Most Eurotrip advice is absolute garbage. It’s written by people who spent forty-eight hours in a hostel in Barcelona once and now think they’re the second coming of Rick Steves, or worse, by content marketers who haven’t left their home office in three years. They tell you to buy a Eurail pass, visit the Louvre on a Tuesday, and bring a comfortable pair of walking shoes. Thanks, Brenda. Real helpful.
I’ve spent the last six years drifting through Europe in fits and starts while working my regular job. I’ve been scammed in Naples, stranded in a rural Polish village in the dead of winter, and spent way too much money on lukewarm beer in London. I don’t have a brand to protect. I just have opinions formed from actually being there when things go wrong. If you want a sanitized itinerary, go to Pinterest. If you want to know why your plan to see ten cities in twelve days is a recipe for a mental breakdown, keep reading.
The ‘Bucket List’ delusion is killing your vibe
The biggest mistake people make is treating Europe like a grocery list. London, check. Paris, check. Amsterdam, check. You spend more time looking at the inside of a train carriage or a budget airline terminal than you do actually looking at the cities. It’s exhausting. It’s performative. It’s not a vacation; it’s a logistics nightmare disguised as a dream.
What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently. You aren’t traveling for the culture when you do this; you’re traveling for the validation of having ‘been’ there. I used to think the more stamps I got, the more interesting I became. I was completely wrong. I spent three days in Rome once and all I remember is the sweat and the feeling of being ushered through crowds like cattle. I didn’t see Rome. I saw the back of a thousand tourists’ heads.
Go to two places. Stay a week in each. Sit in the same cafe three mornings in a row until the waiter recognizes you. That’s the win. Most people will disagree because they want the Instagram grid to look full, but they’re the ones coming home needing a second vacation just to recover from the first one. Total amateur move.
The great Eurail scam
I know people will fight me on this, but the Eurail pass is almost always a waste of money for anyone with a brain and an internet connection. It’s a product designed for Americans who are terrified of European transit systems and want the ‘safety’ of a pre-paid pass. I tracked the math on my 2022 trip through central Europe. I looked at 14 different routes including Prague to Vienna and Budapest to Munich.
- Individual point-to-point tickets booked 3 weeks out: €412 total
- Equivalent Eurail pass plus mandatory reservation fees: €588 total
- Savings by avoiding the pass: €176 (That’s like 30 decent meals)
The reservation fees are the real kicker. You buy this expensive pass and then you still have to pay €10 to €20 just to get a seat on the high-speed lines in France or Italy. It’s a hidden tax on the uninformed. Just use the local apps. Download Omio or Trainline and book as you go. Or better yet, use FlixBus if you’re broke. It’s not glamorous, but it works. Eurail is a relic. Let it die.
That time I almost slept in a Polish train station
This happened in January 2019. I was in Poznań, Poland, and I decided I was ‘too cool’ to book a ticket to Berlin in advance. I figured I’d just show up at the station and wing it because I wanted to be a spontaneous traveler. I got to the Poznań Główny station at 6:00 PM. The last train was full. The next one wasn’t until 4:00 AM. It was -12 degrees Celsius outside.
I spent eight hours sitting on a plastic bench next to a guy who was eating what smelled like pickled herring out of a jar. Every time the automatic doors opened, a blast of arctic air hit me like a physical punch. I was wearing ‘fashionable’ boots that had zero insulation. By midnight, I couldn’t feel my toes. I felt like a complete idiot. I ended up paying €140 for a last-minute hotel room that was three miles away just so I wouldn’t freeze to death. Spontaneity is great until you’re shivering in a station in Western Poland with no plan. Book your transport. Don’t be like me.
The secret to a good Eurotrip isn’t finding the best hidden gem; it’s avoiding the most obvious disasters.
Anyway, speaking of Poland, the pierogi in the milk bars (Bar Mleczny) are the only thing you should eat there. They’re cheap, they’re served by women who look like they want to fight you, and they’re the most authentic thing left in Europe. But I digress.
The 7-kilogram rule (or why your suitcase is your enemy)
I refuse to travel with anything more than a 35-liter backpack. I’ve watched people drag massive Samsonite hard-shell suitcases over the cobblestones of Prague and honestly, it’s hilarious. You can hear them coming from three blocks away. Clack-clack-clack-clack. It sounds like a machine gun. I personally hate Samsonite. Their wheels are garbage on anything that isn’t a smooth airport floor, and they’re way too heavy before you even put a single shirt in them.
I weighed my gear before my last two-week stint in the Balkans. My total pack weight was 6.8kg. That’s it. If you can’t fit your life into 7kg, you’re bringing too much crap. You don’t need three pairs of shoes. You need one pair of boots and maybe some flip-flops for the hostel shower so you don’t get foot fungus. I’ve tested six different pairs of ‘travel’ socks over the last three winters and tracked the wear on the heels. Merino wool is the only way. Everything else starts smelling like a locker room after four hours of walking.
Heavy bags make you a target for scammers and they make you miserable on transit. If you can’t carry your bag up four flights of narrow Parisian stairs without stopping to gasp for air, you’ve failed. Pack less. Then take out half of that and you’re getting closer. Travel light or suffer.
A note on the cities everyone loves
I’m going to say something that will probably get me banned from every travel forum on the internet: Paris is kind of miserable. Unless you have a budget of €500 a day, you are going to spend your time in cramped, overpriced cafes being ignored by staff who have reached their limit with tourists. The city is a museum that’s been preserved for people who don’t actually live there. It’s beautiful, sure, but it’s sterile in a way that feels fake.
Go to Berlin instead. Or Sarajevo. Or even Marseille if you want France without the pretension. People think they need the ‘classic’ experience, but the classic experience is a curated lie sold to you by movie studios. I might be wrong about this, but I think the best pizza in the world isn’t even in Italy—it’s in this weird basement spot in Prague called Johnny Pizza. I know, I know. ‘How dare you.’ But I’ve had the pizza in Naples and it was fine, but Johnny’s had this crust that I still dream about three years later. Sometimes the ‘wrong’ place is actually the right one.
And don’t get me started on Venice. It smells like a wet basement and costs as much as a mortgage payment. Skip it. Go to Treviso instead. It has the same canals and half the people. Venice is a theme park. Avoid the theme parks.
How to actually do this
Stop over-planning. You don’t need a spreadsheet with fifteen tabs. You need a passport, a decent backpack, and a willingness to look like a fool occasionally. The best moments I’ve had weren’t at the top of the Eiffel Tower; they were at a random bar in Budapest where I ended up drinking palinka with a group of retired teachers until 3:00 AM. You can’t schedule that. You can only leave enough space in your itinerary for it to happen.
Don’t buy the souvenirs. Don’t eat at any restaurant that has pictures of the food on a board outside. And for the love of God, stop trying to see everything. You won’t. You’ll just see the surface of nothing.
Is it worth the money? I honestly don’t know anymore. Some days I think I should have just put that cash into an index fund and stayed home. But then I remember the light hitting the mountains in Montenegro and I realize I’d probably just have spent the money on a better TV anyway. Travel is a weird, expensive, uncomfortable habit. But it’s better than sitting on the couch.
Go book a flight to somewhere you can’t pronounce. Just bring good socks.