To Pay Or Not To Pay? (an easy question...usually)
I thought that we would be able to find a place just about anywhere to lay down our tent and sleep for 6 hours, but once we got out there and started looking for places to camp, I found it was a little more difficult. Our first spot took us a while to finally decide to camp in a public park in Bath and finding a place later on often proved to be just as tough. We then decided to try out the "campings" that so many cities in Europe offer. I felt ripped off often as we were charged up to 10 Euros a person for a 5' X 8' spot of ground for the night. We could use public bathrooms (thanks McDonalds :D) we didn't need a fire, and most of the time the showers were extra at the campings.
We decided to camp for free most of the time. It was great! We saved so much money and it was fun to find nice campsites. I have pictures for some of them and a description for each in order:
Bath, England
This was our first camping spot, behind that pine tree, just beyond the bench in Victoria Park. It turns out that there are quite a few people that run along this path in the morning :D
Amsterdam, Netherlands (Zeeburg)
We stayed at this camping because we were in a huge city with lots of pot and prostitution and figured it was safer than in the bushes near graffiti covered, skater hang outs. If I were to do it again, I think I would be ok with sleeping in the bushes though.
Paris, France
We got off the metro north west of the arc de triomph looking for a bus to take us to a camping. During our search for the bus, we decided we didn't want to pay for what we could get for free. It was dark when we set up camp and thought nobody would be in this part of the woods. When we woke up to some frenchy cleaning up trash saying something to us, we said, "Sacre blueh!! Je no par par frances!!" and left promply passing the trash on the ground that was telling of the type of crowd that visits these parts. We found out later that there is lots of prostitution that goes on there. We packed up and took the 20 min walk to the Arc.
Barcelona, Spain
We walked around Montijuc, a park on a hill to the west of the city, for a while before finnally settling on a spot right next to a cemetary wall...spooky!
Bern, Switzerland
This campsite is just behind the temple, which is just outside of Bern. There's a place for a campfire and plenty of wood. It was a cool place to camp, recomended to us by the French and Italians we met there :D Great spot!!
Interlaken, Switzerland
We had tons of fun talking to our new Swiss friends at this overlook where they were havinig a camp fire. They let us join them and we grilled brats on their coals. The guy at the bike shop that was really cool told us about the place. Great view!!
Pompeii, Italy (Camping Zeus)
An ok camping right next to the ruins of Pompeii. WiFi for a steep fee throughout the grounds.
Paestum, Italy
We ended up in this rural area with lots of farmers fields ready to camp at around midnight. We decided to throw down the tent in an empty grass parking lot/field instead of on top of an ancient wall.
Vienna, Austria
When we arrived at a stop near where a camping was supposed to be, we asked a Wiener (haha...someone from Wien is, of course, a wiener). She replied in a thick accent, "Look, avound...its all green. You can camp anyvere." So we found this nice spot by the Danue canal.
Fussen, Germany
After getting off the train, we headed for the hills and started to set up camp in a field when we saw two guys w/ packs on heading up the trail. We started talking to them and they invited us up to a clearing where we had a fire and enjoyed some amazing music by a couple talented guitarists. It was rad! This is where the tent was.
Weisbaden, Germany
We walked around for a while at like 11pm to find this crappy spot right around houses, just down the hill from a road.
Koblenz, Germany
We asked a younger guy about camping whereupon he looked around, quieted to a whisper, and gave us two place names. He instructed us to go to the first and ask about the second. We found a nice spot on the bank of the Rhine river.
Oslo, Norway
According to law in Norway, you can camp 150m from any building...anywhere. We weren't sure if that still applied in the country's capital, so we decided to hide ourselves in a frisbee golf course right behind the nude statues park. There were tons of people out in this huge park with about a hundred nude statues by this famous Norwegien sculpturist. People stayed out late too...probably because it didn't get dark until 11:30pm!!
If any of you plan to camp for free in Europe I definatly recomend it, but some countries you'll want to be outside of the city in order to hide yourself.
