We arrived in Stockholm the 31st of May and didn't end up leaving until June 10th. Talk about a long stay in one place. It was great though. And hopefully we didn't overstay our welcome to much at Hilary's cousins' place.
Hilary's cousins are Helen, Daniel and Sandra. Helen and Daniel live together which Helen's boyfriend Hakan and their dog Idum. Sandra lives by herself in a place close by. They are the sweetest family. I'm so happy we got to meet them and hang out for 10 days.
We didn't get to see much of Sandra, as her life is pretty stressful right now. But Helen, Daniel and Hakan were amazing. They were more than willing to show us around their city, invite us out with their friends and treat us like family -- which Hilary is, but they pretty much adopted me as well. Yay.
The week was really laid back. We walked around, went to parks (there was sunshine!), saw a couple museums and drank and ate food. Hilary was sick for a few days so we ended up taking those days off and just hung out around the apartment. It was really nice not constantly feeling rushed to see everything. The change of pace was much needed this far into the trip.
Because I have so many days to cover this blog may not be as complete as the rest but I'll do my best to summarize each day starting with June 1st.
Tuesday
Daniel is really in to history so he took us on a couple walks around the city explaining things as we went. Although, the first attempt at this we ended up getting a little side tracked by beer and our walking tour turned in to a drinking tour, no complaints. Helen and Lynn (Daniel's girlfriend) met up with us and we all went to Sandra's work to have dinner then headed to their favorite neighborhood bar.
Wednesday
Daniel, Helen, Lynn, Idum, Hilary and I decided to go to the park and soak up some sun since Stockholm is the first place we've had real sun in a few weeks. It was so great to just lay and feel the sun on my skin again. Sandra and her new puppy Harley met up with us eventually and we spent most of the time watching Idum and Harley wrestle with each other.
Helen, Hilary and I then decided to head inside before the sun could do any permanent damage to our skin. That night Helen's university was hosting a BBQ so we grabbed some food and headed out after a couple of hours inside. We hung out there for awhile to eat and watch some Swedish baseball, which is surprisingly nothing like American baseball except that there is a bat and some bases, and then decided to go off just the three of us by the water and drink a 3 liter box of wine we had purchased earlier that day. This ended up in us going from bench to bench around the city finishing this off. Eventually we ended up at a bar where we had another drink, met some random boys and eventually headed home.
Thursday
There is a food festival going on in Stockholm this week so we decided to head down there with Helen and one of her classmates. There were a ton of people around and some pretty good food. While we were out walking around there were huge trucks full of kids playing loud music jumping up and down, blowing whistles and screaming their lungs out. Turns out these were people who were graduating from high school. This is a big Swedish tradition. It was very bizarre to see. Especially when I asked Helen to translate one of the signs that was hanging off the back and she translated it as "Honk if you have a big penis." Ha - alright. I tried to imagine something like this happening in Seattle and the thought made me laugh.
Helen's friend, Marie, knew of a place with a great view so we headed up there to watch the city as the day faded. We hung out there for a few hours and when it eventually got to cold to be outside anymore in the clothes we were wearing we headed back for dinner.
Friday
We were tourists today and headed in to the old town to do some souvenir shopping. Once we got that out of the way we headed to a photo museum which had 4 exhibitions going on. The museum was very new, about two weeks old. Museums are not normally my favorite place, but I love photography so I don't really give this museum the same connotation as I do most. All the exhibitions were really good and interesting. The exhibits were "A child is Born", "The Birthday Party", "Life of a Photographer" by Annie Liebovitz and "Bodies". After that we just headed home for dinner and then watch a movie with Hakan.
Saturday
We attempted to get out of the house today, but after getting into the city Hilary could not stop coughing and looked horrible. I didn't want her to continue getting sick and feel this was the rest of the trip. It isn't fun for anyone when someone is to sick to enjoy anything, so I strong armed her into going back home and resting for the day. We spent the day watching Mad Men and Dane Cook. It was very lazy and not typically something you do when traveling, but it was needed.
