Martin Johnson heads to Moscow for the Champions League final between Man Utd and Chelsea - but with trips costing upwards of £1,500, and world economies braced for a recession, we decided he should get only £30 a day...

Rotterdam Saturday morning. I’ve only been going about 16 hours and already I’m thinking about knocking Moscow on the head, diverting to Paris, and applying for the bell ringer’s job at Notre Dame.

It’s the backpack. A few hours of Charles Laughton wearing this thing and he wouldn’t have needed a fake hump.

A long way to go: It’s only day two but Moscow’s Red Square is far from Martin’s thoughts

I’ve packed sensibly, as the guide book tells you, but the problem is the guide book itself. It runs to 1,284 pages, and if I ever drop it on my foot I’ll never walk again never mind make Moscow.

It’s called "Europe on a on Shoestring", which is basically the object of the exercise, and while I could have travelled a bit lighter bringing the Encyclopaedia Britannia instead, I’m sure it’s going to be a life saver.

The train from Liverpool Street to the ferry terminal at Harwich seemed a good place to start, but it was peak commuter time and I couldn’t even unpin my arms until a lot of people got off at Chelmsford.

It was then that I discovered why there were 1,284 pages. The first bit was all about European history, all very informative, but learning a bit more about Alexander The Great and the fall of the Berlin Wall didn’t seem to me to be vital information for the budget conscious traveller.

The next chapter was only marginally more helpful. All about European food. Yes, well, I already know that the Belgians like chips, and the Germans have a strange fondness for boiled cabbage, and the pulse rate only began to rise when I found a chapter entitled "Events Worth Making A Detour For".

Sadly, Europe seems to be a bit thin on attractions during May as I was offered a choice between beaches in Croatia, a gypsy festival in Prague, and "listening to sacred music in Fes."

Nothing at all, though, on football, apart from a curious entry advising travellers "NEVER" to call football soccer in Europe. And so, making a mental note not to mention the word soccer, for fear of being locked up and grilled by the Dutch secret police, I got off the overnight ferry in Rotterdam planning to travel on to Enschede to watch a game of football.

First of all, though, I did indeed run foul of the authorities, without even mentioning soccer. The unmentionable word in this instance was "ticket", as in not having one.

Mistaken in the belief that I had boarded a free rail shuttle from the ferry into the central terminus, I watched the conductor shake his head sadly and inform me that this error would be punished to the tune of 67 euros.

But by the time I’d managed to let him know that I only wanted to ride on his train, and not buy it, we’d arrived.

I hopped off pretty sharply, thus saving nearly two days’ worth of my planned budget on a 15 minute train ride.

However, the mood of self congratulation lasted for only as long as it took to witness the queue at the Rotterdam central ticket office.

"National ticket machine malfunction" the bloke in charge of minimising the chaos informed me. There were so many people babbling incoherently it reminded me of trying to catch a train in Delhi.

I tried to beat the system by punching away at a machine on the platform, hoping it might co-inside with the precise moment they cured the national ticket machine malfunction.

Two things alerted me to the futility of this exercise - the continued appearance of the word "stoppen", and the fact that no-one else was bothering.

Back to the queue then, which had not got any shorter. Lesser men would have aborted this entire mission on the spot, but the sang froid for which we British are renowned kicked in when I noted that of the 10 available counters, only two were open.