Need advice backpacking/traveling in Europe
 

I am planning on going to Europe this summer for about a month. Altogether including the flight from America my budget will be approximately $3500. I'd like to visit as many countries as possible while I'm there. Suggestions? Places I have to see? I'm more interested in meetings locals and college students my age, seeing festivals and concerts, etc. than doing the normal tourist destinations. Definitely interested in seeing the Netherlands, Denmark, and England although the area around Greece and Italy would be great to visit too. I'm open to suggestions not really sure where to start.

OK -- this will sound cold -- but the first thing you need to do is either increase your budget (a lot) or shorten the trip (a lot).

$3500 won't cover a month including airfares. Your airfare alone will likely be over $1000 leaving you only maybe $75 or $80-ish per day. Plus the more you move around the more it will cost -- inter-city/inter-country transport on a busy itinerary like that would eat up another several hundred $$ - thus reducing your daily budget even more.

And - the less you move around, the <i>more</i> you actually see.

$3500 works out to $116 per day for 30 days, even if your flight costs nothing. If your flight costs $1,000 then you'll have a daily budget of $83 for 30 days in the most expensive part of Europe, excepting Greece. That may be an impossibly slim budget even if you stay in hostels.

If your budget is firm, then you should cut back the length of your visit to maybe 21 days and focus it in southern Europe where euros go farther.

Remember -- those festivals and concerts you want to attend can cost a LOT too . . .

For example Glastonbury (already sold out but just to give you an idea) costs more than $250.

I think you should start by pricing airfares so you know how much money you will have on the ground. Depending where you are starting from, even $1000 may be challenging to find. If you are a student, check STA Travel and Student Universe - my son found better fares on the latter, but nothing in the $!000 range.

One way to make your money go further is to couchsurf, and it will also hook you up with locals. There's a website, couchsurfing.com, that will help you put this together. Keep in mind that you can't use couchsurfing like a hotel - you will be expected to spend time with your hosts. My son couchsurfed successfully in London, Amsterdam, Leiden (the Netherlands as well), and Copenhagen.

You really need to relook at your budget.

Start with airfare - which if you can get for $1K will be a great deal.

Then you need to look at the cost of intercity transit - can be inexpensive if you buy far in advance - but that will reuire you to buy tickets for fixed dates and times.

The you need to look at the costs of several of the festivals and concerts you want to see - ticket prices should be available now (or you can check prices for last year).

Assume you wil have to stay in hostels or couchsurf. Both will allow you to meet local young people - but you also need to reserve this in advance (the bet hostels often sell out and you may be left with dreadful places that are not very pleasant or safe).

Agree that I don't see how you can do it for these amount - even walking a lot in cities versus local transit and eating lots of picnics or sandwiches from markets. Nightlife will be a major charge on yor budget - beer or wine in a student pub can be fairly cheap but any hard liquor or mixed drinks are very expensive.

FYI, my DD thena9, went with 2 friends for 6 weeks a couple of summers ago and spend almost $8K. However, they did stay in very modest hotels versus hostels - since they wanted guaranteed AC (not found in all lodgings in europe no matter how hot the weather).

Sorry - that should be 19 - cat on the keyboard.

In addition to exploring couchsurfing you may get more ideas about travelling on a frayed shoestring by looking at some of the sites more geared to young (and alternative) travelling like http://www.travelpunk.com/ or http://www.roadjunky.com/ or http://www.letsgo.com/ or a host of others.

And artsnletters, who posted above, has some great threads about scruffman, her son travelling on almost nothing. Click on her name and search her postings for a number of them about scruffman