I wanted to leave this part of the analysis of my longest trip ever for later cause it is not exactly the most pleasant one but after my new Hivian friend's @mypathtofire "demand" I decided to prioritise it:
At this point I wanna remind you all that you can feel free to ask me any part or aspect of my trip that you would like me to focus on in my next posts.
Speaking of accommodation costs in general, they really have gone sky rocketing lately. I couldn't imagine that it would be so hard for me to find inexpensive places before I started booking. Inflation? Post COVID19 overbooking? A mix of both I guess which resulted in crazy listings like all these old rundown VW RVs in Germany at the price of what a medium hotel used to cost before this craziness. And while Serbia offered me the cheapest AirBnB ever (a whole apartment for 100 euros per week @ Crusevac) and Croatia was OK(ish), the rest was a challenge. Especially speaking of Belgium, France and Netherlands. These looked untouchable. Germany is more reasonably priced than them.
In general I managed to keep the weekly accommodation cost below 300euros, averaging around 200+ish. Please don't ask me to calculate the precise average because I hate to remember the shitload of money I spent since it was all self financed and unsponsored 🙂 I was renting whole units, preferably with some space for my bike cause I had to be able to repair something in case I had to.
I also don't want to remember how much I spent on fuel which reached the price of 2.2 euros/lt in Netherlands, the most expensive I've seen anywhere, ever. Not even comparable to the accommodation costs though as my bike is very efficient and reached the all time lows in consumption that I had to see since it was brand new (flirting with 3lt/100km) after a tune up I did with my mechanic. Isn't this impressive that a bike can still perform the same after 16 years and more than 155.000km? It really is.
Speaking of why I picked place A instead of B, that had to do with various factors which often made it a time consuming mind game. Convenience of location, attractiveness, proximity to supermarkets, space for my bike, OKish bed, obviously price, all these parameters where getting harder and harder to satisfy as I left the Balkans behind. And you might think of me as a bit of a drama queen but all these were important on a trip like this though of course I had to compromise at times leaving some out of the equation.
Convenience of location was (even more) important when the weather was bad (and usually it was) cause you don't wanna deviate a lot on a motorcycle when it rains dogs and cats. Mainly for safety, not to stay dry.
Proximity to supermarkets was important cause it gives you the chance to just walk after an exhausting riding day to the local store (or at least take a short ride) and buy some much needed stuff. Otherwise I'd have to carry the stuff I needed with me on an already filled to the brim bike. I was always carrying some food for emergency but couldn't carry all my supermarket shopping all the time I'd be riding several hundreds of km from A to B.
The weather dictated my choices a great deal. For example it's one of the reasons I stayed for 2 weeks outside Belgrade. The other reason I stayed so long there was because I had a super cute container home for me at a very large plot with all the space in the world to repair an 18 wheeler. And my host was one of the best I ever had. We ended up hanging out with her (as cool) friends enjoying epic food all together:
I also did some house sitting which dropped the costs dramatically, especially if you consider that I was given houses in France and Netherlands, two of the most expensive countries. The pros of being a trusty and handy man 🙂😎
I was trying to rent on a weekly basis to drop the AirBnB costs since I had such a long trip ahead. The lack of value for money places forced me to book places for less days in a few occasions. I don't mention AirBnB because I want to promote it, quite the opposite, I am more bitter with them lately but it's a convenient platform. I must admit that at some point I did something I hate which is asking a favour. I had such a hard time at some point trying to find places without getting broke that I asked them to give me a coupon since I am such a long time member with exclusively top reviews both as a host or a guest (subject of a later post). Actually in the past they used to give me coupons from time to time and this time I asked them when I had already spent a shitload of money in the middle of my trip and was about to spent almost as much on my way back. Well, they slammed the door in my face 😂. Just imagine the plus money those fuckers make out of the latest inflation since they work on percentage from bookings and the hosts had to raise the prices quite a bit.
I avoided big cities throughout my trip. The cost is higher there, the bike is less safe if you leave it out and if you seek for a safe parking the cost gets even higher while less places offer something like that. Besides, big cities were not my top priority anyway. I've spent almost all my life in one.
