I booked my accomodation via Booking.com

However, we are not going on any holiday tours but more or less ”éxecutive” backpackers hoping to rough it out, but only a bit….. We had only purchased our one way ticket to Frankfurt. As everyone knows, holiday visas could be one of the requirement that we have to consider aside from purchasing our air tickets. Our travel agents had told us that we may need holiday visa for the countries that we are visiting, but they are not 100% sure. Considering that we all of different nationalities, that makes it more difficult a task to researched.
I first checked the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade webiste http://www.dfat.gov.au/. It mentioned to go to the Smarttraveller website http://www.smartraveller.gov.au/. I then had to look for the relevant links on that website for holiday visas. I could not find any useful tips there. I then went back to dfat website and found the email address and phone numbers of the consulate that we
might be travelling to. Talk about bureaucratic bungle….90% of the email address is out ofdate and trying to ring them to ask about holiday visas is like moving a mountain. Imagine if there is an emergency !! There is no human being on the other end of the line, a lovely voice no doubt !

visas let alone any visas. Reading through the article, it is still not 100% clear if we can get away with not getting a visa in our home country as the article mentioned
that ”holiday travellers should contact the nearest High Commission, Embassy or Consulate of the countries they plan to visit well in advance of travel.” Probably covering themselves……..

Nowadays travel agents do not necessarily organise visa for their clients. Those who does it will organise them for a fee.
There are more and more travellers who does not go through travel agent to organise their travel with the birth of ‘Internet’.
That is the case with me and many of my friends. I have also met lots of overseas travelling companions who had organised their own travel with the internet and with great success, flexiblilty and with ease. Not only that, it turn out to be cheaper as well.
Thanks for the valuable information blogger!
I can now travel to Europe with the certainty I do not require a Visa (yes, I’m going for less than 90 days!).
Keep up the good blogging 🙂