I'm shamelessly procrastinating from packing up my apartment so I thought I'd make a quick post about some of the resources I've used to plan the trip.
For budgeting purposes I've used the Price of Travel European Backpacker Index, which can be found here: Cheapest cities in Europe in 2017 - 56 major European cities by price It's ordered by US dollar values but I have tended to use euros for the cities that use the euro, pounds for the UK and converted into AUD everywhere else.
I've used this site - which also has less extensive indices for other continents - as a budgeting tool for my US and Japan trips, and I've found that it works well as a base of assumptions, but that I have to allow a bit more for each budget line. I don't like to stay in bargain basement hostels, I tend to spend more on attractions and food but I rarely drink alcohol (and never on my own). What I've found is that if I budget 30% more per day then I come out slightly ahead, allowing for some minor unexpected expenses (I also have a budget for unexpected *major* expenses, but that's a separate thing).
I've made provisional hostel bookings for the entire trip, and my accommodation costs are running at an average of 15% more than the bed prices listed on the Index. For that extra 15% I'm getting small dorms (no more than 6 beds in a room), in mostly high quality hostels. I'm only rarely staying in places with average ratings of below 8/10. So I'm running under budget for accommodation and getting pretty decent places to stay.
Zoo and aquarium visits are a killer cost for attractions, and with my tentative itinerary I'm actually running at about 135% of the Index - slightly over budget - for attractions. I can live with that, both because I'm a bit ahead on accommodation (and transport, which I'll come to later) and because that's just how much it costs. If I need to cut spending I'm going to look to do it on food and accommodation rather than, say, stand outside a major zoo without going in. I use Wikitravel for a brief overview of the major attractions in any given destination, although you should double check the prices listed on the institution's official website. Many of those listed on Wikitravel are out of date, but conversely you can also find online discounts.
Food is a bit of a wildcard, but it's also something that I have a fair amount of flexibility on. I have about 600 meals to eat along the way, as well as caffeine (Coke Zero being my poison of choice) and I'll need to stay well stocked on sugary snacks too. That might be counter-intuitive for those who don't know diabetes, but it cuts both ways: when I'm more active than usual I'm prone to low blood sugar, and there have been days when I was away that I simply couldn't drink Gatorade fast enough to keep going.
But anyway - this is a budget line that could blow out if I get reckless, but about half of my breakfasts are provided for by hostels, and I can eat relatively cheaply from markets and so on too. I'm aiming to buy one vegetarian meal from a cheap restaurant each day. My parsimony with respect to alcohol also gives me some latitude for food, as that is a component of the index that I'll usually not be using at all.
It hints at how much ground I'm seeking to cover that, of the 56 destinations listed, a total of 33 are relevant to my trip. I have some destinations that aren't listed, and for these I've used the nearest city in the same country; a fairly rough and ready substitute, but one that seems to be working. I've budget-mapped the more expensive countries and my known expenses - accommodation, attractions I definitely want to visit and transport costs - are less than two-thirds of my budget. Most reassuring.
For accommodation my preferred site is Booking.com, with Hostelworld as a less-favoured alternative. Booking tends to be a bit more expensive as you get closer to the dates you're looking to book, and I think they tend to have fewer rooms available for any given hostel. But what they have in their favour is much greater flexibility: nearly all Booking.com properties have free cancellation up to a couple of days before check-in. Often the booking is slightly more expensive to maintain the free cancellation, but it's worked out well worth it because I've put provisional bookings in place up to nine months ahead, and jumped on some remarkable savings as a result without sacrificing flexibility until I was ready to book trains or ferries.
Booking.com also has far superior customer service to Hostelworld; I've managed to clear up a couple of little issues through them without any hassle, whereas with Hostelworld at best I've received an email days after the fact. And when you do book on Hostelworld you have to pay a non-refundable deposit; if you pay more for a flexible booking you can get a cancelled deposit back, but only as credit for a future booking, locking you into using Hostelworld again within 12 months.
For inter-city transport I expected, for a long time, to use Eurail passes and budgeted accordingly. Ultimately I recognised that they didn't add up, to the tune of saving thousands of dollars by making my own train, bus and ferry bookings ahead of time. I can see how a Eurail pass would benefit a Zoochatter coming for a short period of time, focusing their trip entirely on zoos and wanting to move rapidly between cities. If you were doing a three week trip to zoos in, say, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland then they might well work for you. But not for me.
It's proven a far better strategy to simply make bookings myself, as and when the services I want to use open. It means I face a high sunk cost should I later choose to re-jig my plans but I don't mind: between my early accommodation and transport bookings I estimate I'm saving somewhere between $6,000 and $10,000. Flexibility is nice, but I'm not paying that much for it.
There are two train websites that don't actually sell tickets but have been indispensable in planning. www.seat61.com/ has a somewhat messy and confusing layout but once I got used to it, it became my go-to source for scoping out major train routes and especially to determine when fares become available. Another great website is railcc, which allows you to plug in two major cities (say, Munich and Stockholm) and not only find available connections but a full breakdown of the timetable, with all scheduled stops listed. This has been hugely helpful in planning my crossings in and out of the Schengen zone, as ideally you want to cross out of the zone before midnight and into it after midnight, so as to preserve precious visa-free days.
My preferred site to make bookings in Western Europe has been trainline.eu, which has most of the major rail providers in the region and sells discount fares at face value, without any mark-ups or handling fees. I've also made some use of Loco2 as well as the official websites of a couple of providers. For bus services I like GoEuro, which features quite a lot of bargain-basement services. For ferry services I've used Direct Ferries to search for options, but I've always booked directly through the ferry line's website, as I've found the prices can be a bit better.
I'll leave it there for now. I've ignored these book shelves long enough. Time to return to the packing.
