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Laopooh posted:I'm arriving in Barcelona on Thursday as stop one on a year long backpacking trip and wanted to get some tips. I've booked my first night at a hostel for 10 euros but it looks like most cheap places are fully booked. My budget is about $30 a day so I was hoping to find more cheap places, will I be SOL? You'll find it a lot harder than in winter, that's for sure. When I was travelling around Europe earlier this year, most hostels were nearly empty (except amsterdam, london etc). I pretended to make a booking at some of the same empty hostels, and they are already booked out for August. Book a week or more in advance if you actually know where you are going, at least for the next month or 2. And a whole year, wow. Have fun! And by the way, in most countries it will cost a lot more than 10 euros, if you go to amsterdam or berlin or places like that it will probably be double that, at least. My money saving tip is go east to places like poland, slovakia etc.
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Jul 12, 2010 04:02
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Yeah, when I was in Europe the most I ever paid for a dorm bed was 30 euros in Amsterdam, and I was amazed at how much that was. 15-18 was the norm in most countries, or more like 10-12 in the Eastern places like Poland / Lithuania where the currency is worth about as much as a wet paper towel.
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Nov 15, 2010 06:50
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thepokey posted:I'm an Aussie that's pretty set on doing some kind of work program in the UK next year. I've been to the UK before and hold an Irish passport so the whole visa thing is not an issue. But I have a friend who has just moved over there with his girlfriend to live and work for awhile and is struggling already with trying to get a decent job and hasn't got any real accomodation yet so it's costing him a fortune into his savings already. Way too late for this I know... but I did the london pub program. It is overhyped and exaggerated, and you should go with the liveinjobs site if you must do pub work. Do not pay anyone. Work is not that hard to find, but you won't get anything over minimum wage which is about 6 pounds an hour. Or really 4 pounds an hour after tax and NI. Can you handle that? I did about 1.5 months of pub work and decided I'd rather not bother any more. Oh by the way, they couldn't even find me work at first, I was waiting nearly a week in London paying shitloads at hostels wondering what I was going to do, then I got a 1 month temp pub position. We got 2 meals a day that we were forced to pay for, no exceptions, it was taken from our earnings before we ever saw it. That was around 35 pounds per week for basically leftover pub meal poo poo like steak and kidney pie that would otherwise be thrown away. I put on weight and wasn't very healthy at all, just from a short period of that. We were often rostered for 50 hours a week or so, and anyone who complained would be given 20 hours the next week (i.e. not really enough to live on). Nevertheless, it was character building. Ah, getting up for an 11 hour split shift most days of the week, lugging coal in a bucket up stairs to light fires, my throat burning from the coal fumes and occasionally getting nosebleeds from my airways being so dry and parched no matter how much water I drank. Good times. The next job after that which the london pub company also gave me was in Walworth. Now this was basically the crime capital of London a few years ago, and probably still is. My manager at that pub was mugged in the park opposite the pub by a gang of kids with knives. I quit after a week because what was the point? My life was not worth wasting doing that, getting up early and spending every waking moment serving people and getting a small bundle of notes at the end of the week that I earn the equivalent of in 1.5 days here in Australia in a lovely retail job. Except here I can walk around outside at night, carrying an ipod or a laptop, and I won't be stabbed to death for it. Feel free to ask me for more details if you want, but that's the gist of it. I'm glad I did it for the experience, but there are much better things to do with your time.
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Dec 16, 2010 14:05
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