Preparing for first Straight Razor shave: Honing and Strops in Europe

I've been DE shaving for only three months now and have fallen in love with it. But already I've been seduced by the beauty of many of the straight razors on this forum and am planning to cheap on my Muhle R89 before the honeymoon is even over. Shameful, I know - I blame all you SR shavers out there who posted beautiful pics of your collections

While the beauty and romance brought me here, I can't afford to go out and buy a nice Dovo and all the gear and I wouldn't want to do so until I've tried it and decided it it's for me. So I turned to eBay and picked up a vintage solingen razor (which will likely need some work) and two GD's. I'm a hand-on guys and I can myself getting into the restore work, doing my own honing and eventually doing my own custom work (hence the GD's) but right now buying tools and stones is not realistic. Luckily, I work part time with a violin maker who has many stones and tools and probably I use his sometimes. But first, as I said, I want to try it and see if it's for me. Which brings me to my question:

My plan at this point is to send out the solingen razor (and maybe one of the GD's) to get honed, does anyone know where I can get them honed in continental Europe? I'm in Germany right now but I can likely send them to any shop in the EU with little trouble. Problem is, I don't know where to look or who charges reasonably for the service (a quick google of 'rasiermesser scharfen' didn't prompt anything too promising) Any ideas or recommendations?

Also, I'll need a strop and paste. I was looking on ebay over here and found some options:
Cheap eBay.de Strop 1
Cheap eBay.de Strop 2 - 4 sided
Cheap Strop3 - 2 sided
Cheap Strop3 - 4 sided with another cheapo razor
as well as on nassrasur.com (I defined 'cheap' as anything costing less than this one; ie the cheapest I could find in a webstore):
Hängeriemen

but I have no idea what I should be looking for in a beginning strop kit or how to make a knowledgeable decision here. All I know is: I don't have much cash and I feel like I'm pretty likely to destroy my first strop so buying a good one is probably not wise.

Can anyone share some wisdom on these topics?
Looking forward to the first SR shave, but still got a way to go...

Another thought: Should I bother paying for honing? Or for the same cost should I just pick up a cheap stone or two and practice on the GD's?

The vintage solingen razor might be ok, I find it odd that the seller put up 4 photo's but all are of the same side of the razor, so you'll have to wait and see.

GD's are ok but require some work (not sure this is for someone just starting out).

As far as honing is concerned, you're in Germany and I suppose you understand German? You might take a look in the German Forums: http://forum.nassrasur.com and http://www.gut-rasiert.de/forum/index.php/ I'm sure you'll find people there that are willing to help you with the honing.

I looked at the strops you mentioned, what can I say? I wouldn't buy them but they might be ok. You might look in the BST forum of the German forums for a used one?

You have not yet shaved with a straight so you really need to have a razor that's honed as it should. I wouldn't recommend trying to hone before you know how to shave with one. But that's a decision you have to make yourself. I got a few cheap but perfectly honed straights in loan from others to try when I started so I had something to compare with and started practicing honing the same week, it can be done but it's a lot of variables at once to deal with.

Thanks for the tip Snuff-Belgium! I'll check out those forums this weekend - my German is still a work in progress but I think I'll manage to figure it out.

I ended up ordering a strop and paste for 24euro and the razor arrived in the mail today. They need a hone and polish and a nice set of scales but I'm very happy with them for the price. I put up another post about them here:
http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showth...aights-First-restores-couple-of-old-Solingens

Still haven't decided whether to try to hone on my own or wait and send them out this time... but I'm not in a hurry, I'm just enjoying the learning experience

I looked at the other post, good score for 10 euro's. Problem is when you hone it yourself that you won't know if you got the maximum out of your stone. But you can try, shave testing them as you go until you're satisfied. Good luck