Italian vacation

[Alessandro]

I've been planning a trip for a few months with two of my friends to travel up through Italy through Austria to Germany. I'm really psyched because I haven't been out of the country (Canada and Mexico do not count).

Here is my problem. My friend Alex, who is Italian, can't or won't tell me how much money to budget for food, shopping, incidentals, etc. He says stuff like "depends on the exchange rate", or "depends on what you want to do". No shit. He's never had to worry about money his whole life, so I can't really blame him for not knowing what things cost.

It's driving me nuts. We don't have to worry about accomodations throughout our trip, that's been taken care of. We also don't have to worry about taking the trains because we are planning on riding motorcycles all the way up. (By the way, does anyone know if an American drivers license will work in Europe, or do I have to get an international license?) What I want to know is how much anyone spent per day on everything else. Just a ballpark figure, no need to pull out receipts or anything like that.

I need to find out so that I can start selling blood plasma and sperm to afford it. <IMG SRC="biggrin.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">

[Susie]

Rough Guide/ Lonely planet are really good at telling you how much everything costs and giving tips for budget travellers...You can spend zilch, or hundreds, it really depends on what you do. I found (in Italy) it was much cheaper to go out for a meal and stay drinking than to go to a bar...and you could pick up snacks for lunch for next to nothing, especially from the deli's.
I'd buy a guidebook, not to plan your whole holiday by it as discovering things yourself makes the whole trip more enjoyable, but for practicalities it always helps
Oh
this may help too! (http://www.thesite.org/info/careers/gap_year/world_on_a_shoestring.html)

and here are some useful links around the web (http://www.thesite.org/community/links/travel.html)

Susie <IMG SRC="smile.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">

[ 21-02-2002: Message edited by: Susie ]

[Alistair]

Austria can be realtivly expensive, with Germany second, followed by Italy. Allthough if you are shopping and cooking for yourself they are all quite cheap compared to England, I would guess probably around the same as the USA (haven't been there)