Travel

The cost of living while hitchhiking

I started my trip on 18th of August at 11:20 AM from my hometown city. I already bad my backpack prepared and supplied for 5 days.

In my pocket I took with me cash 22 RON (5 EURO) and 2 credit cards. On the first one I had 921 RON (195 EURO) and on the second one I had balance in two currencies: 32 EURO and almost 200 RON (42 EURO). Total of roughly 280 EURO.

Today I have 21 RON on my first account, and just a bit over 300 RON on my second one. Plus 24 EURO cash. Thus 92 EURO left.

Since the day I left 3 weeks have passed and I spent 190 EURO.

Most of my money went on accomodation, transportation, food and others.

Unfortunately, my hitchike went badly in Serbia, thus I had to take the bus from Nis to Skopje for 11€. For the route Skopje – Thessaloniki I took the train for 12€. So, in total I spent 23 on transportation.

Accomodations I took were in Nis 1 night 9€ for a shared hostel room and in Skopje 2 nights 5€/night (really cheap hostel) in the same kind of shared room. So this is 19€.

Sincerely I don’t know how much I spent on food. I bought stuff both from supermarket and from bazaar markets. I guess I spent around 50 – 70 €. I must say I already had packed food for 5 days, all costing 12€. But I won’t count that in the total.

Supermarket receipt in Sithonia, Greece. Food is so expensive here

Then, the others category includes different things. In Thessaloniki, at the beer festival, the entrance, a Hungarian Kurtos and a non-alcoholic beer cost me 10€. The withdrawal of 40€ for ATM in Greece cost me 2.5€ (even though in Macedonia it did not cost me anything). The purchase of a new charger and cable was 19€. The sunscreen protection milk was 5€. Oh, and the biggest of all was the registration fee for workexchange platform WorldPackers: 29€. All these unexpected payments were around 60-70€.

This was my expenditure analysis. I can say I made mistakes, I lost and destroyed items I had to to buy again and some expenditures are just because I was too comfortable to make free of charge decisions.

Anyhow, the experience was worthy. And here is a short ending thought: money can be easily made, but experiences not.

Răzvan

I am Razvan. I graduated Computer Science in Romania and I worked as a Software Developer at Microfocus (previously HPE or HP) for a year. At my graduation I quit my job and I started again freelancing. I plan to travel for 3 years in different ways, to see the world, to rediscover myself, to set my standards, my goals and to explore the things I learned in school all these years. I love hiking and mountain climbing, though I want to learn skiing. Money are not what I desire in life, though I know they are important for my health insurance and my retirement. The food part and the accommodation I can handle for now. My young age helps me not complain and not being to demanding in my needs. I would like a world where money were not available and we could exchange goods. Anyhow coins are not a currency in my perception anymore, but time is always the unit measurement I use. I don't waste my time with strangers, companies or things I don't value. You can see me sometimes at different presentations sitting and listening to the speaker and the next 5 minutes you can see me walking out the building cause I see the presentation as a waste of my time. That's me. But I always try to give most of my time to people and causes that matter to me. I opened a blog in order to share my thoughts. I know I have so much to share, I am confident about myself and I want people to have access to my words. I know people can make money out of blogs by affiliating and advertising clothes products or by selling their own products. To be honest, I thought about ways I could earn something from this page, but I don't want to lie to you for the money. I guess in case I really appreciate something, I would just tell you about that. This is me. Răzvan