10 countries in 10 days. Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? Well, I suppose it was in a way. But with some thoughtful planning, a bit of gratitude towards Europe’s distinct lack of border controls, and a hell of a lot of driving – it was achievable. It you’d have asked me before about the likelihood of such a thing occurring, I’d have probably put it in the “extremely low” category. But then again, I would have said the same when it came to the chances of completely shaving my head before venturing off away somewhere. And yet there we were, 4 bald guys boarding the Eurostar en route for the experience of the year.

Believe it or not, I wasn’t planning on doing this element of the trip. But when I came home to find hair all over the floor and my 3 associates for this journey in some sort of half-head-shaven state – I felt somewhat compelled to join in. After all – “4 bald men” sounds better than “3 bald men and the one guy still with hair”, right?

It was an interesting sensation to say the least, although I wouldn’t say it was enjoyable by the time you realise how sensitive your newly-exposed skin is to the wind. And let’s not even get started on the annoying “Velcro-head” stage.

Still, too late by that point so we must embrace it. We set off for St Pancras International on an early Friday morning, shot through the French and Belgian countryside and arrived in Amsterdam later that afternoon.
Amsterdam’s a great place, but we’re saving that until the end. We picked up the campervan and headed North for the Afsluitdijk bridge, across and back down to our first stop – Giethoorn.

“It’s like Venice, but in the countryside” my esteemed companion, Mr Wilson, tells the camera. And having also stopped at Venice further down the line, I can… perhaps see why. Just a little bit. It’s a small village built on a network of tributaries; certainly not the bustling tourist attraction that Venice is though – which definitely isn’t a bad thing.

We carried on after our little walk around and headed East towards Hamburg, parking up about an hours drive from the city next to a small forest area. Bless the park4night app for providing us with such good locations during our trip. The first of many hours and hours of driving were already catching up. It’s probably worth mentioning at this point that only 2 out of the 4 of us could actually drive.

We sped off the next morning (I say sped, we drove as efficiently as possible, aware that we were going to be covering 2000 ish km over the next 9 days and fuel wasn’t the cheapest it’s ever been) for Hamburg, which we were all very excited about. The thought of driving in a left-hand sided vehicle on the opposite side of the lawless roads of a busy German city was so appealing to us (not). Seriously – you think the M25 is bad? Try the inner German city roads in an Uber.

Our first stop as great cultural explorers? McDonalds.

Hear me out – this is the world’s only “row-through” McDonald’s which sounds unique enough to justify our apparent lack of adventurism. Plus, every countries’ McDonald’s is different, right?

Unfortunately… we didn’t even do the row-through bit. Yeh, we suck. Although in our defence you’d probably expect a city that’s renowned for having the world’s only row-through McDonald’s to have more than 1 place for hiring boats.

Moving on. My main desire for coming here was visiting the Miniatur Wunderland – and it was genuinely one of my favourite parts of the whole trip. If you don’t know, it’s the world’s largest model train attraction. And you needn’t be a train nerd to appreciate and enjoy the scale and attention to detail of the numerous mock-up towns and villages based on various countries around the world. There’s even a fully automated, functioning model airport which I didn’t expect! Words don’t do it justice, so check out the dedicated video on YouTube if you’re interested.

By this point, Ash had gone 48 hours without a beer, so we promptly headed for the Hamburg nightlife before he fell into cardiac arrest. The rest was a bit of a blur, so rest assured that a night out in Hamburg is not one to miss.

The next day was a a painful one. Only in part due to the previous night’s ventures, and mostly due to the arduous 8 hour drive to Prague. It was the longest single-day stretch we had, so good to get it out of the way with.

Prague is a great place, an amalgamation of old and new and filled with interesting little markets and alleys containing all sorts of random shops and museums (the sex machines museum being one of the highlights). We took a walk up to Prague Castle which gave great views of the city from the top of the hill.

Another good couple of hours of driving that night took us into the Austrian mountains, where we were pleasantly surprised (and a bit worried…) to find a hefty amount of snow had fallen the next morning. Certainly a bit of a change from the shorts and T-shirt weather we’d had in Prague a mere 12 hours before! As fun as it was throwing snowballs and shouting into the mountains, we didn’t fancy getting stranded so promptly headed downwards and docked in the town of Windschgarsten for a couple of hours and stocked up at the local Hofer (Aldi) store.

As we approached the approximate halfway timing of the trip we had to make rough plans for getting back to Amsterdam in time and still cover a remaining 6 countries. Our next leg took us into Slovenia for the night, and while we weren’t planning on staying here for very long we still tried to make the most of it.

Ash was starting to die at this stage, so me, Chris and Ryan took a venture out to explore what we could and tried to convince Ash that he hadn’t missed much beyond what ended up being an in-depth discussion about skincare products.

We set off the next morning into Italy, quite relieved that our journey to Venice “was only going to take 3 hours”. Yeah… how our perceptions had changed.