For budgeting purposes I've used the Price of Travel European Backpacker Index, which can be found here: Cheapest cities in Europe in 2017 - 56 major European cities by price It's ordered by US dollar values but I have tended to use euros for the cities that use the euro, pounds for the UK and converted into AUD everywhere else.
I've used this site - which also has less extensive indices for other continents - as a budgeting tool for my US and Japan trips, and I've found that it works well as a base of assumptions, but that I have to allow a bit more for each budget line. I don't like to stay in bargain basement hostels, I tend to spend more on attractions and food but I rarely drink alcohol (and never on my own). What I've found is that if I budget 30% more per day then I come out slightly ahead, allowing for some minor unexpected expenses (I also have a budget for unexpected *major* expenses, but that's a separate thing).
I've made provisional hostel bookings for the entire trip, and my accommodation costs are running at an average of 15% more than the bed prices listed on the Index. For that extra 15% I'm getting small dorms (no more than 6 beds in a room), in mostly high quality hostels. I'm only rarely staying in places with average ratings of below 8/10. So I'm running under budget for accommodation and getting pretty decent places to stay.
Zoo and aquarium visits are a killer cost for attractions, and with my tentative itinerary I'm actually running at about 135% of the Index - slightly over budget - for attractions. I can live with that, both because I'm a bit ahead on accommodation (and transport, which I'll come to later) and because that's just how much it costs. If I need to cut spending I'm going to look to do it on food and accommodation rather than, say, stand outside a major zoo without going in. I use Wikitravel for a brief overview of the major attractions in any given destination, although you should double check the prices listed on the institution's official website. Many of those listed on Wikitravel are out of date, but conversely you can also find online discounts.
Food is a bit of a wildcard, but it's also something that I have a fair amount of flexibility on. I have about 600 meals to eat along the way, as well as caffeine (Coke Zero being my poison of choice) and I'll need to stay well stocked on sugary snacks too. That might be counter-intuitive for those who don't know diabetes, but it cuts both ways: when I'm more active than usual I'm prone to low blood sugar, and there have been days when I was away that I simply couldn't drink Gatorade fast enough to keep going.
But anyway - this is a budget line that could blow out if I get reckless, but about half of my breakfasts are provided for by hostels, and I can eat relatively cheaply from markets and so on too. I'm aiming to buy one vegetarian meal from a cheap restaurant each day. My parsimony with respect to alcohol also gives me some latitude for food, as that is a component of the index that I'll usually not be using at all.
It hints at how much ground I'm seeking to cover that, of the 56 destinations listed, a total of 33 are relevant to my trip. I have some destinations that aren't listed, and for these I've used the nearest city in the same country; a fairly rough and ready substitute, but one that seems to be working. I've budget-mapped the more expensive countries and my known expenses - accommodation, attractions I definitely want to visit and transport costs - are less than two-thirds of my budget. Most reassuring.
For accommodation my preferred site is Booking.com, with Hostelworld as a less-favoured alternative. Booking tends to be a bit more expensive as you get closer to the dates you're looking to book, and I think they tend to have fewer rooms available for any given hostel. But what they have in their favour is much greater flexibility: nearly all Booking.com properties have free cancellation up to a couple of days before check-in. Often the booking is slightly more expensive to maintain the free cancellation, but it's worked out well worth it because I've put provisional bookings in place up to nine months ahead, and jumped on some remarkable savings as a result without sacrificing flexibility until I was ready to book trains or ferries.
Booking.com also has far superior customer service to Hostelworld; I've managed to clear up a couple of little issues through them without any hassle, whereas with Hostelworld at best I've received an email days after the fact. And when you do book on Hostelworld you have to pay a non-refundable deposit; if you pay more for a flexible booking you can get a cancelled deposit back, but only as credit for a future booking, locking you into using Hostelworld again within 12 months.
For inter-city transport I expected, for a long time, to use Eurail passes and budgeted accordingly. Ultimately I recognised that they didn't add up, to the tune of saving thousands of dollars by making my own train, bus and ferry bookings ahead of time. I can see how a Eurail pass would benefit a Zoochatter coming for a short period of time, focusing their trip entirely on zoos and wanting to move rapidly between cities. If you were doing a three week trip to zoos in, say, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland then they might well work for you. But not for me.
It's proven a far better strategy to simply make bookings myself, as and when the services I want to use open. It means I face a high sunk cost should I later choose to re-jig my plans but I don't mind: between my early accommodation and transport bookings I estimate I'm saving somewhere between $6,000 and $10,000. Flexibility is nice, but I'm not paying that much for it.
There are two train websites that don't actually sell tickets but have been indispensable in planning. www.seat61.com/ has a somewhat messy and confusing layout but once I got used to it, it became my go-to source for scoping out major train routes and especially to determine when fares become available. Another great website is railcc, which allows you to plug in two major cities (say, Munich and Stockholm) and not only find available connections but a full breakdown of the timetable, with all scheduled stops listed. This has been hugely helpful in planning my crossings in and out of the Schengen zone, as ideally you want to cross out of the zone before midnight and into it after midnight, so as to preserve precious visa-free days.
My preferred site to make bookings in Western Europe has been trainline.eu, which has most of the major rail providers in the region and sells discount fares at face value, without any mark-ups or handling fees. I've also made some use of Loco2 as well as the official websites of a couple of providers. For bus services I like GoEuro, which features quite a lot of bargain-basement services. For ferry services I've used Direct Ferries to search for options, but I've always booked directly through the ferry line's website, as I've found the prices can be a bit better.
I'll leave it there for now. I've ignored these book shelves long enough. Time to return to the packing.
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considering they keep species such as Marbled Cat......
and one of only three cat species present in European collections I have yet to see.