I have always wanted to travel. Over the last few years, I really wanted to travle to Europe, and spend a long time there. However, there were several factors that made deemed the trip impossible. The main thing of course, is money. Another thing is having an Indian passport, which means to go almost anywhere that I wanted to go, I needed pre-arranged visa. I know its not that big of a deal, but to me, having the convenience of just taking a flight to somewhere I really wanted to go and not worry about all the Visa BS was compelling. Then, in May 2011, I got the one year long internship at Intel Corp, in Hillsboro, OR. This was an excellant opportunity! I assessed my salary, and realized that I can certainly make the long trip to Europe, if I plan well in advance, and be smart. Not only that, but also the fact that i will be eligible to become a US citizen in June 27, 2011 made it even better. The most important reason I chose Summer 2012 was because that's when the UEFA Euro 2012 Championship was going on, and I thought that would be a wonderful time to be in Europe. Besides, Germany is my favorite Mens National team, and ti support Germany in Euro 2012 while in Europe seemed like a fantastic idea! Also, after starting work at Intel, I realized that to go on a trip that is more than 3 weeks after I start working full-time would mean I will have to wait for 5+ years! I figured that if I were to do that, then it won't be the same, as in 5+ years, I will most likely be married, and doing a trip of this magnitude with a wife (plus maybe kids :p) would be quite an ordeal! After considering all these factors, I decided that doing this trip in Summer 2012 is the BEST option! One, maybe two friends of mine have also decided to come with me, at least trhough Europe. I don't think I will ever get to do that once getting a real job and getting busy!
Scandinavia has always been a weakness for me! I longed to visit the land of legendary Vikings, Fjords and excellant public welfare for a long time. Therefore, trip to Europe without including Scandinavia was out of the question! So I decided to fly to there first, from Seattle. Oslo seemed the best option because Icelandair flies there from Seattle via Reykjavik, and the fares were too good to not book!the moment the fares were available online (330 days prior to the travle date), I started monitoring the fares. Studentuniverse.com was the website that offered the best fares (if you are student, which I am by the way). their fares to Oslo-Gardermoen from Seattle was 100 bucks cheaper than Expedia. I did some reasearch and estimated that the one way flight to Oslo would cost about $375 via Studentuniverse. After days and days of monitoring the fares, in September 2011, Studentuniverse had a coupon for $40, and I decide to get the ticket for June 13th to fly from Seattle to Oslo. After the coupon discount, the flight came out to $350! That was an important moment, because that helped me plan the rest of the trip with a solid starting point! I planned the trip out so that I spend about 3 days everywhere I go. After doing all the estimates, I came to the final dates. Spend june 14th until August 7th in Europe. Leave Europe on August 7th and fly to Dubai/Muscat/Doha, depending on the airfare. I wanted to fly out of Frankfurt to Dubai/Muscat/Doha, because Frankfurt offered the best connections possible, and was also an ideal place to end the trip.
From Oslo, I wanted to fly to Stockholm. I looked at the travel options. Rail was certainly in my mind. However, trains from Oslo to Stockholm took about 6 hours, and there were no overnight trains (at least when I was researching). So I decided to fly. I also did some research and concluded that if I were to get a Eurail Global Pass, I would spend about 76.75 dollars per segment. So I decided that if the airfares were to go below that mark, I will take the flight.The airfares did, and I got the flight tickets for the Oslo-Stockholm leg.
My original plan was to do Oslo->Stockhom->Copenhagen->Hamburg->Amsterdam->Manchester->London->Paris->Madrid->Ibiza->Barcelona->Venice->Milan->Rome->Vienna->Munich->Frankfurt. So, as the airfares dropped below tha $76.75 threshold, I booked them.The first leg that i got the flight ticket on was Copenhagen->Hamburg on SAS, on June 23rd. This was probably my biggest mistake! The fare was 76.40, and since it was below 76.75, I booked it. How stupid of me! Once I started researching the fares for Hamburg->Amsterdam, I realized that the one-way, nonstop fares were ridiculously expensive! I really didn't want to fly an LCC and no matter how I looked at it, I couldn't get a nonstop oneway flight below 76.75. Then I considered trains, but there are no quick non-stop trains between Hamburg and Amsterdam. The only nonstop train was the City Night Line, and the fares for that was not too attractive. I even considered the fact that I don't have to pay for a night's stay, but the CNL was still not worth it. Later on, Norwegian Air Shuttle published the fares for their Copenhagen-Amsterdam non-stop flight, and the fares made me cry! About 50 something dollars! I desperately tried to call Expedia and asked if I could change the flight from Copenhagen to Hamburg to Copenhagen to Amsterdam, but they would not do that! My only option was to cancel the flight and lose the $76.40. I also looked at the flights from Amsterdam to Manchester, and the fares on full-service, nonstop airlines (namely KLM) was just as ridiculous as the Hamburg-Amsterdam leg. Though Easyjet served that route, I really didn't want to fly them. Also, I was planning to spend 2 days in Hamburg, and 2 days in Amsterdam. This meant I would not get to enjoy the either of the cities to my satisfaction. Therefore, with a heavy heart, I decided to scrap Amsteram from my list of places!
I got the flight from Oslo-Gardermoen to Stockholm-Arlanda for about $61, Stockholm to Copenhagen-Kastrup for about $60, both on SAS, booked via Expedia. I already described the whole fiasco above about the Copenhagen-Kastrup to Hamburg-Fuhlsbuettal. From Hamburg, I wanted to go to Manchester, and the only option is flights (obviously!). Easyjet flies from Hamburg to Manchester-Ringway, and so does Lufthansa via Eurowings. The flight is available for booking via the usual travel websites, as well as the Lufthansa website. One day, just out of curiosity, I searched for the fare on the Lufthansa Germany website, and the fare on the Germany website was about half of what it was on the US website! I was shcoked! This gave me an idea. I had found out about this German travel website called fluege.de while watching a Fussball-Bundesliga game on tv, and decided to try them. That somehow led me to cheaptickets.de, as well as the Expedia Germany website. The prices on all these Germany based websites were about half of what it was on US based websites. This definitely gave me an opportunity to put all the German I learned to some real work, and I booked the Hamburg-manchester flight through cheaptickets.de site, for about $83, including foreign transaction fees.