Sunday
We decided to take a boat trip out to the archipelago. This is an area of Sweden made up entirely of islands. I think there are around 30,000. It was a 3 hour round trip ride and was absolutely gorgeous outside. When we got back Hakan and Daniel offered to take us on a motorcycle ride through the city and countryside. They both have bikes. We happily accepted and spent a few hours our riding around. I've been on a bike a few times in my life but always forget how much I love it. So much fun. If I had the money or the balls to buy one I would totally do it. Since I don't, I might have to resort to finding a boy with a bike. Chris - that's you! :)
Monday
We hung out with Helen all day shopping and eating. Eventually we ended up on a mission to find a cafe and have some traditional Swedish cakes. When this mission failed we ended up at a bar. However, Helen got us some delicious Swedish chocolate first, so we spent the rest of the night eating chocolate, drinking and laughing. The drinks are not super cheap in Sweden but we were able to find a place with some good prices on beers, cider and shots - oh my. That was a good night...
Tuesday
We finally found our Swedish cakes today with Helen. First we went to say goodbye to Sandra and Harley, then walked around Helen's neighborhood a little until we found the cafe. After that we went to the train station to reserve our seats. We wanted to leave the next day but after an hour and a half at the station we found out everything was booked and ended up having to leave a day later and we are taking a less direct route than we hoped. Oh well, the life and times of a traveler are not always easy.
That night we were invited to another one of Hilary's distant (very distant) relatives, Lisbet. She was a really nice lade who is widowed and retired and now does a bunch of traveling with one of her friends. She goes to South Africa a lot too which I thought was really cool. The meal she made us was unlike anything I've ever had before. It consisted of a very fancy Swedish caviar specialty followed by salmon which was prepared in some special was but was essentially raw and then a bunch of vegetables and then followed up with delicious raspberry pie. I can honestly say I never thought I'd be eating caviar and raw salmon in Sweden, but I did, and it was surprisingly not awful - ha.
Wednesday
This was our bonus day. We spent it with Daniel and Lynn going to the Swedish outdoor museum, Skansen, which was way better than the one in Switzerland. Since we had Daniel the historian with us he was able to tell us a lot of interesting things about the place, which was great.
After the museum Lynn's dad was gracious enough to invite all of us over for a good family BBQ. So good! He is a great cook and we sat around drinking wine and beer and having great conversation.
Thursday
Today is the day we actually leave Stockholm. The morning was pretty slow. I got up around 7am, due to not being able to sleep. This worked out great cause I was not stressed at all and had some alone time before Hilary got up. We packed, said our goodbyes, which was really sad. Hilary and I keep insisting that they all come visit us in Seattle someday and I genuinely hope they do!
Once we got to the station we began our 24 hour train ride to Paris. This is a little interesting because we originally wanted to go to Bordeaux, but could only get tickets to Paris for certain. We have to wait in Paris to see if we can get a train to Bordeaux or not. This leaves us in a little bit sticky situation since we aren't sure which city we'll be sleeping in come Friday night. But we have couchsurfers in both cities lined up just in case.
Friday
On very little sleep, we are finally on the train from Frankfurt to Paris. Our overnight train last night was from Copenhagen to Frankfurt. It was a lot less exciting than my last overnight train but I hardly got any sleep due to the noice and movement and sleeping with 6 people in one tiny room. We had to get up a 6:30 to swtich trains. The process itself has been pretty smooth so far so that is good. No realy train mishaps. We will be getting to Paris, now it is just a matter of figuring out how and when we are getting to Bordeaux.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Kyrkhult
Hilary's family is amazing. Her third cousin, Leif, and his wife, Eva, live in a small town in Kyrkhult (pronounced sher-cult), Sweden. Leif met us at the train station a little outside of Kyrkhult and drove us back to his place. This is only the fourth time we've been in a car the whole trip with this was a treat. Instantly we were greeted with hugs and wonderful aromas of a homemade Swedish meal. We spent the night eating Swedish meatballs and the most delicious gravy I've ever tasted thanks to Eva. It was a really good night of talking and getting to know them.
