360 in 365 – Joachim voyage autour du monde

lessons learned from my previous travel(s)

In my previous post, I wrote about a train trip I did last fall, from October 2 to 17 I traveled from Venice, Italy to Stockholm, Sweden, and I stopped to Vienna, Berlin and Copenhagen. I travelled with Interrail tickets and CouchSurfing, the community that connects traveling people and people hosting traveling people. I coult write about that in a next post.
One of the things I wanted to know, is that if I could travel alone. Some people have problems with that…

I didn’t have any so I decided to do a longer travel, the one I’m preparing right now, this Round the World trip. I thought I should try to learn things about my previous experience : what could I do to travel better than last time?

1. Have a smaller bag.

   I had a sailor bag. A huge one, around 60L or 70L, filled to the top with lots of clothes. It wasn’t great at all to travel with this bag. Way to big and heavy for comfort… I regretted having it when going to the railway station in Venice and when I arrived in Copenhagen at 8am and had to go to the hostel… Next time, I want a 45L backpack.

2. Travel with a real backpack.

   The problem with the sailor bag is that it isn’t practical, due to the lone strap. I had one of these and a messenger-type bag for my cameras. It was’t really comfortable.

3. Take a seat in the night trains, not a couchette.

   Night trains are very practical but not comfortable. The best way to sleep, I found out, was’nt to take a couchette, but a seat. You have less neighbors in seat-compartiments than in couchette-compartiment… and try to sleep when your 5 swede night neighbors engage in a snoring contest. At least, when you’re alone in your compartiment, it’s quieter. Plus, seats are cheaper!

4. Travel longer.

   This one is quite logical. You should be able to take your time digesting your travel… One year should be great in that regard…

Well, that’s all I can think of for today. Now I have toremember that when packing my backpack and planning my route!