I will be traveling from Manchester to London via train, and London to Paris via Eurostar (duh!). The ticket is available for booking via raileurope.com already, but I do NOT want to spend the ~$8 dollar service fee charged by raileurope! That is BS if you ask me! So I will have to wait until March 5th, 2012 to book that ticket via eurostar.com. I really hope the $56 tickets will not be sold out by then!
An important metric that I use to analyze the value of a flight is miles per dollar. Its the ratio of the miles I travel on a flight to the amount I paid for that flight. The metric becomes irrelevant for short flights such as most of the ones within Europe. A route that can be analyzed and compared with this metric is Paris to Madrid, with its ~600 mile flight distance. Any flight above 5 miles/dollar is sensible to me.
One of the strategies that I used to save money (and time) was to apply for airline credit cards. I applied for American Airlines AAdvantage Visa card, Delta Skymiles Gold American Express, and Lufthansa Premier Miles & More World Mastercard. All three of these came with bonus miles, and they helped reduce the total travel cost pretty significantly, as I will explain later on. In the European segment at least, I got an award reservation on Iberia from Paris-Orly to Madrid-Barajas for 10000 AAdvantage miles and $64 in taxes. and fees. Expedia lists the ticket for ~600 dollars! How ridiculous is that! I will never understand the airline industry! It is the most MESSED-UP and SENSELESS industry if you ask me!
From Madrid, my plan was to go to Ibiza and from Ibiza to Barcelona. I got a ticket on Spanair for Madrid-Ibiza and on Air Europa on Ibiza->Barcelona-El Prat. But fate was unkind to me. First, Air Europa cancelled the flight that I was supposed to be on in December 2011. I was put on a 10:35 am flight instead of the afternoon flight that I was originally booked on. I didn't like the timing and so I chose the refund option, extended by Expedia through which I got the tickets. Then, in late January, Spanair went bankrupt and so, as of this writing, my trip to Ibiza and from Ibiza to Barcelona is completely up in the air. Expedia has not acknowledged the fact that Spanair is no more, and the itinerary still shows up as "confirmed in expedia website. I will be really mad if both Spanair and Expedia ends up messing up the situation and not refunding my money/rebooking me!
From Barcelona, I got booked on a Spanair flight to Venice-Marco Polo, but as you can imagine, that flight is now up in the air as well! I hate all this uncertainty! Why can't expedia come to their senses and let me get my money back or put me in a different flight? And I just found out about Air One, and their flight between Barcelona and Venice. I can't make a move about it because I'm still not sure about the status of my Spanair flight! What a dilemma!
Update Feb 8: So I called up the credit card companies that I used to buy the tickets and disputed the charges. The credits appeared on my statement. So I guess I got the money back!
Now I need to keep hunting for cheap fares on MAD-IBZ, IBZ-BCN, BCN-VCE/MIL as well! Oh well!
I have decided that it is best to travel by train within Italy. Depending on which airport I fly into (Venice or Milan), I need to do Venice-Milan-Rome or Milan-Venice-Rome. each journey is about 2.5-3.5 hours long. Not bad! Its gonna be on the Frecciarossa and the Frecciargento trains. From Rome, I fly Niki airlines to Vienna airport. I spend four days in Vienna, where I have family. From Vienna, I fly Niki again to Munich. I plan to spend about 3-4 days in Munich, and expect to spend quite a bit of money there as well from what I've heard about its cost of living. From Munich, I will take the Deutsche Bahn ICE to Frankfurt. I spend about 3 days in Frankfurt, and on August 7th morning, I begin my journey out of Europe! First, its a short hop to Berlin-Brandenburg on an Air Berlin flight on the morning of Aug 7th. My next flight is also on Air Berlin, but from Berlin-Brandenburg to Dubai Intl. The layover time is 12 hours exact, which gives me a day to go around Berlin! Berlin was not part of my initial itinerary, but I guess I gained that instead of Amsterdam!
On February 16, I received an email from RailEurope about a promo code to get $25 off an order of $25 or more, to be used by Feb 23! I was absolutely delighted when I saw that! That meant I can get the Eurostar ticket for July 3, 2012 right away, and I did just that! It was a multi use promo code, and my friend who is coming with me to Europe was able to use that as well! After the $7.95 booking fee charged by RailEurope, the discount came out ot ~$17, and that is pretty spectacular! Overall, the price for a Economy, non-refundable ticket from London-St. Pancras to Paris-Nord came out to $38.95 for each of us! An absolutely golden deal if you ask me! The funny thing is that, because we got the ticket separately, I was put in coach 17, seat 16, and my friend was put in coach 16, seat 17! We gotta call them up and ask to be seated nearby, in the same coach at least! Even if we are not able to sit nearby, getting $25 off for each one of us was pretty damn good!
Now lets back up to the getting to Dubai part. My plan is to spend 3 days in Dubai, and then either fly to Muscat or fly to Doha and then to Muscat. It all depends on how cheap the flights are, and the convenience of my cousins/relatives in the area. Either way, I plan to spend until August 18th there, and then fly to Kochi, India. I will be traveling to India after 3 years! A lot has changed since the last time I visited India, and I'm really looking forward to seeing my family and friends again!