The next day Hilary and Leif went out to see where her ancestors migrated from and I opted to stay in and enjoy a relaxing day to myself. This consisted of a great breakfast, time on the couch reading and the longest bath of my life. I'm not usually a bath person but this was needed and was so relaxing. When Hilary and Leif got back we had dinner and desert. Now comes the best part. Eva is a trained masseuse and offered to give both Hilary and I massages after dinner. I'm not usually a huge fan of massages but this was so needed and absolutely amazing. After that we watched a movie and headed to bed. It was by far my slowest day. I think it was the first I've spent the whole day inside and I loved it.
The next morning we got up and headed on a road trip to meet another one of Hilary's relatives about 2 hours away by car. She lived in a beautiful small town on the beach. I'd compare it to an Oregon seaside town. We had lunch, visited a few of the places on the Swedish peninsula which took a few hours and then had some warm quiche and eventually around 7pm headed back to Leif and Eva's place. Once there we just watched another movie and then headed to bed again. The rest has been so nice. It sounds boring, but after 9.5 weeks of anything but boring it is welcomed.
The last day we were there was pretty much the same routine. Slept in, ate breakfast, read my book, took a long bath, had a delicious homemade Hungarian dinner and then Leif took us to the train station and we said our goodbyes.
This post was short, but I cannot express enough thanks to Leif and Eva. They were absolutely amazing and wonderful people!! Now we are on our way to Stockholm to hang out with their children for the next week. Yay!
The next day Hilary and Leif went out to see where her ancestors migrated from and I opted to stay in and enjoy a relaxing day to myself. This consisted of a great breakfast, time on the couch reading and the longest bath of my life. I'm not usually a bath person but this was needed and was so relaxing. When Hilary and Leif got back we had dinner and desert. Now comes the best part. Eva is a trained masseuse and offered to give both Hilary and I massages after dinner. I'm not usually a huge fan of massages but this was so needed and absolutely amazing. After that we watched a movie and headed to bed. It was by far my slowest day. I think it was the first I've spent the whole day inside and I loved it.
The next morning we got up and headed on a road trip to meet another one of Hilary's relatives about 2 hours away by car. She lived in a beautiful small town on the beach. I'd compare it to an Oregon seaside town. We had lunch, visited a few of the places on the Swedish peninsula which took a few hours and then had some warm quiche and eventually around 7pm headed back to Leif and Eva's place. Once there we just watched another movie and then headed to bed again. The rest has been so nice. It sounds boring, but after 9.5 weeks of anything but boring it is welcomed.
The last day we were there was pretty much the same routine. Slept in, ate breakfast, read my book, took a long bath, had a delicious homemade Hungarian dinner and then Leif took us to the train station and we said our goodbyes.
This post was short, but I cannot express enough thanks to Leif and Eva. They were absolutely amazing and wonderful people!! Now we are on our way to Stockholm to hang out with their children for the next week. Yay!
Friday, May 28, 2010
Copenhagen
When we got to Copenhagen our host, Jan, was waiting for us on the platform with Danish beers in hand. So amazing. We then walked out of the station and he made us put our bags down and drink the beers right then and there. At this point I was already in love. We spent the first half hour in Copenhagen outside the train station drinking beers and talking. I could not have asked for a better way to enter Scandinavia.
Once we were done with the beers we headed to Jan's place. We found out we are his first CSers - yay! We love popping the CS cherry, haha. This is the second time it has happened. He surfed in other places but just recently got the OK from his landlord and roommates to finally start hosting. So glad he did cause he is amazing and a great host. He is super energetic and the type of person who is just really fun to be around. When we got to his place we made tacos for dinner, yum. And then headed to a bar in his neighborhood for a drink. Unfortunately, Hilary is getting sick so we only stayed out for one beer.
The next morning we got a late start. Since Hilary is sick she slept in until 11 and I didn't want to wake her so I just found random things around the apartment to occupy my time with until she got up and we could get going for the day.
