Travel Plans - And (Gasp) An Advanced Reservation

I know, I know.  This trip was supposed to be done without advanced reservations.  But I have a really good reason for this one, I promise!  Let's start at the beginning.

To start out with, I allotted 17,400 DKK (600 DKK per day) as my budget for the on-ground portion of the trip.

 We first look at the opportunities available for transit.  The reasonable options here are bus, plane, train, ferry, and car.  Planes are far too expensive, and the boarding process makes them take nearly as long as trains for short trips.  Car rental is a beast I'd really rather not deal with on my first European trip.  This leaves the bus, train, and ferry systems, of which only the buses and trains are in direct competition.  Buses have the advantage of being slightly cheaper, but trains are faster and more comfortable.  I decided to opt for trains for the comfort level.  I'll be spending a fair amount of time in transit over 4 weeks - I'd rather be comfortable and arrive sooner for a small increase in cost. 

Working out good deals for the train, however, is tricky business.  The best prices for travel are obtained either well in advance or moments before the transit departs.  Advance tickets are cheap because the transit companies have no good way of knowing how demand is going to stack up.  Additionally, having tickets purchased early allows them to calculate how demand is likely to work out earlier, which is helpful to them - so they add an incentive to order tickets early by pricing them earlier.  Low prices right before departure operate off a different principle.  The day a train leaves, the odds of them selling a ticket at a high-demand price point are relatively low.  Since the individual passenger cost on a train is a pittance, it's in their best interests to fill each train to capacity - so many will offer discounts to lure in last-minute ticket-buyers  People who wish to purchase only a few days in advance, however, tend to pay full price (this depends also on what sort of turnaround a specific mode of transit has - plane tickets tend to go back to discount prices a little earlier than train tickets).

The bottom line is that spending some time in a city and then purchasing a ticket to another city a few days in advance would wreak havoc on my budget.  Thankfully, there is an alternative option - rail passes.  After pricing out all my options as best I could, I determined that the best deal for flexible rail travel would be to buy two rail passes.  The first would allow me to take unlimited Danish rail on any 7 days within a one-month period.  This should be more than enough to get me through my Denmark-only portion of the trip - the first two weeks.  The second pass will allow unlimited Scandinavian rail on any 6 days over a two-month period - this should get me through the second two weeks.  Together, the rail passes came to $503, or about 279 DKK per trip.  The average trip by pre-purchased rail works out to a little less than this, but the premium for near-unlimited flexibility is worth it, in my opinion.  Additionally, further savings may be gleaned by taking advantage of local rail (for free) on the same day as an inter-city transfer.

For 1230 DKK, I could have bought this thing!

This leads me to the advanced reservation I made.  While the dominant method of travel for this trip will be by train, I figured I would be severely remiss if I didn't experience a Scandinavian-style ferry while I was over there.  Now, for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, it's not the vessel to the right:

Rather, it's the one below:

I'm on a boat - like a boss.

 Since overnight passenger ferries are not easily obtained the day before, I scheduled a 16-hour overnight ferry from Copenhagen to Oslo to start off the Norway/Sweden portion of my trip.  This ferry booking cost a hefty 1,230 DKK.  On the flip side, this expense covers the room for the night, two all-you-can-eat meals, and a beautiful night trip through the North Sea, with Denmark on the left and Sweden on the right, finally pulling into Oslo through the Oslofjord.  Worth it?  I think it will be.

 From a financial standpoint, it didn't seem to make sense to try to break down these fees and only count them against the budget as the trips were made.  Rather, it seemed to make more sense to simply subtract the costs from my overall budget, and recalculate my budget per day.  This should give me a more accurate picture of how much money I'm spending on a day-to-day basis.  By this measure, my current per-day budget is now about 470 DKK.  As you can see, however, I still have about 500 DKK left available for my first two days!  Not too shabby.

I realize this post may have been a little rambling and hard to follow, so if anyone wants some clarification, please don't hesitate to ask.  I know I said this post would be more about packing, but I realized I needed to get my passes ordered quickly so they would have time to ship to me.  I'll get back to packing for the next post.