Planning a trip to Europe for 4.5 months Dec-April 07/08

Can't you get a cheaper flight, than to London?

If you're going to cover, skim most of Europe anyway...
As we usually say on here, pick a smaller area.
4.5 months ain't that long for doing it real justice. Absorb is the watchword.

TYou may get a fascination with a certain period in history. And want to follow it. Gawkism #335; Travel plans should be just a rough outline.

You have friends out there you haven't met yet. Seriously.

A favorite gawkism of mine; We won't know what we're dealing with, till we get there.
History didn't just happen in capitol cities. Yea, nor big ones.

One bad thing about return tickets is; they don't let us go home as soon as we're broke. Or have had enough travel. Whether sooner or later.

Southern Europe is cheaper than northern too. You may want to chill on a beach. You'll need good rest occasionally. And a chance to chill from all the sensory overload.
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WELCOME TO THE HEALTHIEST, COOLEST ADDICTION.
SEE THE WORLD? WHY NOT?

I don't know all of the details, but you'll want to check into the Schnengen (sp?) visa regime to see if that will cause you problems.

A couple of ideas:

-- I don't really think there's much need to have a set itinerary. With 4+ months, you can travel at whatever pace you'd like to, staying and savoring certain cities, and just passing through others. You might want a general idea of things you want to see in a certain country/region, but while you're on the road you might get ideas from other travelers, or be in the mood for a city/rural area, etc., etc. You're traveling in the off season, so there's no reason to make tons of advance reservations (The exception will be holidays like New Year's Eve.) Use www.hostelworld.com to book while you're on the road.

-- You'll be able to see a lot of countries in 4.5 months, so the world (or at least Europe) is your oyster. But do heed #1's advice about taking it slow, and not spending all of your time on the train, zigzagging through Europe.

-- It sounds like you have an idea of some countries you want to visit. What I might suggest is that you go to your local library and pick up a copy of the Lonely Planet, Rough Guide, etc., guidebook for those particular countries. They don't even need to be current editions. Just browse through them for suggested itineraries and ideas for places to see and things to do. But as noted above, don't be afraid to plow your own trail, and get away from the typical tourist path.

-- For transportation, check out the guide to rail passes at www.seat61.com and at www.ricksteves.com.<BR><BR>-- Get a good pair of waterproof hiking boots, and it might be better if they were at least a bit insulated. Many of those countries will be snowy and slushy for walking at that time of year. I'd personally probably want to save the more northerly countries for April, and stay south more often during the heart of winter.

-- Generally speaking, for your budget, you'll want to calculate all of your transportation costs. To that, you'll want to add about 25 Euros per night for hostel beds, and a few Euros per day for local transportation and incidentals. Meals can range from basic street food and grocery store (5-10 Euros per day) to one sit-down meal per day (another 10-15 per day) to eating out all of the time (which can add up to a lot of money awfully quickly.) Museums and tourist attractions will set you back about 10 Euros per visit on average, so maybe you'll want to budget for one of those per day or every other day. Add another 5-6 Euros per drink for nights out. Prices will obviously vary, but these are some basic averages. It sounds like your budget is pretty good, and I'm guessing that you'll probably end up being able to get by for less than $25k total if you are smart about it. (Is that U.S. dollars or Aussie dollars?)

Dave

Hate to mention this once again. Understand that you are not from the EU - guess that you do not have a passport from an EU country (if you have: skip reading next lines).
From late December all the countries you mention expect UK and Switzerland will be members of the Schengen . This means that you wil be there illegally after 90 days - so unless you intend to spend 1½ month in the UKSwitzerland you must change yor plans. Croatia will also be outside Schengen.

Which kind of mone are those $ US,Singapore, Australian?
1000 USD/week = 100€/day - if the transport (Eurail etc.) is paid, you stay at dorms and mostly eat grocery food, then you will be fine - actually very fine. Problem is that as soon as you start on "own room, restaurants, drinks" - it is suddenly not very much - or far too little. So you must be prepared that you fundamentally are travelling dorm/grocery food - after a week or two you get the feeling of how much "extras" you can afford with your level of entrance fee/drink/local transport - expenses and can adlust your spendings.

You should also make up your mind how you will spend those 10 days/country - see capital one place more? travel around a lot (1 day/town or place)? - in the last case - try to cut some of the countries. Since you are travelling midwinter - cold and rainy a very large part of the time - coutryside not at its best to put it mildly - you probably will stay to larger towns, right?

If sticking to your list I think the following order is more logical:
UK
Belgium
Netherlands
Denmark
Sweden
Germany
Czech
Hungary
Austria
Italy
Switzerland
France
Spain

Driving a rent car will eat money. And it removes you from the fun learning you could do on trains

Concerning the Schengen rule addressed already in #3 you should consider to visit the countries implementing Schengen in the week before Christmas (Czech Republic, Hungary also Poland and Slovenia) before this point of time. Thus they are not on the 90 days count for Schengen.

A reason to visit Germany before Christmas are the Christmas Markets.

Thanks for all your post. All of you have been so helpful and willing to provide useful advise. I will share a little more info:

I am travelling from Melbourne, Australia direct to Israel first, to spend a couple of weeks with my dad who lives there. I am using frequent flyer points all the way, so not paying for the flight other than taxes. I will be booking a budget airline (Isstadirect or Thompson Travel) to London Luton, so that Israel know I have booked a flight out.

