Travel Expenses

In this post, I would like to review my travel expenses this time. Interestingly, all the 10 countries have their own currencies. Europe has the common currency Euro, but there are still so many countries where the Euro has not been circulated. This fact also makes me realise that I have travelled round the edge of Europe. The following are the 10 currencies I used this month.

• Ukraine: Hryvna(UAH)
  
• Moldova: Leu (MDL)
  
• Romania: New Leu (RON)
  
• Serbia: Dinar (RSD)
  
• Macedonia: Denar (MKD)
  
• Albania: Lek (ALL)
  
• Italy: Euro (EUR)
  
• Iceland: Krona (ISK)
  
• Denmark: Krone (DKK)
  
• Sweden: Krona (SEK)
  

My travel expenses have been financed by one credit card. When I sorted and calculated my bill by currency units, each amount tells me how much I have spent in each country. As my financial source is the Japanese Yen (JPY), all calculations have been done in JPY. For 30 days trip I spent total JPY 225,761 (EUR 2,109.28). 30% of transactions have been payed in cash after withdrawal at bancomats. The following pie chart shows this total expenses by country.

As we can see, the Nordic countries cost a lot. Of course, I have to consider how many days I was in one country. However, 60% of the amount was spent in the week 4 (Italy, Iceland, Denmark, and Sweden).

Trvelling expenses consist mainly of accommodation, transportation, food, and admissions for museum or gallery. I do not go shoppin! The following pie chart shows what kind of purpose I have spent. "other" means mainly food.

The reason why the proportion of "transportation" is so large would be that I bought flight tickets in the end of July, I did not book tickets on the internet in advance, and changed bookings, missed the train, and re-purchased many times. This part could have been squeezed. In addition, The fact that I took many overnight trains, buses, and ferry also contribute to the transportation part larger.

Overall, I could enjoyed strong Japanese Yen. Although I felt Denmark and Sweden were extremely expensive, Iceland was relatively affordable. Perhaps, it would have been impossible to pay if I had visited the Nordic 3 years ago...

I think that credit card is powerful to review where money is going in travelling.