First Time Backpacker. Europe to Asia

[TheSeaBruh]

Hey to all. I'll give a vague plan then ask the main questions I have. I plan on graduating within the next year or two from my university and before grad school i plan on throwing caution to the wind and traveling the world. I've done a ton of research for about the past year, but still feel the need to ask for myself. I am from the United States and plan on traveling to Europe and traveling to Asia. I'm a first time traveler and would appreciate any advice. I've read you can work your fare to travel across the Atlantic on a boat and hopefully plan on doing that once I find out more about it. I plan on Getting to Europe and couchsurfing and working on farms or anywhere that needs work. I plan on working for a little bit and then moving on to the next place I decide to go to. I want to blog/vlog my entire trip. I don't know of anyone having done what I'm planning to do.

My main questions are:
Does anyone know about traveling to Europe on a boat working to pay your fare?
Will I need to continuously get new work visas for every country I travel to?
Has anyone personally worked on their travels that I can talk to about it?
How easy is it to blog/vlog on your journey?
Has anyone ever traveled this far of a distance via backpacking or public transportation minus flying?

Thank you in advance to anyone who replies!

[Sijuki]

Welcome to the boards! There are a wide assortment of travelers here so I know a few of them have had some erratic adventures.

It's been a while since I looked up traveling on a boat overseas, but it seemed even when I was looking into it that you still had to pay to do it, even though you did some working and what not. It wasn't cheap or quick. I'm not saying there aren't options somewhere.

This pretty much sums up what I had read before.

Most work you will find will probably be under the table, trying to get a work visa isn't an instantaneous process, so unless you know when and where you will be you won't be able to plan ahead. But working for a hostel or bar or other service place for room & board or some spending money is possible.

There are definitely a few people on here who have worked during travels, hopefully they will spot this post. They can give a bit of insight.

Blogging would be easy, your only issue is finding internet access. Even in Europe you can find many places to use public internet. I did this for the most part on my travels.

I can assure you that many have traveled all over without flying.

Best of luck.

[The Sasquatch]

Hey, firstly, welcome to TPunk! Secondly, I am by no means an expert in the area of your q's, but I'll give it a shot.

From what I understand, the days of working your way across the ocean on a freight ship are long over. I think mostly because of insurance issues, this has just become a thing of the past. You are still able to pay to get aboard a ship like this, but its a time consuming, expensive way to travel. If you have sailing experience, its possible to find a crew position on a boat. Not sure if I'm allowed to link to other forums, but there is a thread on the 2+2 poker forums I frequent of a guy who is doing a similar trip right now. He crewed a sailboat across the atlantic, trans-siberianed it to China (where he is now), and he has already arranged passage on a freighter across the Pacific. (The trip starts somewhere past the 1/2 way point of the thread)

chopstick goes for a sail - Page 3 - Other Topics Forum - Discuss Pop Culture, Arts and Entertainment

Working - Its probably not feasible to get visas for everywhere you're gonna be/wanna work if you're trying to work your way across Europe. Often you need to be in your home country, or at least out of the target country, when applying for a work visa. Also, the countries or amt of visas/country that your gov't has agreements with might be limited. A # of years ago, I spent a few months in New Zealand. I did have a work visa, which, as a young Canadian, was very easy to obtain. I did some work in vineyards, pruning the vines and the area that I worked in was so short of agricultural labour that it was possible to just rock up and obtain a temporary work permit very easily for this type of work. So for your situation, unless you're planning on staying in one place for a while to save up some money, its probably best to just find under the table work or work at hostels, wwoofing or some other sort of work exchange. I'm not up to date on the websites for this kind of stuff anymore, but I'm sure a quick google search will come up with something.

All the best and hope this was helpful.

[Sijuki]

You peruse the 2+2 forums... I haven't been on there in a few months.

[travelpunk]

You'll have to check the US governments website to see which countries require a visa.

It's pretty easy to set up a blog/vlog for people to follow your adventures, assuming you have a camera and laptop/tablet and or an android/iphone and an internet connection.

If nothing else, set up a free youtube account and tell people to subscribe to your channel. You can then embed those videos to your blog. Free blogs as wordpress.com or blogger.com should be good enough, but there are a ton of others as well.

Welcome to the boards!