Okay, so now that you have a budget, an itinerary, and an idea of locations, now it is time to book it all. Of course, the earlier you book your tickets, the cheaper they are going to be.

Book your tickets as early as possible!: When you know where you want to go, your first step should be financing the tickets needed to get where it is you want to be. Now there is more than one way to skin a cat. Of course, since backpacking typically implies doing stuff "on the cheap" i would suggest if you are under the age of 30, is trying to book your tickets with STA Travel. I suggest STA because they provide affordable rates for Hostel and Hotel bookings as well as tickets. It is the ideal tool for the young backpacker to utilize, and unfortunately i did my research on STA while i was over seas... I believe that you can save lots of money at a student rate than if you chose to purchase at a standard rate.

Another note on booking tickets as early as possible... if you have a solid understanding of your itinerary and all of your hostel bookings, you can just book all of your train, and airplane tickets in advance and save lots of money. If you are only spending most of your time in major cities, you can save money by advance booking your tickets.

Eurail Passes (or other equivalents): In Europe, there are many different ways of traveling by train. Purchasing a Eurail pass allows you to have a certain level of travel throughout the EU. As an American citizen you are allowed to purchase one, however citizens of the EU are not. A note about Eurail passes: While you "save money" on the front end, there is a lot of possibility of losing gobs of cash on the back end. Why? because you can get lost on the train system, or in one of my experiences, having to deal with a rail worker strike by the ::coughcough::french::coughcough::. It doesnt sound as if you are losing money right? However when you have hotels/hostels booked, and you lose money to missed reservations, and also have to spend extra bucks on getting to your destination whether it is by bus or plane... you end up losing money... and lots after a while. Personally I don't have very many intentions of ever using a Eurail pass ever again just because of the funds i ended up burning as a result of using it. Now, it is still a useful tool. You can get lots of "free" train bookings which is nice and you don't have to worry about fumbling around and looking after tickets. I suggest trying it (at least once)... just to see what your experience is... hell, it could be very different from mine. You can book Eurail passes with STA Travel as well.

Hostels!: Okay... before going into hostels, it is important to note that if you think you can just waltz into any respectable hostel with clean sheets, hot showers, and a good atmosphere in HIGH SEASON you are absolutely, POSITIVELY WRONG. It doesnt work like that. The reason why i suggest planning out an itenerary is because you can completely advance book all of your hostels. The closer to high season that you make a hostel booking the more likely the cost of a single bed will go up. I am telling you only once: DO NOT TRY AND BOOK HOSTELS ON THE ROAD!. Not because you cannot do it, but because you are cutting up your budget with high season rates. Most hostels will honor the rate at which you booked them which is why you book them outside of high season far in advance when most people like you aren't really thinking of making their bookings and are actually convinced that they "have time". The fact is, you DONT have time. Optimally rated hostels will go fast whether it is because of group bookings, location, or general facilities. If you think you are going to walk into a hostel in the middle of june or worse yet, july, and think you are going to get a room when you are in Paris, Barcelona, Ibiza, or Hamburg... you better get ready to fork up some major dough to pay for a cheap hotel room (which aint all that cheap). If you are looking to go to Amsterdam, forget about it! There are rooms available, but most are either in dodgey sections of town, or are extremely over priced (like 225 EU for a bed with 6 other bed in it, over priced). So do yourself a favor, advance book everything. Also, be sure to do your homework on hostels because some are affiliated with certain organizations such as YHA, or HI... If you need more information on hostel bookings i suggest you check out Gomio, Hostelling International, Hostels.com and STA Travel.

You are probably thinking right now, "Cliff, you are telling me to prepare for everything in advance, so where will all of the adventure be in having everything go perfect?" The fact of the matter is, while yes, it makes for a good story to talk about how you got lost and ended up in the wrong country, or landed in a city but had to sleep in a train station because of no available hostels, but the fact is that after a while you realize that everything that is "part of the adventure" deftly becomes cumbersome and unenjoyable... You spend so much of your time in worry about where the next place is, that you in many ways forget that the entire purpose of the trip is to have fun and not spend your time in worry. Trust me, even when you have everything planned out to a key, stuff still goes wrong... You'll get your adventure despite all of your plans.

Okay. As stated before, some people like the idea of not planning your trip... and well, it is a good idea minus all of the associated risks involved. Now granted, some can get away with not spending as much time planning... depending on what time of year it is. But if you are young, adventurous, and ready to shake a leg and throw back some shots with other young, like minded people... you will want to go in the summer time in which case, you will want to plan. Summer time is the high season and it is so easy to meet many wonderful, beautiful, adventurous young people... just like you.


