (and $5,000 sounds about right), you add ten to twenty percent for inflation and the ever sagging dollar, just to be safe, and you should be fine. (and cross your fingers things don't get worse!)
OH! and use common sense, and have a great trip! (don't forget your camera)
British Pound double the value of US dollar, Euro 1.6 time the value of US dollar. Very hard to live in the expensive countries in that budget. Working possibililty will be very slim unless the employers are willing to risk the penalty, that also means, you may be hired in way lower than average wage, otherwise, why the employers have to take the risks.
Change your travel plan to eastern europe or asia..........
be so careful not sure if you are male or female but remember they steal people over there also and they do that its not just a movie they have so be careful and dont' go alone and be alone with no one. just have good time take care its things would have loved to do when i was young but too chicken to do it.
No comments:
Post a Comment