How to visit 30 cities for less than $450USD – Europe on the cheap | Hacker News Reader

How to visit 30 cities for less than $450USD – Europe on the cheap

nomadapp.co

54 pointse_reder35 comments

You can actually do something similar with an Interrail Pass [1]. It's a train ticket valid in all of Europe for 1 month for €407 if you're under 26 or €532 if you're older. Still, pretty cool!

1: http://www.interrail.eu

A funny hack to save money on your accommodation with the Interrail pass is to use night trains for sleeping. Many interrailers might stay in Paris for a week, but every night they jump on a random train towards somewhere, sleep for 4 hours, then switch trains going back towards Paris, and sleep the way back.

Sadly, there are ever fewer sleepers left; a combination of low-cost flights and high-speed rail have essentially killed them.

Watch out for the sleepers further east (Bulgaria, Romania etc.). Great for thieves, not so great for sleepers.

US users probably don't know much about it but Interrail is one of the greatest things about being young European, together with the Erasmus student exchange program. Add the very low-cost airline ticket to the mix on a continent that is quite safe and peaceful place and you may start to understand why young people are much more positive towards the EU project than the previous generations.

EU is also planning to give Interrail tickets to to all young EU citizens, I hope it becomes a reality: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/interrail-pas...

Europe can be cheap as much as you want, hitchhiking and youth hostels are safe and available pretty much everywhere. You can even visit expensive cities like London for about 20$-30$ a day by sleeping in a hostel and and eating fast food(or even cheaper if you do groceries and cook in your hostel).

I really love what we have in Europe, it would be a huge tragedy if it all collapses back to the divided and hostile Europe.

Most European children don't go through Erasmus or inter rail.

A train ticket for kids paid for by unwilling tax payers is little more than bribery and propaganda. It's disgusting, they can't win the hearts and minds of the populace so they insinuated themselves in schools and now are outright bribing kids.

I was pro-stay, but some of the stunts the EU are pulling to get kids to believe in EU federalisation are disgusting.

I understand how it concerns you and how on principle can be against your ideology but I wouldn't call a train ticket "disgusting" :)

Giving young people means to travel is not brain washing, it's actually the opposite as they can actually go to that country and see what it is all about so they would be less susceptible to propaganda. It's like public education but with no teachers to push an ideology(it's just a ticket, doesn't come with a guide), I would say that if EU manages to pull this of it would be a great public service.

About 15% of students in Europe take part in Erasmus. Considering moving abroad alone for a year to a country where you don't necessarily speak the language is quite intimidating I'd say that's a pretty high number of students. As for inter rail - maybe the fact it's €400 just for the train ticket is why the only people I know who have done it are quite well off. Making it available to everyone who wants it should change that, opening the experience up to everyone regardless of background.

Edit: Making an experience available to everyone isn't exactly propaganda.*

*unlike that extra £350m pw going to the NHS

Whats wrong with wanting the youth of Europe to be well traveled and be versed in differnt cultures. Even if it is propaganda, it's certainly beneficial.

I did both Interrail and Erasmus and its probably the best things I did in my life.

I will be more than happy to contribute to that with my taxes to give opportunities to young people to become more open minded.

You don't feel that it could be described as education?

Taking from people to give free backpacking travel to 18-year-olds (who should be able to work and save up enough for a rail pass on their own), because some overpaid technocrat thought it would "promote belief in the EU" or what not ... I can see why so many hate the EU.

yeah! I love Interrail! That's a really good option, too! I might add it to the blog post. Thanks :)

Just a quick warning though. A lot of those flights are not originating from the city or main airports. For instance, the "Brussels" flight they suggest taking is from an airport that is one hour away from Brussels (in Charleroi). It means that you will need to spend some more money to get to the city centres. These additional costs from "low cost" airports to the cities do add up to a significant amount on that entire itinerary. Just something to keep in mind.

That's quite right. You can safely add $10 per flight for transport to the airport.

