EUR07: Appendices; or, Europe on $122.86 a day

Well, I’ve been home for half a week, sleeping in my own bed, showering without sandals on (and without simply a facecloth for drying myself), eating regularly, staying stationary for more than 2 days in a row, and enjoying a constant stream of movies and games of Trivial Pursuit with family. Do I have any final thoughts? Revelations? Infectious diseases?

The answers to those questions are: maybe, probably not, and yes. My final thoughts are thus: Europe is good. It still hasn’t really sunk in how many places I’ve visited, and how long I was out on my own. I can still say that the whole experience was fantastic, once-in-a-lifetime – I was able to visit places and do things (crossing into Asia) that I’d been waiting to do for a long, long time (and had, until recently, given up as out of my reach for the moment). There were some great people and moments along the way, along with a few stumbling blocks. Any revelations I may have had were tied to the latter, as on a number of occasions I had to get off my ass and TCB, something which I’m normally fairly reluctant to do. We’ll see if I can parlay this into world domination. And as for the infectious diseases, well, I’m still coughing up German viruses, but that’s almost abated.

On the trip, I wrote down what my expenses were each day, and I’ve taken the liberty of writing that all up for your perusal and consideration. Note that a lot of them come from before I even left on my trip, such as the $806 for the Eurail pass; however, I’ve included them in my “Per day” total, since it was all money that went towards the vacation. When I calculated the per-day average spending, I averaged it out over 33 days instead of the actual 32 I was away, to account for the fact that some expenses were “miscellaneous”… what the statistical accuracy of doing that may be, I’m not entirely sure. I do know that I went a bit over budget (having aimed for $100 a day), but I think I can forgive myself. You can get the spreadsheet here:

Once again, a huge thank you to my pops for using his air miles to completely pay off the airplane tickets to and from Over-the-Pond.

In the meantime, I’ve added a few books (which I read during the trip) to my Books section (ego->newton64) [2023-08-14: find me on BookWyrm]; and otherwise, it’ll be back to normal around here – meaning back to posting completely arbitrary observations and the occasional Zionist rant.

It’s great to be home, and hopefully I’ll be seeing the rest of y’all soon.