I had my backpack stolen when I fell asleep in McDonalds. The guy came back with my passport and wanted to exchange it for 10 euros, but I snatched it out of his hands.

Meet Will, an Australian traveling around Europe, who, like myself, only bought a roundtrip ticket and nothing else. I met him at a hostel in Berlin and he told me this story and concluded by saying, “it’s actually quite liberating not having to worry about baggage.” Good on ya, Will. If that happened to me, I probably would just cry myself into denial.

Forget about all those blogs and articles that say Europe is cheap and you don’t need much money to begin to travel with. Perhaps those articles may be slightly true if you were to travel during off-peak season, but regardless, it’s not that cheap at all. I mean, there are certain cities that are cheaper but I wouldn’t recommend traveling around Europe on less than a grand.

Before coming to Europe/Scandinavia, I planned to have much more money than what I actually came with so that changed my itinerary in itself, and I was also ignorant on the fact that Scandinavia is stupidly expensive. I thought that I would be able to live the Aussie way and just plan everything as I went along, but as I learned the hard way, living care-free is expensive. You wouldn’t think it, but if you plan to fly to, let’s say, Germany on a seconds notice, the cheapest flight roundtrip may be 200 euros. Of course though, it is much more expensive during the holidays, when really, you can get a flight to Europe from Scandinavia for less than 50 euros most of the time.

I came to Finland with less than a grand after I lost about $200 after the exchange rate — the euro is so strong — To try and live on just that for 3 weeks was a struggle that defeated the purpose of me escaping to Europe for. A stress and care-free trip after a year worth of classes, had me stressing about how much money I could use each day and whether or not I would be sleeping vertically in a dodgy place. It was only the second day into the trip, and I was already losing sleep that wasn’t caused by jet-lag. Also, by only having that much money and not having bought any flights to Europe or booked hostels, that costed me about another 300 euros. So basically, I had to live on 500 Euros for 3 weeks. I’ve always wanted to learn the life of frugality; it’s quite famishing.

Note to self: if you want to have a hell of a good time, you need to plan ahead. I regret for not booking all of my flights and accommodation when I initially bought my tickets to Finland. If I had, I probably would have been able to hit 10 countries instead of just 4. But learning the hard way is the life for me.

When people say, “you should travel by the eurorail because it’s much cheaper than flying,” are basically slapping you in the face with lies. The eurorail is ridiculously expensive, and you either have a limit to how many times you can use the ticket or you have to constantly be moving. You’re better off just busing through Europe, because that will most likely save you from going into debt. Flying is also often cheaper than the rail as well, as long as you buy your ticket well in advance.

Europe is a great time, and Germany is so wunderbar, I could talk about it for ages.

So the moral of the story is to plan ahead. For me, that is the only way to travel stress-free. You know you’ll always have a place to sleep, and you don’t have to allocate a certain amount of money for long-distance transportation. Those two are definitely the most important items to be checked off when traveling. — I actually met two Aussies that planned their 5-week Euro trip a year and a half ago. Damn it, why didn’t I do that. — By the time you go on your trip, the money you bring, you can use for all the food and drinks you want. Trust me when I say this, because I didn’t get to eat nearly as much as I would have liked to.

Such is life.