I mentioned before the unsponsored/self financed side of things but in no way I want to omit the fact that without Hive this would be even harder to accomplish. To be honest I didn't expect that no whales would consider stopping by the content I harvested during the longest motorcycle trip one has ever done here (with the bright exception of @appreciator which made a world of a difference), especially considering what can catch their attention. But it's more important to mention how heartwarming was to feel that some of you were riding with me, reading your comments later and feeling your clicks through all those km I did. A super thank you to each one of you, regardless what that might translate in numbers. I'd love to tag you all but I'll run the risk of leaving someone out and that's unfair. Your support is super appreciated by me and I hope I'll be able to deliver such stuff again to you on any chance given.
I hope I got you covered but please, if I left something out let me know and I'll put it in the pipeline.
Have a good life everyone!
All the time I wondered why there was so little engagement on your posts 🤷♀️ maybe its a little bit about the communities and tags you used, still I dont understand.
Tags are not the problem. Speaking of communities:
During my first months in Steem (soon to be Hive) I started posting travel stuff in Travelfeed. Later I realised that for some reason guys who posted in Pinmapple/HYBH got much more rewards regardless the content. That's because OCD supports the latter instead of the former. So I jumped in P/HYBH and indeed I got much better rewards. Actually I was almost always on their top 3 - you can imagine the kind of content I had to post there touring Europe for years. Then later I started getting less and less attention from them till at some point I wasn't even making it to their "honorable mentions". Comparing my content with the "better" ones brought laughable results so I quit them and got back to Travelfeed since they also have a better front end to post such stuff. As soon as a member of P/HYBH realises this, texts me asking me why I left them for Travelfeed and that the latter doesn't add value to Hive as they do etc... Long story short, I found out these communities are in some sort of fight/antagonising against each other (though unequal since OCD supports one of them) and I just left all that crap behind quitting both.
But it's not just a wrong community thing. I wish it was that simple 🙂
Yes I understand, at the end its also a lot about what one is doing in the background.
I have no memory how and where I came to your journey, only that the Alien Tower catched me 😅
Fun fact, I'd miss that post of you back then when you mentioned how my post redirected your thoughts to a more positive direction cause in my hectic travelling days I missed your mentioned. Who enlightened me? The same P/HYBH member I mentioned before 🙂
Well, I have ever only posted two in the weekend community and my second one was totally ignored; they commented that it would have been upvoted if I hadn't used reward.app.
There was some sort of disagreement in the background that they ride out on the users unintentionally.
We are left in the dark sometimes, I still haven't figured out how to set up auto-votes because I can't seem to log in and on discord nobody replied to my question.
With regards to OCD and whales:
You say you're replying to comments, that's great, but the bottom line is engagement, they don't just look at your content they also look if you are active and appreciating others, which means voting but also reading and commenting.
I believe that if you don't you will fall off their radar eventually.
This is a social network, not just a platform to promote our stuff. Well, that's my understanding, I've only been here a year and a half, but I have to be quite honest:
If people aren't interested in me than the same goes the other way, there is only so much time I have in a day; for me that goes in the real world too. ;)
Hope, you have a bit of sunshine where you are as here's it's pretty bl.. damn grey! 😠😄
I never set auto upvotes because handy as they are, they're by default unfair.
I even did the above to people who never bothered to engage with my stuff. 5 years here, there might be a chance I might have thought about this too you know... :)
If that's what you get from what I have shared here I rest my case.
Today it's surprisingly grey and humid for our Mediterranean standards so feel less envy but it is still warm enough to keep swimming so... you can feel envious again :)
Have a nice day.
Trust me, I DO!! I wish I was there RIGHT NOW.. 😂
Of course you would have looked into all of that, you are here a LOT longer than I have, I meant no offence!!
I felt the same with my music videos and in the end I stopped as it was too much work for not much interest.
However, I might start again at some point..
Enjoy your swim!
Thanks for the great overview. I didn't factor in the weather being very important and supermarkets.
I have noticed accomodation costs seem to have skyrocketed along with most things I guess. They say 5-10% inflation is more like 50-100% lol
Each country has different inflation. For example here in Greece the food inflation is single digit while in Holland it was 12%. When I first visited a supermarket there I went OUCH! on check out.
Thank you for partially triggering my write up, see you on the next ones!