Tokyo Jim’s 生活

Well, I made it back home just in time to attend the Usenix LISA Conference taking place in San Diego. I’ll have a trip summary and some observations later, but since many people have been asking me how much my 50-day European trip cost, I decided to publish that information here.

The total amount spent for my trip, including airfare, rail pass, and all expenses incurred along the way is $4193, or about $80 per day. Gee, that sounds like a lot. And I usually stayed in hostels. Of course my three weeks in Germany were more expensive on a per-day basis than my time in lower-cost countries like Slovakia and Hungary. Deducting the airfare, it’s closer to $68 per day.

Lodging costs ran from about $10 per night in hostels in Hungary to $50 per night for some places in Germany where I chose to get a hotel room rather than stay in a hostel too far from the center of town.

We won’t even start to talk about the opportunity costs, since much of my income comes from hourly work that I could not (or didn’t have time to) perform while on the road.