Europe Travel Expenses – The Schengen Area

It’s difficult to distill our time in Europe down to a few comments, but we certainly saw our fair share of town squares and old churches and we sat outside at countless cafes. Most of our time in Europe was spent within the Schengen Area, where there are no passport checks between countries and the currency is most often the Euro, but not always. Overall, it was fairly easy traveling. Especially after having come from China not too long before, traveling through Europe was a breeze. There are always delays, complicated logistics, and moments of intense confusion to figure out, but in general we had fewer of those moments traveling through Europe than other places we had been to on this trip.

Waiting for a train in Dresden.

There were a lot of highlights to think back on. Even just arriving in Wrocław, Poland was memorable. Despite being in a foreign country, it felt more like home than anywhere else we had been during our previous four months. Wrocław is also on our list of favorite cities. We didn’t know at the time that our first stop might be one of our favorites, but the downtown area had a sort of welcoming feel about it and where else can you run around a city looking for little statues of dwarfs? 

Arriving on the ground in Wrocław on our Wizz Air flight from Kutaisi, Georgia.

We remember going to the beer festival in Berlin (twice!) on our quest to sample every kind of German beer we could get our hands on. I don’t know if we succeeded or not, but I think we reached our practical limits to beer tasting. 

At the beer festival in Berlin. 

Our time with a rental car in Czechia was fun. It gave us so much freedom and we saw so much of the country in a couple weeks’ time.

Stopping in Telč on our road trip across Czechia.

Vienna was a very memorable city. I just think of it as the city of statues and beer gardens. The statues were everywhere around town, and the beer gardens were cheaper than normal restaurants, so we usually ended up at them for dinner. 

One of the hundreds of statues adorning the buildings and fountains of Vienna.

What I remember most from Budapest is going to the same restaurant for lunch every single day that we were there. It was that good, and the fact that is was also one of the most affordable places around kept us returning. 

Our favorite spot for lunch in Budapest.

One of the biggest surprises was perhaps Ljubljana. It was a small city, but it was so charming and one of my favorites. 

An outdoor market in Ljubljana.

We will also remember our day-and-half-long race around Rome to try and see as much as we could in the little time that we had. I think we did pretty good for ourselves. 

Trevi Fountain in Rome. 

And we will certainly remember meeting up with friends in Stockholm, Brussels, and Dusseldorf. They provided such a great break from our normal trip. It was comforting to see a familiar face and enjoy some time together.

Belgian fries. One part of our experiential goals while in Belgium: fries, waffles, and beer. 

We spent a lot of time in Europe's Schengen Area and saw a lot of places. Our point of entry was in (1) Wrocław, Poland. We had flown in from Georgia, but our week in Poland was really just a very long layover on our way to (2) Stockholm. From Stockholm, we flew to (3) Berlin, then took the train to (4) Dresden and then onto (5) Prague. We spent two weeks driving all over Czechia and even back into Poland again to see Auschwitz. We dropped the rental car off in Brno and then took the train to (6) Vienna and then onto (7) Bratislava. From there we made a significant detour from our route and flew to (8) Brussels and then took a train to (9) Dusseldorf to visit some friends before flying back east to (10) Budapest. From Hungary we left the Schengen Area and headed to (11) the Balkans. Our time in Serbia, Montenegro, and Croatia, was covered in a separate expenses post. We entered back into the Schengen Area in Slovenia and had a great time in (12) Ljubljana before heading by bus to (13) Trieste and then by train to (14) Rome. Rome was the final stop of our trip as we had known it. From there we were boarding a transatlantic cruise home to Florida.

Europe’s Schengen Area was an expensive destination for us. We spent an average of $119 a day, which is way more than the portion of our Europe travels that took us through the Balkans, which only cost us $85 a day. Still, Europe fell within our means if we adjust our spending a bit. We went to the grocery store more often and to restaurants a bit less in the most expensive destinations. We also skipped a lot of tourism expenses for two reasons. The first being that tourism activities usually cost a fortune so not doing them saves money, and second being that at this stage of the trip we kind of stopped caring about the typical touristy things. There was little that seemed worth the additional expense towards the end. We were fine exploring cities by ourselves on foot and working hard to find activities that offered discounts on certain days of the week, like museums, which often have free entry every once in a while if you keep your eyes out. Our itinerary was also dictated by cost to a large degree. A lot of our back and forth movements were driven by whatever cities offered the lowest cost connecting flights. 

  

Accommodations: Our accommodation prices were among the highest we had encountered. And that did not necessarily mean we were staying in nice places. Berlin was our worst Airbnb of the whole trip, but everywhere else worked out fine.

Restaurants: This depended on where we were and how easily we could afford restaurants. We ate out in Czechia almost every night and could stay close to budget, but we ate out in Italy only a handful of times. All the food in Europe felt familiar. I don’t recall coming across anything overly exotic.

Transportation: We took a handful of flights on Europe’s low-cost carriers. The best in my opinion was Wizz Air. Despite the name, which does not inspire much confidence, the seats were far roomier and more comfortable than any of the others. Most of the time we travelled by train. We had high expectations for the trains in Europe, which everyone always hears about how easy and convenient they are. Indeed, they were convenient and got us where we needed to go, but we both think that China now sets the bar for quality and convenience when it comes to high-speed rail travel.

Grocery: Our grocery expenses were just about at our whole trip average, but it varied by country, depending on the cost of dining out. We almost always had access to a kitchen and we often used it.

Drinks: Europe’s café culture was a pleasure. We were never more than a block away from a place where we could sit outside at a table and have a coffee, beer, or glass of wine. We got very good at scoping out places with the best quality wifi or the best happy hour deals.

Tourism: Most of our expenses in this category went to museum, castle, and historic church entry fees. There were some great museums in Europe. The Vasa Museum in Stockholm and the Kunsthistorisches (Art History) Museum in Vienna come to mind as particularly noteworthy ones. We also cheated a bit and put our visits to the Berlin beer festival under the tourism category rather than the drinks category. But it did feel much more like a cultural event that we were participating in than a drinking event.

Other: This was the usual random collection of expenses: laundry, SIM cards, money leftover or lost from currency conversions, and the cost of replacing worn out clothing.

We can also break down our expenses by country. Again, like in the Balkans report, we like to look at our expenses based on what we call living expenses, which is all our expenses minus transportation, tourism, and the 'other' category. This is meant to reflect what it costs to simply be someplace. To stay in an accommodation and cover the cost of food and drinks. Vienna and Berlin/Dresden were the most expensive destinations on our list. Although to a large extent this comes down to what we chose to spend in these places and does not reflect a real apples-to-apples comparison of what costs are like. Budapest and Czechia come in at the lower end of travel costs. The lowest of our travel costs where when we stayed with friends in Brussels, Stockholm, and Dusseldorf. Not having an accommodation expense saves a tremendous amount of money. 

Cost of travel by country. *We were staying with friends in the countries marked with an asterisk, so our expense were lower than typical. 

Europe was great fun. After having been on the road for a year by the time we arrived in Europe, I don’t think we would have stayed on the road for as long as we did if we been elsewhere in the world. It felt familiar and was easy to manage. Travel always creates headaches, but there were fewer of them in Europe than elsewhere. Our original plan for the trip was to spend time in Eastern Europe. I’m not sure we really did that. We mostly covered Central Europe and the Balkans on this trip, so there will always be more for us to see when we return one day.