8 Things You Should Know Before Backpacking Europe

1. The internet has changed everything.

This is a statement that is true of pretty much everything in the 21st century. But it is especially true of backpacking. Websites like HostelWorld make it easy to find the closest and cheapest hostel in a city at the tap of a button. Apps like Couchsurfer make it easy to find free places to stay or other travelers to hang out with. Hitchwiki makes it easy to find places to hitchhike from and websites like Rome2Rio will spit out the cheapest way from one city to the other in seconds. Before all this technology, you would have had to find these things out through word of mouth and asking around. Trust me when I say that these apps have more and better information than the bartender at a hostel telling you there’s a mad scene in Marakesh and he’s got a buddy to drive you there. You can see so much more when the internet helps you with your logistics. So do your research. There’s a lot of great traveling tech out there on the web, just waiting to make your trip easier.

2. Getting off the Google is hard….

That being said, it’s pretty common to have access to these apps only 10% of the time. Temporary data plans that can stretch across multiple countries are expensive. My advice is to go without and just hook up to free WiFi. But be warned. Getting off the Google is hard. I’m young enough that I grew up with the internet. I thought I knew how much I relied on it. But I found out that I had no real understanding of just how much it had permeated my life until it was suddenly….gone. Or mostly gone. No longer having the internet at my fingertips was a larger part of my trip than I thought it would be. I found myself walking somewhere and being totally unaware of how to get back because I was so used to Google maps. Trying to meet up with people went from ‘I’ll text you when I get there’ to ‘okay, I will be standing by this sign at 8 o’clock. I will stay there for 20 minutes, but if you aren’t there by then, I’ll assume you didn’t get WiFi soon enough to read this and I will find something else to do’. It’s hard and it’s strange. Even just having to go back to wondering things is odd. Looking at a beautiful building in Zagreb and having no idea what it is but being completely unable to Google it. There are so many times when you just want to be able to Google something and then know it, right away. It makes you wonder how on earth anyone survived before the year 2005.

3. But also kind of wonderful.

But you quickly learn that not only did they survive, they thrived. And so will you. You gain a better sense of direction, a better memory, more attention to details, and better problem solving simply because you have to. If you want to go somewhere, you actually have to know how to get there and how to get home. If you are trying to cook something, you have to remember the recipe. But that wasn’t the best part about living 7 months without 100% accessible internet. The best part was how it changed how I felt about the internet. Facebook went from being this tool I used to avoid term papers to being the best and easiest way to talk to my mom or my best friend. Snapchat went from being something I did when bored in the elevator to how I told my brother what country I’m in. Social media stopped being about distraction and started being about communication. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. And my absence from social media reminded me how glad I am to exist in a world with it.

4. Yes, it’s safe. Even for girls. But you have to be gutsy.

This concern was probably the number one question I got traveling. You’re alone and female? But….aren’t you worried? The answer, I would always try to explain, is no. I felt perfectly safe traveling alone because I always remembered something my grandmother used to say….you will probably never see these people again. If I ever felt uncomfortable or unsafe, I could just leave. Easy as that.

Whereas extricating yourself in your own city, when you are with friends-of-friends can be a tad more complicated. You have to make the call if a situation is awkward or if it’s unsafe, if it’s weird or if it’s uncomfortable. When you are traveling, you don’t. There are no social consequences whatsoever to anything you do, so it just doesn’t matter as much. You don’t even have to worry about making up a good excuse, you can literally just walk away. Same thing applied to everything else, from hostels to streets I didn’t want to walk down. So, yes, I felt safe. But only because I trusted my gut and had the wherewithal to follow it.

5. And yes it’s cheap. It’s as cheap as you can stand it.

The difference between a tourist and a backpacker is that a tourist has money but no time and a backpacker has time but no money. Traveling can be cheap. You can Couchsurf, hitchhike, and even dumpster dive for your food from supermarkets if you like. People do it. But traveling is as cheap as you are comfortable with. For example, I found that while I liked Couchsurfing, I also liked hanging out with people closer to my age. So I stayed in hostels about half the time. And I found that I did not want to dumpster dive at all, ever. I was willing to pay for half my lodging and for my food. While that made my trip more expensive than it could have been, it also made my trip exactly what I wanted it to be. There are cheap options out there for every part of traveling, it just depends if they are the options you want to take. Or if you think traveling is worth it enough to do it the dirt cheap way, prioritizing seeing things over any type of comfort. You quickly figure out where you draw the line.

6. People don’t hate Americans.

Before I backpacked Europe, I had never traveled outside of the United States. So I thought something a lot of Americans think — that everyone else in the world hates us. I was genuinely expecting eye rolls and a dismissive puff of a European cigarette every time I said I was from Washington D.C. But that didn’t happen. Instead of giving me hate, most people had some question stockpiled that they had always wanted to ask an American, or a native English speaker. My favorite, by far, was a girl from Columbia who asked me why Americans used the phrases “booty call” and “butt dial” to mean such different things when they sounded so similar. The questions were usually funny or interesting, and they gave me a new perspective on my own country (seriously, why do those phrases mean such different things?!). So if you are worried about traveling because you think people hate Americans, don’t be. And don’t pretend to be a Canadian. Just be your red, white, and blue self and you’ll be fine.

7. America is from everywhere. And it is everywhere.

When my brother was in Denmark with me, he asked me to show him something really different, something he’d never seen in the USA. I had to explain to him that traveling from the USA to Europe doesn’t really work like that. If asked before my trip what America’s biggest export was, I would have told you entertainment. But I had no idea what that meant until I started traveling. No matter where I went, no matter how remote I got, people had seen American TV shows or movies. They can quote Friends to you in Greece, and kids can tell you about Spongebob in the mountains of Romania. There are very few places in the world that my culture has not touched, somehow. But the reverse is also true. I grew up eating Polish food and going to the German market at Christmas. We have Greek weddings and Turkish coffee. There were very few cultural things I encountered that I had not seen or heard of a version of at home. And there were very few places where people didn’t know about my culture. Whether that is good or bad is up to you, but I was definitely surprised.

8. Don’t panic.

It’s the oldest adage in the traveler’s book, written on the back of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but it is still the best lesson. Don’t panic. No matter what happens, you can handle it if you stay calm. If you ever want to wonder just how calm you can stay, go backpack. It’s an exciting series of logistical puzzles, where you are trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B, spending as little cash as possible. Your life goes from being routine to complicated overnight. But the feeling you get after solving these problems, is like no other.