VISA PLANNING

Definitely high on the priority list is knowing what visas you may need on your trip

Unfortunately, being Australian, I found out we are only allowed 3 months travel without visa in the Schengen Zone – UGH! we are not permitted to spend more than 90 days within 180 days in the territory of the Schengen Area.

This cut our van trip down by many months as we had to leave the Schengen zone by the end of the 3 months and couldnt return in another 3 months, d*mn you Europe! we could have applied for individual visas for e.g. France etc but we hadnt planned our trip in full and wanted to be as spontaneous as we could, so werent sure what month we were to be there, also how long the process takes and how much, this might be something to look up for my next campervanning expedition

VISA CALCULATOR FOR THE SCHENGEN ZONE
https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/visa-calculator/

So, the whole spontaneous thing couldnt be as spontaneous as we wanted, i had to plan our visa timings accordingly so used a calculator like the above to approximately map out our timings

I ended up including in the countries out of the Schengen zone and the calculator lets you know to the day when you can return back into Europe

Its been quite easy other than the fact that you need to look up and organise every day or 2nd day as to where you will be going the next few days, but you end up getting it in the end… camping here is different to camping in AUS, in AUS we tend to find a camp site, stay there for 3 weeks and go back home, whereas in Europe, since everything is so close and there is just SO much to see, you want to move around fairly quickly and its so easy from country to country… im jealous and wish I had a passport!