I was born in the UK, but hold an Australian passport. It says I was born in Middlesex, but not sure whether that would suffice given the Schengen agreement as the above posts have mentioned. I assume I have to book a return flight as well. This could be return to Melbourne anywhere in Europe. I will book the return (in advance) with points as well. Should there be an issue with the return date, I can always change this and just sacrifice between 2,500-5,000 pts, which isn't too bad. There always seems to be flights going out. Where else can I check to see whethr I am doing the right thing according to Schengen?

#1 I take you point regarding southern Europe, however, this is something I would prefer to save for another trip, at a warmer time, so that I can enjoy the beaches and islands. I would like to go to Croatia, but not sure whether winter is the best time. But I'd like to relax a while in Switzerland in a off the beaten track hostel (can't remember the name of the place, but was recommended to relax and go on hikes etc)

#2 I have an older edition of the lonely planet and an old starters guide, which has suggested itineries of each country. I will photocopy and print these out. Disappoiting that the latest edition does not have suggested itineries for each country. eg. 2 day, 1 week stat, 2 wks, etc,
I will have a look in my local camping store for waterproof boots and goretex, insulated jackets, thermals etc, thanks

#3 Sorry neglected to mention, $AUD Australian dollars, so $AUD25k, is around EURO $15.7k. thanks for the country order, makes A LOT of sense. Yes I'd prefer to spend more time in each country. For place like Spain, 2 weeks, other smaller countries just a few days. Regarding budget, will all be dorms, although places like Italy looking forward to eating out, and more so in Eastern Europe.

re your passport/Schenge: You are extempt from the 90/180 days rule if you are a CITIZEN of one of the EU countries, that is (in practice) that you enter and leave on a standard passport issued by one of the EU countries. In that case you can stay 3 month/country (6 if you are looking for job. indef. if working or have sufficient funds and register).
Only way around is to get some specific visa (like for studying..), but that is VERY difficult and the visa will only give you extra time in ONE country.

Re itineraries: Actually I think it is good that they are gone from the guidebooks. There is soo much more to see in Europe that what you can see following those "trodden paths"/backpacker tracks from what ppl. are told to be must-sees that many non-European travellers follow. It will be much more interesting (and cheaper) if all travellers did not follow those: Venice-Cinque- terre-Florence-Rome - or Paris-Amsterdam-Berlin-Prague tracks.
In those cases where I need "a starting point itinerary", I look (on the net) up some organized bur-"tour" through the single countries/region in question and study the day-to-day programme. Much (negative) can be said about organised tours, but they do try to give their customers most for their buck and especially most for their time and they ARE (over a certain backpacker level) organized by local incoming agents that do know what ppl. mostly enjoy visiting their country! When you then realize that they all go to "the capital+xx-town and the yy-mountain region", then there is a very good reason to look up those places in your guidebook.
BTW - you shoul look into the single country LP guides!! The shoestring one is very "thin". Can't you borrow them on the library at home?

Another suggestion: Never go to a "country" for less than 3 days (one for travelling -2 to look around in ONE city) - think in places (cities. town, regions) and not in countries - I know that everybodys immediate reaction is to visit a large number of countries - but in reality the country-country difference (and even worse the capital-capital difference) is often much smaller than the regionA-regionB difference.
Example: Milan(o) and Naples/Napoli or Sicily are like on two different continents. Milan is not THAT much different (on the coarse scale) from London or Berlin.
Think this way - if you were to advise a visitor to Australia about an initerary - would you then make sure that (s)he would visit all the States and Territories? Think on Europe/EU the same way!

Thanks Bjoern, I certainly will go and visit the library or Borders bookstore in the next week. I'll have a good read of these and also look up other organised tours and get some brochures from travel agents. eg contiki, intrepid routes etc.

I am one that always wants to go off the beaten track, but I guess there will be many more times that I will return that I can cover more and more base. I'd live to visit countries a little bit more off the beaten track (maybe not so much more now) but like Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, but will save it to later.

In regards to the Schenge, yes I was born in London, but have lived in Australia for most of my life and will be travelling on an Australian passport. Its only reference to being British was place of birth, which has 'Middlesex'. Would this be enough, or would I require a British passport. If my Australian passport is not sufficient, would should I then fly into some other European city to start with? Its just that the cheap flights from Tel Aviv are to London and I think it is a good base to start from, I have family their etc.

So I have arranged it in this order now without delegating timeframes to each country:

UK
Belgium
Netherlands
Denmark
Sweden
Germany
Poland ???
Czech
Hungary
Austria
Italy
Switzerland
France
Spain

That makes a budget of about 116 Euros per day. That should be just fine for a budget traveling lifestyle. You'll still have to be careful and smart about how you spend your money, but if you do that you'll be able to splurge on occasion.

Winter probably isn't the time I'd want to visit Croatia. Greece is a bit warmer, and I've spent some time in Greece in the winter and it was a pretty nice time to be there. Croatia, though, being further north, is likely to be a bit chilly. I've been there, though, in April, and it was a nice time to be there.

Dave