Just a small part of one wall of the Wiesbaden LEGO store

Sticking to a budget can be hard, especially when my last two trips basically haven’t had one as they weren’t that long in comparison to this trip. The Achilles heel to my budget were going to be things that I knew of like Nike stores, swiss watches and knives, Tintin and clothes. I managed to avoid Nike Paris with great strength, I only bought one new swiss army knife while in Lauterbrunenn (which has come in handy already actually), I already bought the majority of Tintin stuff last year and I simply just have no room for new clothes in my bag, except for the new shoes I bought to replace the others.

One shop I hadn’t thought of breaking the budget was LEGO. Wiesbaden has quite a new LEGO store and wow it sells every single thing imaginable LEGO. All of the complete sets, all of the minifigs, all the keychains, clothes, accessories, everything. They even had a 3mp digital camera and the shell of it was made out of LEGO. If I had the money and room in my bags I could have gone bananas. As it is I think I only spent 30 euros over three different visits.

I looked on the internet though and Germany has quite a few stores, and a brand new one just opened in NYC as well, so im going to try my hardest to try and resist till then. By which stage ill probably have no money anyway so I wont be able to buy anything. Its the perfect plan.

But apart from that the budget is on track. I have spent approximately $4000 so far, and its just a touch over four weeks. The first four weeks were going to be the most expensive of the entire trip by far, and ive come pretty close to my estimates. The first week alone for the Tour de France my hire car set me back $1000, and then food and hotel on top of that. Six days of lifts and trains pass in Lauterbrunnen set me back $300. But from here on out its a lot cheaper, 20 euro a night hostels in almost all places I plan to visit, or very very cheap hotels in the smaller places im going. Oktoberfest is however likely to break things. Damn beer.