Venice would be our first night on an actual site, much welcomed given the the built-in campervan shower was somewhat temperamental with the hot water. We took a tram across to the archipelago-like city and soon lost ourselves in the intertwining canals and small streets. Even for the more mild time of the year the place was packed with people, certainly giving you an accurate impression of what a tourist honeypot looks like.

Nonetheless, it is no doubt a unique place. We were by the nature of our trip limited to the time we spent in places, and I think Venice was one of the spots that needed more time to overlook the typical touristy surface and discover the more authentic Italian elements.

Italy would be the only country where we made 2 different stops, and the next day we made way for Milan.

I personally wasn’t sure what to Expect from Italy’s second most populous city, We parked up in a somewhat sketchy looking car park, grabbed a coffee (I wanted a mocha but apparently these don’t exist in certain European countries) and walked in to the city centre.

If you like the idea of traversing grand malls, filled to the brim with designer label shops of every type, then you’d probably like Milan. I’m certainly no stranger to questioning the worth of various items when their cost gets to a point of insanity, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt so overwhelmed by the sheer number of brands that one could decide to spend a mortgage deposit-worthy amount of money on.

Of course, none of us would be so futile as to purchase such items when we were all still either trying to get on to the property ladder or learn to drive. Oh wait – yes we were. But it’s fine. A belt with Louis Vuitton moulded into it that nobody will see under a shirt is undeniably a smart purchase and worth every penny (50,000 pennies to be exact).

We got back to the van on our feet (you know, since we now couldn’t afford a bus ticket) and headed for Switzerland in the night. Our formula for finding spots for the night combined the right distance with somewhere potentially scenic that was somewhat on the general route. Combining park4night and Google Maps provided a decent overview of potential spots that met those requirements.

Ryan took the wheel for the first stint as we made way through the Alps; tunnel after tunnel through the night. The final stretch took us around Lake Lucerne (Vierwaldstättersee) and were we not driving in the middle of the night at this point, the views would have been spectacular. I guided the beast around the windy roads that lay between the lake and the mountains, arriving in the small town of Weggis.

The next morning could quite possibly take the #1 spot for best waking view. Lake Lucerne was an incredible sight with the snow-topped mountains in the background. Weggis proved to be a very quaint and picturesque Swiss town, and despite the apparent shear randomness of where we had arrived, we had (for me at least) one of the best meals of the whole trip right next to the lake. I was at this point very content with my ability to pick a random location to stay for a night, unknowing what to expect and yet be so pleasantly surprised when waking up.

We ate and took the usual quick walk around before setting off once more. Today would be solid driving as we made our way out of Switzerland and through France, Belgium and Luxembourg – trying to minimise the driving required the next day so we could make the most out of our remaining time in Amsterdam.

When we did finally arrive back in the ‘Dam the next day, our hearts were set solid on the surreal atmosphere of the city’s nightlife. I could quite easily describe this place as the multi-cultural hub of Europe, with different people from all over the world congregating to enjoy the Netherlands’ unique laid-back environment in numerous ways. Dutch “coffee” (marijuana in case you were unaware) shops are everywhere, so if you ever feel in need of some weed, magic mushrooms, or pizza (or all 3?) at some point during your trip – you’re never far away.

We got some drinks in a bar to watch Tyson Fury vs Dillian Whyte, and hats off to Chris and his ‘alternate’ Ring Announcer impressions for making this extremely amusing for everyone.

Some very nice Dutch people then guided us to the recommended clubbing area of the city, taking us through the infamous red light district and into a main square where you’d find drug dealers conveniently spaced out no more than 20 meters apart from each other.

Drug dealers aside, it was great – and we got a good couple of hours of “ooonce ooonce” before Ryan got dragged out for bypassing the toilet-payment lady and slumping to a crippled mess in one of the stalls. I then had to follow him around the square as he tried in vein to get into another club whilst waiting for Chris and Ash to leave and re-join us. An amusing ending night for sure.

We returned the van back in good time on our last day, and the friendly staff member even drove us in the van to the correct bus stop to save us paying for an Uber. That all but confirmed our suspicions about European road laws; he had no issue with 5 of us in a 4 seater van.

A bit of train hopping and we were soon back on the Eurostar, our adventure complete. My hair had grown back a decent amount by now so I my concerns about walking into work the next day were not as heavy as I thought they might be – although I don’t think I’ll be shaving it again any time soon.

Our objective was met and we had indeed traversed 10 countries in 10 days. This was a great way to pick up a flavour of numerous places and know which ones we might want to spend more time in in the future. For me, Weggis was a highlight as a pretty random-chosen spot, but the Miniature Wunderland and Prague markets are also spots that could easily warrant a further visit in the future. I can wholeheartedly recommend this sort of trip for anyone who lives to see and explore as much a possible in a relatively short period of time. Europe is a great place for this given its relatively small area when compared with the likes of America or Australia. Travelling across a particular country here may take hours rather then days, which really enables the ability to see and do more from a range of different nations.

The below video is the result of hours of footage taken along the journey, and I have no doubt that a sequel will be in the works (Eastern Europe perhaps?) at some point in the years to come.