Preparing for travelling (with spreadsheet and planning ideas)

A photo, taken after this post of the plane journey to Helsinki

I am about to travel around Eastern Europe for 3 months, and this is what I've already learnt.

Most people can relate to the feeling of wanting to get on a plane and go somewhere. Unless, of course, you're terrified of planes, which a lot of people are. However, everyone understands needing to escape to somewhere different.

Growing up, I saw 'travelling' as going on a family holiday to an all-inclusive resort where you would spend all day by the pool with an ice cream and never leave the hotel. As I got older, that world view stayed the same for years, I'd never thought to look into other places and cultures. Let’s also just say that my geography knowledge was... limited.

Following a trip that opened my eyes to discovering new places, instead of seeing them from a different perspective than my closed minded, media addled brain, I started looking into it. Of course, I knew there was more to the world than the UK and my bubble of life but I needed a moment where that bubble popped. Which happened to be a trip so Slovakia in 2022.

From then on, I decided that travelling was what I wanted to do.

In September of 2022, me and my partner at the time started researching and planning a trip to South East Asia as we believed it would be the cheapest and most exciting place to travel - that's where most backpackers go on their first adventure, right? In fact, by July, I already had everything planned; the route, the Accommodation, the activities, the travel. Something just wasn't adding up. Through all the researching and budgeting, we realised it totalled to a lot more than we thought it would. We also didn't feel quite ready to go that far around the world for such a long period of time. So we changed the plan

Don't get us wrong, we absolutely still recommend people go to South east Asia and it's definitely still on our travel list, but when we saw that budget we decided to change around our plans. For context, we're from the UK, which is a lot closer to Europe than Asia. The cheapest one way flight we could find to Bangkok was £500 and we managed to get our one way flight to Helsinki, Finland for £25.

From there, we found an amazing route: from Helsinki, using public transport, coaches, ferries and trains, we can make our way slowly all the way down to Istanbul, Turkey.

By November 2022, we managed to book all accommodation, which came to a total of only £2000 for both of us.

We will spending around 2/3 days in each place, with some exceptions for main places such as Athens and Istanbul, where we will be staying a bit longer. This is our route:

- Start in Helsinki, Finland

- Get a coach up to Rovanemi, where we can see the northern lights, visit Santa's village and cross the arctic circle

- Make our way back to Helsinki to get a ferry over to Tallin, Estonia

- Coach to Riga, Latvia

- Coach to Vilnius, Lithuania

- Coach/train to Warsaw, Poland

- Train to Krakow, Poland

- Coach to Prague, Czech Republic

- Coach to Budapest, Hungary

- Coach to Belgrade, Serbia

- Coach to Zagreb, Croatia

- Coach to Ljubljana, Slovenia

- Train to Trieste, Italy

- Ferry to Pula, Croatia

- Coach to Zadar, Croatia

- Coach to Split, Croatia

- Coach to Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina

- Coach to Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

- Coach to Dubrovnik, Croatia

- Coach to Kotor, Montenegro

- Coach to Podgorica, Montenegro

- Coach to Shkoder, Albania

- Coach to Durres, Albania

- Coach to Tirana, Albania

- Coach to Ohrid, North Macedonia

- Coach to Skopje, North Macedonia

- Coach to Pristina, Kosovo

- Coach to Bitola, North Macedonia

- Coach to Thessaloniki, Mainland greece

- Coach to Athens, Mainland greece

- Coach to Sofia, Bulgaria

- Coach to Plovdiv, Bulgaria

- Coach to Bucharest, Romania

- Coach to Brasov, Romania

- Coach to Sighisoara, Romania

- Coach back to Brasov, Romania. From here we will get a coach to Chisinau, Moldova (we will keep checking government advice for Moldova prior to this.)

- Coach to Varna, Bulgaria

- Coach to Istanbul, Turkey

In essence this trip has been in the making since 2022 when we started planning South east Asia. Already, before even going on the trip, we have learnt a lot about the world of Travel, especially travel on a budget.

.1- Read up on travel insurance in advance

Travel insurance companies have a lot of niggly bits so make sure you check the fine print. Travel insurance is very important, make sure it covers all the countries you're going to. Always check what your travel insurance covers and ensure you state everything needed.

.2 - You can filter price from lowest to highest for accommodation, but don't just book the first one you see

There are a lot of factors that may go into the price of accommodation. Always check the reviews, we didn't necessarily need our accommodation to be 10/10 reviews across the board but as a rule of thumb, we tried to book accommodation that was scored a 7 and up for cleanliness and Wifi. Of course when you're travelling on a budget you can't expect to always be in amazing accommodation, but we also didn't want to be sleeping in a pool of dirt and rats. We managed to find rather cheap accommodation everywhere we went, going by this rule. Also MAKE SURE YOU CHECK LOCATION some places may say they're in the place you want to be, but when you google it they're actually 2 hours away from the city and you can only get there if you hop on one leg with your eyes closed.

.3 - Excel/Google sheets may be your best planning friend

If you're a little bit extra like me, you can use these spreadsheet tools to note all your booking and activity information down and create your big epic trip organiser. If you use google sheets, you can share it with people and they can edit it with you, or just view it and get live updates

This is an example of what we did to note our accommodation.

This is an example of how we planned our budget

Remember when planning your budget, it’s best to expect the higher side to allow for exceptions. Its better to overestimate and have money left over than to underestimate and run out of money.

This is an example of how we noted our travel

This is an example of how we chose local activities - On Google sheets and Excel you can share with your travel buddy and they can edit it with you

of course these are just our examples and you can make it your own! It can be so much fun researching and planning your travels and there's some amazing tools right at your fingertips so get creating

.4 - Be open minded

Travelling isn't just about seeing the Eiffel tower or sunbathing in Bali (although we'd definitely like to do those things as well) . There's so many amazing opportunities in the smaller places, the places you don't expect, where it's quiet and there's no tourists and its just you and the local culture. Remember that you're exploring, go off the beaten path sometimes, meet new people even try and be spontaneous. I promise that if you keep an open mind, no where can be "boring".

.5 - Book your travel vaccines in advance

In the UK, they recommend going to your GP 3-4 weeks at least before you travel, and you can get certain vaccines for free, some you have to pay for. You fill in a pre-travel form of where you're going and the doctor will give you the recommendations of what to have. Unfortunately, If you leave it till last minute you will have to book them at the pharmacist, meaning you will have to pay a fee for all the vaccines, even the free ones on the NHS.

I am very lucky to have the opportunity to go on this trip and very excited for the day I set off. Every day I’m learning new things about the world and especially the world of travelling.

Keep track of the blog for more posts about travel and how the trip goes.

-Elisha xoxo