It's important when traveling in Western countries to look out for the cheapest way to travel. If you don't, you'll be watching your funds dwindle so rapidly, you'll be in your overdraft before you can spell waffle. Travel in Europe isn't always that expensive if you know where to look. Ryan air makes it the cheapest continent to fly around and Megabus is a handy way to get around the UK (used to be all of western Europe, shed a tear). The most expensive way to travel in Europe is definitely by train. Here in the Netherlands, however, there is a beaming ray of hope. Group tickets.
There are group tickets in a lot of countries, I'm sure of it, but I wouldn't know where to find them and how to buy them, but being with a resident of the Netherlands, I've been introduced to the secret world of group tickets. This is how you go about getting them.
First of all you need a few things.
Facebook account
Passport
Bank account that can send transfers (one without charges in the Netherlands would be best)
access to a printer
Exact date you want to travel
Location of where you're going from or going to (the bigger the city, the easier to find tickets)
If you have all of those things and you're up for spending a bit of a time to save some money, you can try the next step.
Add this group NS group tickets - Rotterdam. There are also groups in Amsterdam, Groningen and all the other big cities. In the groups, you will find posts with dates and locations like this...
Once you find the date you wish to travel, you join the group where you can exchange bank details and email accounts. How it works is that the main buyer will pay for all the tickets, but only once they have collected enough money to pay for 10 tickets. 10 is the maximum number of tickets and for 10 tickets it will cost them 70 euros, meaning you pay 7 euros per ticket for the return journey. You can get as many tickets as you like, as long as it adds up and if you're traveling in a group of 10, you can just buy the group ticket yourself. However, this is highly unlikely, so the groups should do you well.
Once the buyer has received enough to buy 10 tickets, they will send you a message to let you know and then you will receive your ticket in an e-mail. Open the ticket and you will have to put in some personal details such as name, location of where you're going, and date of birth. Then, straight to the printer and voila.
You need your passport or at least some form of photo ID to travel on this ticket and if you want to hack it even further, you can get off the train at a city that is on the way to where you're going, but make sure the train you get on afterwards came from the same destination that you came from.
Enjoy this little hack and if you want to understand the kind of money you'll save, a ticket from Rotterdam to Amsterdam is usually about 24 euros.