Winter break is going to start soon at my community college. I'm taking online classes also so attendance isn't holding me back since turning in assignments is attendance. I'm 18M, but I know my parents still wouldn't like me getting a flight to Poland or Greece (leaving from San Antonio Airport btw). I do live with them, but pay my own tuition which is like 6k a year. I also have $110 dollars in credit card cashback if that matters (thought about putting it towards a flight to eastern europe).Not sure on how much to budget, I have 16k total. But I would like to keep most of that since I pay tuition, work part time, and make 13/hr. I was thinking a budget of like 2k for at least a week, hopefully. But I'm open to other options/methods. I really want to try backpacking in eastern europe, probably solo. Since all my friends in town are too broke from spending money on weed, alcohol, videogames, and food. So I'm the only one with money that can travel. Any advice/thoughts is appreciated. Thanks.
i did this at 19 a few years and had super similar budget & situation to you. i was even also taking online cc classes lol. got loads of tips.1. don't go in the winter. i did. i severely underestimated the amount of people who'd be outside in the winter. a lot of places i went through looked like depressing ghost towns. i also got tired of marching 10+ miles in the cold everyday even though i swore i loved the cold.leave in late march or early april.2. don't go for only a week, try and go for at least a month. go big or go home; outside of the flight you should be spending less than you do per week in the states. if this is your first time traveling anywhere solo i would suggest you go somewhere local and stay in a hotel or hostel or your car or something for a few days to learn what you should and shouldn't be doing/packing/etc. worst time to learn you don't like something is when you've already blown thousands doing it.3. be flexible. you might want to go home sooner than you can and have a miserable week or might want to extend your stay and visit somewhere else. there are cities you'll like a lot and some you can blitz through in a day because you think it sucks assif you take anything away from this wall of text please please do not go in the winter, just wait a few months. keep saving up in the meantime. also start looking at google maps all the time and mark places of interest in various cities or read travel shit and mark what they say.
2k is a pretty big budget for a week. From San Antonio, I'd fly into Spain in the spring or early fall. You can usually get a $700 flight with one layover. Take the high speed train from Madrid and do Cordoba, Malaga, Seville and back to Madrid. Spain has a lot of cheap places to stay. It's one of the best countries for backpacking.
>>2733893>OP makes a thread about traveling to Eastern Europe>"bro go to the most western region in continental Europe"
It’s a long ass flight for just a week, I would drag it on as long as possible. I don’t know if you’re 2K budget includes flights but it should be possible. Eastern Europe is not as cheap as people claim it is but by staying in hostels, using public transport and eating cheap you can easily get by on €50 per day no matter where you are. Hitchhike and stealth camp and you can do it for even less.Budapest is very comfy in the winter. Or you could try somewhere like Croatia where it’s not so fucking cold.
>>2733825Another generic 'i wanna backpack thread' won't give you much, desu.What exactly do you want to get out of the trip? Write down a list of experiences you want, hobbies you have, dreams, things you'd like to do, etc, and then we can help more.Don't be a fag and speedrun Gdansk - Warsaw - Krakow - Prague - Vienna, or something similar. You'll end up having more or less identical days, doing the same shit and won't have enough time to appreciate anything.Play on the fact it's winter, and pintpoint 'wintery experiences'.>Nowa Huta (Krakow's communist hood) on a grey wintery day and have a 'commie day'>Zakopane for skiing or soaking up general snowy mountain vibes>Visiting a quaint xmas market (Wroclaw?)>Chilling out in thermal baths outside in cold weather (Budapest? Zakopane?)>Taking a nice train journey up into the mountains (Bansko, Bulgaria)>Drinking Sahlab on ferries and potentially seeing minarets in the snow in IstanbulKrakow/Zakopane -> Budapest -> Austria?
>>2733893Hey man, I'm thinking of spending summer in Japan, could you give me some winter suggestions for Angola and Namibia?
>>2733825when are you planning to do this?if you are from san antonio and haven't travelled much the chances are you have probably only seen snow and experienced temperatures below freezing a handful of times in your lifebear in mind that eastern europe gets pretty cold in winter time. your budget will probably have to cover some extra warm clothes
>>2734180Just layer up. All you need are a cheap hat, scarf and gloves.Only goodgoys go all in on the latest $800 goybranded jackets for a week's trip.