Statistics

One of the most frequently asked questions when I come back from my long summer travels is:  

"How can you even afford this?"

Let me be clear: Without my parents covering pretty much all of my living expenses here in Vienna, I probably wouldn't be able to travel at all. So thanks to my parents (and grandparents) :) But this way, and by working a little bit, I can save some money every month.

Apart from that, I just don't spend so much money. As you will see below, accommodation still makes up 26% of my spendings; one can only imagine how high that number would be if I hadn't couchsurfed more than half of the time. The other category that would be either on second or even first place is transportation; apart from two long distance busses and urban transportation, I hitchhiked all the way from Tallinn to Istanbul, so that saved me a LOT of money as well. Also, I don't go on shopping sprees when travelling and don't buy a lot of souvenirs (who will carry that shit?), I don't smoke, and, most recently, I don't drink (see the illustration below). I generally don't do expensive day-tours, don't visit many museums (actually it's usually one in each city: the Jewish one), and don't eat in expensive restaurants.

Now that sounds like a lot of "don't"s instead of "do"s, but that doesn't mean that I don't do anything. Most of my days consist of walking, walking, and more walking. And I like it! Most of the time ;)

First I just wanted to see how much money I had spent in each country. Obviously, this isn't really representative, because in some countries I only spent 3 days, while I travelled others for more than a week. Bulgaria is especially misleading: I got a tattoo there for 45€, so that's an impressive half of the total amount that I left there.

The next graphic is more interesting. I differentiated my spendings in six different categories: Readymades (which means everything consumed while sitting somewhere or things you can buy "to go"), Groceries (which is food and drinks), Transport (which includes both long distance and urban transport), Fees & Tours (which means entrance fees, money I paid for free walking tours, and other charges like for toilets), Souvenirs (to which I counted the tattoo as well ;)), and Accommodation.

Unfortunately I don't have any numbers to compare, but I'm sure that on this trip I ate out (="readymades") way more often than on any other trips before. Especially in the Balkans, eating in restaurants sometimes seemed even cheaper than making an effort and go to the supermarket and prepare my own meals. But apart from that I think I learned to enjoy spending money on another nice cup of coffee and dishes I have never heard of before.

The next graphic shows the amount of money I spent per day in each country - a far more representative image. While I spent the most in total numbers (almost 200 €) in Poland, my daily budget there was actually only about 14,50 €. The most expensive was Croatia, with around 26,80 € daily, followed by Bulgaria, which is again not really accurate, because as stated I got a tattoo for 45,- € there - without it, Bulgaria would range at 13,87 € daily. So the real second place goes to Estonia, with 23,44 € daily, closely followed by Lithuania, where I spent 23,19 € a day. Kosovo is the cheapest, with 5,50 € per day - but I have to admit that I only stayed one and a half days there, brought some food from Macedonia, and was invited for dinner :)

This graphic mainly shows you that I spent an average of 11,79 € for a night (I divided the total amount with 22, the number of nights I actually stayed in a hostel/pension). Also, I lived with around 7 € per day for food, with two thirds going into readymades.

To make things even more specific, I wanted to examine how much money I spent on groceries compared to readymades in each country. Croatia again turned out to be on the first place (5,77 € per day) - here the four days I spent with my two friends mostly cooking for ourselves clearly show. Germany comes on second place here (3,34 € daily), which kind of surprised me at first, but a second glance showed that I sponsored the ingredients for 16 delicious pizzas, completely homemade by my friend and host Gal in Berlin. Afterwards come Estonia (3,04 €), Latvia (2,91 €) and Montenegro (2,60 €), which also felt expensive. Turkey was the cheapest, with a glorious 10 Eurocents per day - but that is because I stayed with my friend Mirjam and she and her husband insisted on paying for everything.

The following graphic shows quite a different picture, but again needs some explanation. Estonia comes on first place with 10,07 € per day; prices are just like in Germany or Austria. Bulgaria (9,67 €) again comes on second place, this time because I just LOVED the food and atmosphere there, so I didn't cook myself at all during my stays in Sofia and Plovdiv. It's followed by Lithuania (7,52 €), where I don't remember eating out a lot, but the Western prices show here again. Poland is on fourth place, with a daily spending of 7,02 €, which is  probably due to my aspirations to find the best Pierogi in all Poland ;) Expensive Montenegro comes last here, with 49 cents a day, because I spent my days in bed, not eating anything at all.

Last but not least: the thing about alcohol. 

I had been thinking about quitting for various reasons for quite some time already, and decided that this trip would be a good chance to try. Except from my first evening, on which my host almost forced me to buy one of the microbrewed local beers, which I didn't even finish, I didn't have a drop of alcohol during the whole trip. And it felt good. At no point I missed getting drunk and lost on the way back to the hostel, or losing my voice from all the shouting against the loud music. Surprisingly, after very few days, I also didn't feel like having beer with lunch or dinner anymore, like I used to. Obviously I was offered homemade Rakiya on various occasions, and sometimes people got upset when I refused, but it got easier every time.

What I did instead was writedown every single time I had the chance to drink, or would've had something to drink in earlier days (be it beer, wine or spirits). To make it easier, I recalculated everything as if it was just beers, and came to the conclusion that I saved my mind and body from 89 bottles - or more than 40 liters! - of beer. 

Talking about money: Just roughly calculated, this decision also saved me between 180 € and 220 € :)