Affording Germany One Seat Cushion at a Time
Next year’s biggest trip will be 3 weeks in Europe. We start by flying into Paris (only airport we could get mileage reservations into) and end up in Leuven, Belgium for a conference before returning to London to fly home. We probably won’t stay long in Paris since we were there for a week in 2008 and it is brutally expensive (although worth every penny). We’re also trying to not plan this out exactly with a day-by-day itinerary so we can be more flexible than in the past. All I know is that it will include some time in London, Paris, Brussels, Leueven and a drive through Germany. The main bulk of time will spent in Germany exploring the places of my husband’s childhood, visiting friends and a new country for me.
Unfortunately this is going to to be expensive with these cities in particular. We are going to call back our mileage people every few weeks and see if we can rebook through other cities and avoid the UK and France this time, but it may not work out. In the meantime our eating out budget has been cut in half and I’m looking for creative ways to save. I would much rather pay for experiences than stuff so we’ll be keeping that in mind this Holiday Season/Birthday (5 in the next 2 months in the immediate family). With tomorrow being the very start of the Holiday/birthday craziness, I wanted to keep our ultimate goal in mind.
I have even considered getting extreme with the budget, aka this youtube video on spending $4 a week on food like this family. Couchsurfing here we come!
