Munich Layover Part One

How I planned my trip to Barcelona, Andorra, Vilnius, Riga, & Stockholm

I had booked a trip to go to Lebanon and Syria in May 2024, and I was excited about it. The flights and hostels were booked; the itinerary was made…but then the war in Israel and Palestine spread a bit north into Lebanon. This didn’t affect my plans initially, but when some of the bombs landed in or near Beirut and some airlines cancelled their flights, I started to think twice. I wasn’t concerned about the violence affecting me per se, but I was concerned about flights being cancelled and getting stranded. Work wise, I just couldn’t afford to be stranded in anywhere. So I cancelled my bookings, and I had to book another trip with just about two weeks’ notice. I don’t relish in a last minute trip. I like to languish with travel books, maps, and blogs, researching and anticipating. As I always say, however, travel teaches one flexibility.

This new trip couldn’t be anywhere that required an advance visa or anywhere that needs a lot of pre-planning. Plus, with only two weeks out most of the flights were expensive. So I traded in my desire for adventure and decided to go for a European trip. On the plus side, this would give me an opportunity to visit a couple of new to me countries, plus revisiting some other places that I like. I found a good price on a round-trip ticket to Barcelona, and from there I would visit Andorra, with a little stop in France, I would fly to Lithuania, travel by land to Latvia, fly to Stockholm, before returning to Barcelona, via  Zürich on the way. It sounded delightful.

I had been to all of these countries before except for Andorra and Lithuania. Fortunately, flights within Europe tend to be inexpensive and the trip was looking to be fairly affordable. The one thing I didn’t factor into my trip planning, and my budgeting was Taylor Swift.

Taylor Swift and the price of Hostels

I am in no way anti Taylor Swift, but I don’t really give her much thought at all, or at least I didn’t before this trip. When I arrived in Barcelona, I discovered that all of Europe was buzzing with her tour dates getting underway. Just after I arrived in Barcelona, she had a couple of dates in Paris and half of the girls staying in my dorm in Barcelona were on their way to the concert. One of them even lived in the United States and said it was cheaper for her to fly from Los Angeles to Europe and buy tickets there than it was to buy tickets in the States.

All of this meant that the price and availability of hostels in Barcelona and Stockholm were not great. Nowhere was this truer than in Stockholm. I had never been to Stockholm, but I had heard it was expensive, so when I started looking for hostel dorms and I found that they were in the $250 CDN range, I thought, “well I guess that’s just Stockholm prices,” and maybe it was a little more expensive because I was booking at the last minute. What I didn’t realize was that my three days in Stockholm corresponded exactly with Taylor Swift’s three days of concerts there. All of the accommodations were three to four times what they normally were and almost every place was full.  I did pay $250 CDN a night for a rather unremarkable dorm bed in Stockholm – one that lacked even a privacy curtain, a towel, or a free breakfast. It is, to date, the most expensive hostel accommodation I’ve ever had.

On the plus side, although I am not a ‘Swifty’, I couldn’t help but be charmed by all her fans, particularly in Stockholm, where they seemed to overtake the city but were so cute and wholesome that it was impossible for me to be irritated by them.

Anyway, that was just a blip on what otherwise was a very enjoyable trip to multiple places, starting in Barcelona…