The first question you need to ask yourself is how long do you want to go for?:
During my stay, I came across groups of all shapes, sizes, and age groups all staying for different periods of time. There are certain things to take into account when asking how long does one wish to stay for. Some of these things are: how many places do you want to go, and for how long do you want to stay at them(we'll discuss later)? and What is your budget(we'll discuss later)? The longer you stay in a foreign country, especially a western European one, the more expensive it is... Guaranteed. While there are certainly cheap eats in Europe, not only does the conversion hurt, but Western Europe is also just numerically higher than the United States. Most people I came across on my trip averaged a total time of about 3 weeks. Personally i feel that three weeks is ideal as it gives you not too little time, but also not too much time as well. Me and my friend stayed there for four weeks which personally felt was a week too long. Jonathan's brother Fon, typically stays away from home for a few months... and by a few I can mean anywhere from two to eight... When one stays overseas for this long though, many times people will take up jobs to help compensate for meals, room and board expenses. However, I suggest you start with about three depending on how many countries you plan to visit. You can visit roughly four or five countries with three weeks... and comfortably so with four weeks.

Money matters: and don't think that it doesnt. For doing things on the cheap... and by cheap I mean cheap, I would suggest going along this table. If all of your hostels are pre booked, most places will honor the locked in rate that you booked it at. You will save booking money that way.

2 weeks = $1500 - $2000 (comfortably)
3 weeks = $2500 - $3000 (comfortably)
4 weeks = $3000 - $4000 (comfortably)

In a four week period, if you go in excess of $4000 you can do this trip at an extremely comfortable pace... Money matters will also dictate where you want to go. If you want to save money, you can do so by finding a friend's house to stay at (if you know any body) or avoid really expensive cities. By defining really expensive cities, i mean cities where you can make an entire vacation out of spending a week in that city with the budget you have for the entire trip. Expensive cities include: Nice (or anywhere on the French Riviera for that matter), Paris, London, Milan, Madrid, Barcelona, and most places in Switzerland. If you want to sustain more of your finances, eastern europe is a good bet for a cheap five star meal and a good place to rest your head... or so many backpackers say. If you want to cut your budget in the west, I suggest going to the supermarket and getting groceries. Groceries are cheap. You can purchase a liter of coke for cheaper than a small glass bottle of coke in a restaurant. The same applies for meats, snacks, and other consumables. If your hostel has a usable kitchen. Utilize it! you will be glad you did... and you can avoid spending gobs of money in really expensive places like Paris.
Here are the minimum rates for some western european countries.
Minimum budget per western european country (USD)
Spain: 50USD
France: 70 USD
Germany: 50-60
Great Britain*: 20-50USD

*Great Britain, while at a 2 to 1 scale with the United States, is not as numerically high as the United States on most things.

Where do you want to go?: Now here comes the fun part... While this series of posts details arranging a trip for Western Europe, it can be applied to anywhere that moves you. However, I would highly suggest a European (particularly a Western European country) for these reasons:

• Reason 1, Singular Currency:You only have to worry about financing the Euro, and not having to switch currencies for all of the places you choose to go on your trip. Also you dont have to worry about running conversion numbers through your head for everywhere you go on your trip because it is one, solid (albeit crappy), rate.
• Reason 2, Governmental Stability: Okay, so not all places you go to outside of Europe are going to be politically instable, however, after some conversations with fellow travelers over some brewskis in London, I found out that many eastern european countries, despite their affordability, are incredibly corrupt. If you are a new traveler, you will have to get used to the language barrier, transportation, lodging, not getting robbed, and a bunch of other things which generally means that you dont want to have to worry about fleeing the country the next coup d'etat takes place.
• Reason 3, A good introduction to backpacking: Look at this experience as backpacking 101. It is the perfect tutorial on how to take care of yourself, set up a budget, and follow an itinerary.
• Reason 4, Free and open travel:Because most of western europe is in the EU, when you visit, you get free and open travel within the european union which means that you dont have to go through customs every time you go over a border and wait to get your passport stamped, and your bags checked.

and finally, What will be my itenarary?: Take my advice, YOU WANT AN ITENERARY THE FIRST TIME AROUND (especially in the high season)! You will want one to help create a stronger sense of reference within your trip. You need to know if you are going according to schedule. Plan out how long you want to stay in each place. Also, iteneraries help people better pick out what their living arrangements are going to be for the entire trip. Iteneraries save time, they save money, and they allow your trip to go smoothly. If you dont want to listen to me, fine. But be prepared for the fresh new hell that awaits you every waking moment of your trip due to having plans that just weren''t fleshed out enough.

