Howdy. I’m James and I love living and traveling in Europe. I created The Savvy Backpacker waaaaaay back in 2010 to help people plan their budget travels through Europe.
My mission is simple: I want to help you travel around Europe without spending a fortune.
I love hearing from our readers.
Email me directly at james@thesavvybackpacker.com
Note: I do my best to answer all questions but I don’t always have time to answer complicated questions.
I was born and raised in the Midwest. I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri but I’ve lived in Madison, WI, Richmond, VA, New York City, and Paris.
I studied abroad in England at the University of Leeds in 2007 and I’ve visited multiple countries throughout Western and Eastern Europe. In the summer of 2010, I studied French at Middlebury College through their intensive summer language course.
In the summer of 2011, I found a job in Paris so I packed up my stuff into two suitcases and moved to a tiny 7th-floor studio in the City of Light.
I have a Masters of Business/Advertising from Virginia Commonwealth University. Before that, I was in the U.S. AmeriCorps (the domestic version of the Peace Corps) where I worked for an organization that helped provide food to underprivileged people in Missouri and Kansas.
I also published the book The Savvy Backpacker’s Guide to Europe on a Budget in 2015 (but the information on this website is much more up-to-date).
I noticed something when I was researching my first European backpacking trip. I saw that most backpacking sites offered very little well-researched content — most information was just fluff. I spent countless hours wading through hundreds of websites, but I never found one site that gave me all the information I wanted.
Then I went on my first trip to Europe.
As a solo traveler, I got a lot of opportunities to talk to many other backpackers. I picked up a lot of helpful information from the experienced backpackers, and I learned a lot of things that the guidebooks never talk about. After a few months of travel, I noticed that many of the novice backpackers were struggling with the same issues I faced when was just starting out.
When I returned home I was often asked for backpacking advice from my friends and I got the idea to create a high-quality site about backpacking in Europe — a site that I would want to actually use. My vision was to build an online resource that was well-designed, user-friendly, and had tons of great information. This is how The Savvy Backpacker was born.
I hope you find it useful!
Have a question? Send me one of those fancy electronic mails to james@thesavvybackpacker.com
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