The biggest expense is of course getting between Europe and Vancouver. Air Berlin had a fantastic deal of €650 from Berlin to Vancouver, so we've locked that in.
The next issue is getting to South Eastern Europe. We've decided we want to see Budapest, Croatia, perhaps Montenegro, and everything else is a bonus. We're picking up our bikes from Tallinn, Estonia, from where there are no direct cheap flights to any of these places. Doing two flights with bikes is both a bitch and expensive. Easyjet charge €22 or so per bike per flight. Estonian Air had fairly cheap flights to Vienna which end up about AUD200 each including the bikes. This is reasonable, so now the plan is to take the train to Slovenia, then travel down through Croatia to Montenegro, then train back up to Budapest. This will probably take up three of the four available weeks (even covering large boring distances by train or ferry), so we'll be train travelling tourists on the way back to Tallinn.
Currently I'm excited about the thought of Slovenia and a little apprehensive about Croatia and Montenegro. The former seems a lot more cyclist friendly, although the latter are supposedly more visually stunning.
As the greater part of the trip will be in the Balkans, I've found this site particularly useful.
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In May my partner Millerine and I are going to head to Europe for the months leading up to WUGC in Vancouver in August. A portion of this time will be spent catching up with family and friends in Estonia, while another large portion of our time will be spent cycling through countries like the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Croatia. Hopefully we'll fit a couple of frisbee tournaments in there as well.
This blog will be little more than a record of this trip, so probably won't be of interest to the average passer by. However, I'm finding in my own online research that a lot of the most useful information is coming from other blogs of cycling trips through the area. There is not yet a lot of information available for the areas I'm travelling to, so my hope is that this blog will provide useful information for people following in my footsteps.
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