Next post we will talk about setting it all up so that it meshes together... bookings, boats, trains and aeroplanes!

So, word around the campfire is that you now want to backpack huh? Well, if you have been following the last fifteen of my posts, or if you have heard from a friend of a friend that it is the best damned thing since sliced bread well hey... its enough for me to want to tell you what you need to know, and just drop the facts on you like a ton of bricks. Backpacking through foreign countries has had a certain allure to it since the 70's when people would just "get up and go" to certain places not entirely sure of how they were going to finance their way, and not entirely sure of where they were going next. But now in the 21st century with cell phones, laptops, and cheap flight websites this has become an unnecessary burden to bear. However, there are certainly some of you that probably feel that planning out everything takes the allure away from the entire trip... But lets be honest... and I am speaking from experience here, the less you plan, the more can go wrong (I will go into this in more depth later). If any of you have seen the movie Eurotrip then you understand what i am saying. While yes, there is the eminent possibility of ending up on the wrong train (which happened to me), you also have to worry about the general safety of certain places, and whether or not you will have to feel threatened for your, pack, money, or kidneys... do you understand?

This series of Overseas backpacking for dummies is going to be chock full of suggestions and only take them as such. I do not want any of you to feel any sort of obligation to do so and should you? HELL NO! Why? You are individuals! and if you aren't individuals, by the time you are done with this trip you damn well will be. Not only can i not force you to do any of these things (no matter how beneficial they may be) i wouldn't want to force you to do anything you aren't comfortable doing. Plus, i can also learn from different strategies from fellow backpackers. When doing research on how I was gong to go about traveling in Europe there were certain things I certainly took heed to and other things I generally dismissed.

Before going in, lets address some things you might face over there:

You might get robbed: Yes, it happens. For those of you who live in large cities, this doesn't apply to you (unless you are the unlucky guy who regularly gets his pocket picked). I am directing this to most of you suburbanites... Yes, those of you who are used to living in small suburban communities where people laugh and smile all the damn time (even when they don't like you) and are polite and ask you how your day was, and where people don't honk their horn when the stop light just turns green... yes, you. There is certainly the possibility you have never faced anybody trying to rob you, or been in a situation where potentials might try and take your shit... Prevention is easy. Take your wallet out of your back pocket, and put it in one of your front pockets. I'll go into more details later.

Stuff is going to be expensive, you will be on a budget(duh): If you don't know... now you know.

Examine your own physical fitness: As farfetched as this may sound much of this trip involves lots of physical fitness. You need to be in enough shape to carry your own stuff. On the road, I come across many individuals (namely women), who cannot carry their own stuff. Now while I consider myself a gentleman and always available to help someone who needs it, there are other people who cannot concern themselves with affairs that do not involve them and hence, will not help someone in need. Also, there may be periods when you walk longer than anticipated... You might have to walk long distances, you might have to walk up hills, you might have to move a little faster than usual and pick up your pace... the more in shape you are, the easier it is to handle whatever your adventure may throw at you.

Bring a friend: Hell, bring more than one friend. While two is better than one, I guarantee you that three or even four is better than two. The more people that come, the less likely you are to go insane, or even feel your sanity slipping away from you. More friends help you when you cannot deal with someone, when you are feeling stressed out, and when you are out on the town. Both John and I agreed on our trip that our experience would have been better if we brought more people because it equates to more people to hang out with, and a lower likeliness of hearing the same thing more than once (I will go into more detail on this one later on as well). If you choose to go with only one other friend, i suggest you rethink this option not only for your sake, but also for your friend's sake... you can very well risk needing a LOT of space later on after the trip and your friend needing a lot of space from you...

So now lets move on past all of the psychological preparation and get onto the fun stuff... PLANNING YOUR TRIP!

My eyes shot open to be greeted by birds chirping, my brother laughing, and my cousin screaming from the Video Games going on in the next room. The adventure was over, the language barrier had fallen, and now I was given the opportunity to speak about what I thought about the trip. It has been almost two weeks since I made my landing back into the United States. Things have changed but that has been the story of my life for the last four years... what is new? Looking back on it all, despite all problems that arose, I met some of the most interesting people I have ever met in my entire life... and plan to go back to the horizon again.

The End(for now).
-Cliff