What Am I Getting Myself Into?

30 March 2018

This is exactly what I used to ask myself every now and then over the past few months. I am used to traveling more comfortably; there was always a certain basis that I could rely on and from where I could plan my next move. This could be a hotel, hostel, Airbnb, or even a host-family during my time in Australia. This always gave a sense of certainty, and, for my parents, a feeling of ease with me being away and knowing where I was exactly.

This time however, I am going to do things differently. Since I will travel around Europe for an unknown amount of time I will need many different places to stay (this was my first step in gaining more freedom during my trip). I don’t have large budget, so this will be my first challenge: finding inexpensive places to stay. So I decided to look up my old Couchsurfing account (which I’ve only used once, and not even while being abroad). For those of you who are unfamiliar with Couchsurfing, here’s a describtion of the concept from their own website:

“Couchsurfing is a global community of 14 million people in more than 200,000 cities who share their life, their world, their journey. Couchsurfing connects travelers with a global network of people willing to share in profound and meaningful ways, making travel a truly social experience.” – Couchsurfing.com

What’s even better is that this system is based on people’s generosity and doesn’t necessarily require compensation, so it would be ideal to use during my trip. Of course I’m not just being a jerk and only doing it to save money, I’m also eager to meet new people and to exchange stories over some drinks.

Couchsurfing offers the option to plan your trips ahead. The trip will then become public and potential hosts or other members can then contact you and maybe offer to stay at their place or just to meet up. And that is exactly what happened. I was surprised by the amount of replies I got: from people suggesting to meet up and showing me around the city, to people actually offering me a place to stay. So for my first real destination Warsaw (I will be in Belgium first, but I consider that more a stopover rather than my first actual destination) I already got my accommodation sorted out for me.

My second challenge will be more personal. I love the planning ahead of a trip. I always make sure I know all the ins and outs of a destination. I get skip-the-line tickets, book a tour with good reviews and I make a list of places I definately need to see. That’s great when you have a few days or a week in a certain place and you want to get the most out of your stay, but why bother when you’ve got all the time in the world? Besides, as contradictory as it may sound, you risk missing out on certain things if you plan too much ahead. You don’t leave a window open for chance. And, interestingly enough, those random encounters often end up giving you the most memorable experiences (yes, I speak from experience).

So no planning ahead. But is that even possible? Or responsible? Of course certain things must be planned in advance and you can’t always avoid looking up your destination before going there (at least I can’t). But the art is in finding the right balance and only look things up on a need-to-know basis. I try not to be too distracted by all the things I need to see, because I could never see everything. I’d rather look back on the things I have seen and cherish those memories.

A lot of people, myself included, tend to look at the world as one enormous bucketlist of things they want to see or do. When will we ever get satisfied? It is impossible to see every place, and even if you can, what will you remember of them? So I’m trying to change my focus from all the places I still want to go to, to where I am now.

“But surely you must have some idea of where you want to go?”, you could ask. Well, yes, I do. There are several factors that greatly influenced my trip. The first being that I was taking driving lessons, so at the earliest I could leave early of April, provided that I passed my driving test (which, thank goodness, I did). Secondly, I also booked a ticket for a concert that I am really keen to see. That concert is on April 20, in Prague. Since it is more expensive to fly directly to Prague, and also because I wanted to see Poland,  I decided that I would take a flight from Brussels to Warsaw, which I booked for only ten euros (using Skyscanner.com). From Warsaw I would then have ten days to get to Prague. During those ten days I will also visit Krakow (mainly because some friends really encouraged me to visit Auschwitz if I have the opportunity) and Wrocław.

Once I have visited the concert in Prague I will have total freedom to decide where to go next and when. I will use the cheapest means of transportation I can find (beside hitch-hiking, I promised my slightly worried parents), so for most of the time this means taking cheap local and international buses. I got several apps installed that should help me to find cheap connections, like: Flixbus, GoEuro, Eurolines and Rome2Rio. Like I mentioned earlier, I mainly want to make use of Couchsurfing to look for accommodation, but, in case I won’t be able find anything, I could also try to find a place to stay on Airbnb or Hostelworld.

Then there’s also the option of finding a job while traveling. This will be a great way to stay longer at a certain place and earn some extra cash as well, or at least to have a roof over my head. There’s an abundance of websites that will help you in contacting hosts and finding the right type of work for you . Some examples are WWOOF (for farm work), HelpX, Workaway and Hippohelp. Most of these websites, however, do require you to pay for registration. Other possibilities are working in a hostel or bar, house sitting and much more. So far, I haven’t done much regarding searching for jobs (but I have done some research on how to find a job, should I need it). I will wait with this until I’m more certain whether I want to stay longer at a certain place or not. Or when I really need the money to continue travelling.

Right now I am just making some final preparations and buying all the necessary stuff, like toothpaste, shower gel, batteries etc. And it’s time to head out!