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June 2018 | Travel Summary and Statistics
Month #2 | Travel Summary
The second month of our travels around Europe took us to three different countries. We had some amazing CouchSurfing and hitchhiking experiences and continually realised how much we value these communities. We ended the month with an AirBnB horror story, but luckily it has a good ending! Without further ado, here is our June 2018 Travel Summary and Statistics!
Belgium
We continued our stay at the permaculture farm for the first week of June. Eventually it came time to say goodbye to all the furry friends we had made and we based ourselves in Brugge for three days. I absolutely LOVED Brugge and would not hesitate to go back there. The beer! The chocolate! The canals!
Related Posts: Volunteering at Boskanter Farm
The Netherlands
After a long (longggg) travel day, we eventually made it to The Hague (Den Haag) in the Netherlands! This was another small city that I just adored. We did a whole variety of things in the Hague – a walking tour, Madurodam, the M.C. Escher Museum, and much more! We also made some time for a beach day! We also managed to see quite a few random art installations scattered around the city.
Related Posts: Having Fun in The Hague
Continuing north in The Netherlands, we based ourselves in Haarlem for five nights. Again, I fell in love with another charming city. We spent one of our days in Amsterdam (where I wasn’t charmed to pieces), and another biking around the countryside with my cousin and her fiance (my legs & butt have only just recovered from our 56km ride).
Related Posts: Happy Days in Haarlem
The last week and a half of our time in The Netherlands was spent on Texel Island and in Northern Netherlands. We really enjoyed discovering the barren but nature-filled island on the Wadden Sea. And we had a wonderful three days in Leeuwarden and Groningen – cities not often frequented by tourists.
Related Posts: Touring Around Texel Island
Germany
The end of June saw us entering our fourth country of this trip: Germany! Our first stop was a city called Oldenburg, followed by its much larger neighbour, Hamburg. I’ll be writing more about our stays in these areas soon!
Statistics
Number of Countries: 3 (Belgium, The Netherlands, & Germany)
Number of Cities: 9
Number of Rides Hitched: 14
Number of kilometres Hitched: 700km
Number of Times I Mispronounced a Dutch Word: all of them (Groningen actually sounds like hhhhhhrrron-ing-ah – be sure to roll the ‘r’, and make that gaging sound with the ‘h’. I’m telling you, Dutch is hard!!)
Number of Times I Swore Off Bicycling Forever (While Simultaneously Cursing the Wind): 3
Budget Breakdown
Lodging: 0.00€
Food: 381.09€
Beers: 54.35€
Activities: 217.00€
Transportation: 199.89€
Miscellaneous: 8.50€
Total: 860.83€ (~$1366.40CAD)
This works out to 14.35€ per person per day.
Note: these numbers do not include travel insurance or any ATM/Foreign Exchange fees.
Highlights & Lowlights
Hitchhiking – I’m counting hitchhiking as both a high- and lowlight. As you can see, we hitched a lot of rides in June. The rides themselves were all awesome. We met so many cool people and never had a bad experience during the ride. The process of getting the ride was at times a bit arduous. We had some days were we waited no more than 5 minutes, and others where we gave up after an hour of standing in the drizzle & wind with no success. Hitching is still our preferred way of travelling between cities, but some days are (far) better than others.
Meeting up with Kara again – It was so refreshing and welcoming to meet up again with Kara and her fiance. Seeing a familiar face when travelling is always so great and refreshing. While our muscles were less than pleased at the 50+km bike ride we did together, we have fond memories of the time we shared.
The Power of Community – Call me a broken record, but I just can’t get enough of CouchSurfing! You’ll notice that our lodging costs were 0€ in June. We exclusively CouchSurfed and have made so many friends though this platform. Some of these friends even included us in their network of friends which saved us on a particularly eventful night.
LOL’s
I’m including this story as an LOL, because if I don’t my sanity my suffer and I’ll dwell on the events for eternity. Ready? Ok! So the last day of June had us traveling from Hamburg into Berlin. After many (many) attempts at finding a CS hosts to no success, we finally decided to book an Air BnB for the weekend. We also decided to book a bus (instead of hitching) to make the transition into this huge city a bit easier. Arrived in Berlin with no hassle, we made our way to the address of our booking. Mac& I booked the space on Friday evening, and though we still hadn’t heard from the host by the time we left Hamburg Saturday morning, we weren’t too worried. Eventually we made it to the apartment building, and eventually to the host’s apartment and excitedly rang the buzzer.
And…nothing.
We got WiFi and started texting, calling, and emailing the host… to no avail. He was off the radar. We waited on the stairs outside his apartment for two+ hours until his lovely neighbour came home and let us into her flat so we could 1) use the toilet, and 2) store our bags while we went out and got some food. During our wait, we contacted a friend we had made in Oldenburg asking if he had any friends in Berlin. He passed along his friend’s number to whom we sent a nice, but quasi-desperate message. Amazingly, the friend replied saying we were more than welcome to stay with him! By this point it was 7pm. With his address in hand, we thanked our substitute-host and proceeded to take a bus, subway, tram, and another bus 1.5 hours across town.
We arrived, rang the doorbell, and quickly discovered we had gone to THE WRONG ADDRESS. Apparently there are two streets in Berlin with the same name. Unfortunately, they are in complete opposite ends of the city. I was nearing nuclear meltdown mode. Fortunately, Mac was able to make me see the bright side of things – it was still daylight, we now knew where we needed to go, and the transit system was still running. So! We took another bus, subway, tram, and bus to the correct address (which, ironically (and infuriatingly) was only about 15 minutes from where our original AirBnB was). Our angel of a host greeted us with a huge smile. We spent the evening talking and sharing ideas, and then had one of the best sleeps ever. The next day, we were able to get a full refund from AirBnB for our booking.
Lesson learned, have contact with your AirBnB host before you show up excited and naive on their doorstep! We’re so thankful to this community of people we’ve made friends with. Things worked out in the end (as they usually do), and we definitely got our money’s worth on the 7-day transit pass we bought!!
What’s Next
At the end of May I mentioned we might be going up to Scandinavia for the Summer Solstice. Well, obviously that didn’t happen. I wasn’t sure if I should even do this ‘What’s Next’ section in this travel summary and statistics since I was so totally off last month. But I’ve decided to keep it because it’s fun (for me, at least) to compare what our thoughts are and what we actually end up doing. Funnily enough, we actually have zero plans lined up in July! We’ll be in Berlin until the end of the first week of July and then we’re not sure where to go! We do know that we’ll eventually be making our way west towards the UK & Ireland. We’ll likely base ourselves there for 2-3 months while we wait out the remainder of our Schengen Visa. (We get 90 days in a 180 day period to be in the Schengen zone – which is comprised of most countries in Western Europe.) We’ll be eagerly awaiting a special visitor at the end of August in Scotland, but that’s a tibit for another day!
We’re thinking of either going to Poland or Czechia before circling around back to Calais, France. I personally would love to visit Luxemburg, so hopefully we’ll find a way to add that to our itinerary.
What about you?! How was your June?? Do you have any AirBnB horror stories?
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