Lesson #2: All about Money

Well, I’ve written a lot about the brilliant places to visit, the best food to eat, the things you ought to do. But in this series of short stories, I’m going to talk about things no one talks about – The things you learn from the blunders you make in travel!

For any trip, you always do budget how much a trip costs and you plan your finances accordingly. But what happens when you go slightly wrong with those calculations? Well, you get royally screwed, especially if you are a student on a shoe string budget.

We were towards the fag end of the euro trip you know that time where the complacency and the arrogance get the better of you?! We were on our last trip before we had to head back to India in the Croatia – Prague- Hungary trip and we reached Zagreb on a Saturday evening after a long hauling journey from France via Germany, Austria and finally reaching Croatia.

The problem with travel is that you very soon lose all track of which day of the week it is. We had planned to go to Plitvice Lake the next day and had to pay the vendors for the travel etc. for the same. We went to the ATM and we got an error message when we tried withdrawing 100 euros. We said okay, could be a problem with the machine, like big social service workers we told people behind us in the line saying there is some issue with the machine. We walked another 200 metres and came across another ATM, we tried the transaction again and we again got a failure.

Now curious, we decided let’s try a lower amount, we put 75 euros and again the same error. We wondered what could be the concern, we tried more times and finally decided we will pay and get a balance confirmation, turned out we had 2 euros on the card (we were hedging the euro and converting it as and when the rates dipped against the INR and forgot to keep enough buffer, aren’t we thoughtful) and some coins as cash with us. And we could not do any bank transaction as it was Sunday the next day and all banks were closed and we could not buy any more euros till Monday morning in India. And so started the day strapped with no money in Zagreb, thankfully we had free breakfast at the hostel and some nutri-bars from Germany to munch on. We saved our 2 euros to get us a slice of pizza in the night and I must tell you it was the most delicious pizza I have ever savoured.

So always, always, keep enough money to keep you going for a few more days than planned, trust me it helps!!

For the previous lesson click here