This article is omitting a lot of side expenses.

Let's take Paris case: if you use Ryanair as stipulated, you'll end up in Beauvais which is about 80kms from Paris. You'll need to add a 20€ mandatory bus fare or find a car sharing in order to arrive in the city.

The idea is cool and definitely doable if you are highly organized. But you'll need way more preparation than this vague travel roadmap...

yeah... I've landed in Stansted a few times myself and spent nights at the airport waiting for my 7am flight with Ryanair. London, Brussels and Paris are a bit of a pain.

This is poor advice.

You'd spend all your time dealing with flights and inconveniently located airports. You're left with no flexibility, since so much has to be booked in advance.

Instead, look up how train ticket prices are set -- for example, in the UK a budget backpacker would need to book ahead to get at affordable price, but there's no need in Poland. If you miss a cheap pre-booked train in the UK you need a new ticket, but on most trains in Germany you've only lost the seat reservation (I think).

Buses are often cheaper than trains, but much less comfortable and have poor views along motorways -- only use them if the train is too expensive, or the journey a lot more direct / faster.

You then have the flexibility to spend longer in one city than you planned, or to leave early when the weather is bad and you're bored of museums, or to break journeys in smaller towns and villages, which makes for a more interesting trip than a succession of major cities.

Students with a very tight budget should stick to Eastern Europe, and not only EU states. There are Roman ruins in Albania, vineyards in Romania, modern war history in Bosnia Herzegovinia, and beautiful 19th century buildings in Hungary.

I think it's worth to book a bit ahead if that means you can save that much money. E.g. book the flights ahead of time and then still spend a few weeks at every destination. This itinerary is meant to take like 2-3 months. You can still go to all the little towns and villages. But it might make sense to fly into the cities to score the cheap deals. And if you're on such a tight budget just don't stay in super expensive places like London or Paris (just use them as connection hubs...) All I want to do with this itinerary is show the economies of traveling in Europe e.g. flying from London to Linz and not to Vienna which will cost you 5 times as much. Or flying from Rome to Barcelona instead of Zurich to Barcelona lets say.

Interesting how you're crisscrossing the continent using this route. I would definitely choose a more "intuitive" path, but I guess that the fares would be higher.

> From Zagreb head to neighbor country Slovenia. The country is only inhabitated by about 4 Mio. people (one of them used to be the US First Lady Melania Trump). Stop by Slovenia’s plitvice lakes if you can.

Croatia has 4,5 million people, Slovenia has 2 million. Melania Trump is from there, Plitvice lakes are in Croatia.

503 error, anyone have working link?

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

travel is cheap but you should sleep somewhere and that's expensive.

There's always hostels. Down to $30 some places per night, a small locker to keep your valuables. No?

Edit: this comment is bogus. I didn't know about sweet Schengen visa .

Only applicable to people from rich countries

Visa costs for everyone else,

UK - $160

Germany - $120-$210

Spain - $100

Portugal - $80

France - $67

Belgium - $80

... you get the idea.

Ever heard of Schengen?

Nope, you can get a Schengen Visa and you will be able to visit most of the countries.

Also, EU citizens can travel visa free. There is a visa free travel opportunities for many other citizens from the world as EU or individual countries have special agreements with many countries.

So no, it is not a 100 bucks per country visa fees.

Should note that the UK is not part of Schengen. That visa alone is ~100 GBP if you need it.

Free for people in the one of the 26 Schengen countries.

Almost all of the countries are in the Schengen area, so if you skip the UK you just need one visa for the whole lot.

Fun fact: there's not even border control between those countries.

Except airports. And you do need the Schengen visa, plus there are some minor rules like "you need to register with the local police if you're staying in some countries over X months"; this is not really an issue on a trip like this.

Nope, not even airports if your flight is within the Schengen area.

Sorry, my bad. Didn't realize that larger airports have separate Schengen and non-Schengen terminals.

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