Planing A Backpacking Trip Through Europe

This year has been by far the most interesting of my life and it's not even September yet. I lived in another country for five months, came back to Slovenia, went to a concert in London, then volunteered in Gambia for three weeks (a report or reports on that will follow soon) and now I'm going backpacking. This will probably be my last big trip around Europe for a while, as I've realised that I have a whole life - if I don't get hit by a bus tomorrow while jaywalking - to take more or less comfortable trains, sleep in hostels with electricity and hot water, etc. I can do that if I decide to have a family and when (or should I say if again due to climate change and other possible issues that cannot be predicted) I grow old.

This is the first post about the backpacking trip.

WHO IS GOING?

The original idea was to travel through the Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia, Lituhania (I always mix up the last two as I never know which one has the complicated - Lithuania - name in English) alone, but karma or fate or whatever you want to call it, turned out differently. My Polish friend - let's call her by her initial, M. - said she'd be visiting her friends in Finland for a week in September, which meant she'd take the ferry to Estonia and we could meet in Tallinn.

WHERE ARE WE GOING?

As I said, the initail plan was to simply travel through the Baltics and then - as I want to fly less to have a smaller carbon footprint - take a Flixbus or a few trains back to Slovenia. But it just so happened that we (me and M.) made a lot of international friends on the exchange and we wanted to visit as many as possible, so we just kept adding countries. The rough plan is to meet in Tallin and then rush through Riga and Vilnius, visit a friend in a city (I don't even know which one) in Poland, then go to Białystok, M.'s hometown and stay there for a couple of days. Next stop is Slovakia, probably Bratislava, where we'll try to meet up with another Polish guy, and then we're proceeding through Hungary (I've never been there, even though it's our neighbour country, shame on me), where we'll stay with a friend for a weekend near Budapest, to Slovenia. What's the hurry, you ask? I have to be at a student council meeting in Ljubljana on the twenty-third. We'll finish our trip in Venice, where an Azerbaijani friend lives.

WHERE WILL WE STAY?

We don't really have a plan yet. I have my plane ticket from Treviso to Tallinn airport and M. has booked her ferry. I've emailed the Karma Kagyu Buddhist Centre in Tallinn but haven't heard back yet. I might try to find someone who knows someone there or a phone number I can call. On the bright side, we have been given a floor to sleep on in the Rigan Gompa. Later we'll be staying with friends, sleeping on public transport or in parks and trying to find accommodation in Buddhist centres along the way.

The thing about us is that we say "yes!" to every single plan. I have become very spontaneous in the last year (I decided to go to The Gambia practically overnight) and it shows. The problem is that we agree on so many adventures, but we're not organised, and let's just say that the "lost" in my name is there for a reason. But, as an Armenian I know likes to say: "ah well, if it's not fun in the moment, it will be fun type B". Type B fun is when you hate it in the moment, but when you look back you are glad you did it and think about how much fun you had. I can count at least five hikes this year that fit this definition.

Now that sounds pessimistic. But the truth is, that I am really hyped for the trip, I cannot wait to see M. and travel and explore and slide on every slide we see and go to grocery shops in every country - this is a part of experience, we both like to save money and find interesting local products.

Can't wait!