Buy the ticket, take the ride!

My completed Travel Map 31.1.16

We all have dreams and we all have moments when we want to just pack a suitcase and go somewhere far away from our day to day life. I had one of those moments for most of 2015 for various reasons. I had longed to go to Europe for decades so in early November I bit the bullet, visited my local travel agent and bought an airline ticket for Saturday November 28, 2015 from Adelaide, South Australia to Dusseldorf, Germany, and a return ticket for January 30, 2016 from Prague, Czech Republic back to Adelaide.

I planned to be abroad for two months but other than that, and a rough itinerary of which countries/areas and which friends I wanted to visit, I left all of my travel plans open apart from accommodation the first week after arriving, and for five days around actual Christmas Day. I had never travelled outside of Australia before, had no skills in foreign language and thought I would just 'wing it'. I only planned my next stages a mere week or two in advance while 'on the road' and that enabled me to alter plans easily and by looking for and often finding great value options on services like MegaBus or FlixBus. For the most part, it didn't cost much extra than having had longer term bookings for transport and the flexibility was great.

Heading from the Australian summer to the European winter was not only really exciting but sadly, it meant that I really over-packed. I had no idea of how cheap good boots and jackets were in the countries I visited, especially Poland, so next trip to Europe in winter I will only be taking carry-on luggage (my cameras and minimal personal items such as a clean shirt) and will buy luggage, clothing and footwear as I need it. Less is more and how much easier it will be to get through customs. Not everybody could travel so lightly but I know I can.

The other major mistakes I made were being unprepared financially. Though I had minimal funds for the entire trip, I managed, but where I lost out was having a Cash Passport Card (so much money was chewed up by fees just on transferring money from Australia to it - my primary currency was Euros) and also not having enough actual cash of whatever the local currency was when entering foreign countries that used Euros as a secondary currency (Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, United Arab Emirates). In Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, and Slovakia there weren't any problems as they all used Euros.

In saying that, all of the errors and lessons only added to the adventure and all worked out fine in the end. I did drag too much heavy luggage around for far too much of the trip and ended up posting souvenirs home from Germany at expensive prices but they did arrive safely and promptly. It was a better option than lugging them around with me for four or five weeks. So, never underestimate the importance of travelling light. The lighter, the better (unless you are going to a country where shops are limited) as you can buy almost anything you need once you arrive.

Less is best!