We wanted to check out a boat tour around the city that Jan recommended and after a few wrong turns on the bus we made it there. The tour was cheap so we jumped on and spent the next hour or so on the water learning about the town. The tour was in 3 languages so I fell asleep a couple times in the warm sun while the tour guide wasn't speaking English. It was really nice being on the water and finally having sun to enjoy.
After the boat ride, there was a museum Hilary wanted to check out that housed sculptures of one of her favorite artists. Her guide book told her the museum was free on Wednesdays so we headed that way. Turns out her guide book was wrong. It is free on Sundays. But, it happened to be the crown prince's birthday this particular Wednesday and all the museums were free, sweet. We wandered around the museum until we both got our fill and then headed out.
It was time for food and some random walking around the city center so we headed to the main area and hung out there for awhile. We couldn't find any cheap food that looked good so once we had pretty much gone the whole day without eating we headed back to Jan's for dinner. He ended up making us some delicious Rosti. This was the second time we'd had it, but his was for dinner and full of vegetables and eggs, not just potatoes. It was great. We were supposed to meet up with some of Jan's friends for drinks but ended up eating so late and talking we just decided to stay in and have a calm night.
The next morning we made it out of the house much earlier, and headed to Christiania. Essentially this is described as a hippie commune that is pretty much self governed separate from Copenhagen since the 60s. It is a described as a 'social experiment'. It is definitely different from any community I had ever seen before. It is exactly how one would picture a hippie commune set up in the 60s. There is graffiti everywhere, parks, bars, all the buildings are painted bright colors, people selling drug paraphernalia and of course lots of hippies walking around. It was really cool. I can definitely see more than a few people back in Seattle fitting in here.
After that we got lunch and then went to meet Jan for a tour of Carlsburg brewery. A few wrong turns and 20 minutes late we got there and paid $10 for the tour which Hilary's guide book had told her was free - wrong again. This wasn't so bad in the end though cause we got 2 free beer tickets. We learned a ton about the factory and the brewing process and then rewarded ourselves with some good beer. There is an area right before the bar that allows you to smell 20 different aromas and then mark down if you like them or not. Then they lay out each beer they have and you can see which one you want based on what aromas you liked. It was a really cool experiment. I'm not sure if it worked 100% but fun to do at least.
Next on our list for the day was the Tivoli theme park. Theme park! Yay! I LOVE rides and theme parks so I was really excited about this. It wasn't cheap, but after we paid the entrance fee and got an unlimited ride ticket the major money spending was over and we got to ride everything as much as we wanted, score. The lines were nice and short so we got to do just about everything we wanted and some of them twice. I even got Hilary to do a ride where you drop straight down from a pretty high distance in the air. Brought back memories of sky diving - loved it! The three of us were essentially middle schoolers again running around the park. I could not have asked for a better time or better company. :)
Once the park closed and kicked us out food was our next objective. We found a restaurant that was still open, had our fill, got a student discount and then headed to a bar. We stayed at bar #1 for one beer and a shot then moved on to meet up with Jan's friend at another bar. We stayed there just long enough to pick up his friend and head to the next place. Bar #3 was more of a club which we stayed at for awhile. Jan's friend and I got into some good conversation, I liked him a lot. After that we were back to the second bar until around 3am and then headed out to the beach to watch the sun rise.
We ended up taking a taxi to get to the beach. It was so beautiful. We were the only people on the beach. I love nature when it is untouched. We watched the waves roll in, the birds fly about and the sky gradually turn from dark blue, to a rainbow of colors and finally the sun rose over the water. Absolutely gorgeous. We ended up being out there for an hour and a half since we misjudged when we thought the sun would rise; but other than being pretty cold it was perfect. Watching the sun rise is one of my favorite things to do. Everyone can watch the sun set, but only a small percentage of people really get to enjoy the sun rise often. I love it.
The sun was finally up and we were freezing our asses off so we headed back to Jan's place. I was tired but really happy. This had probably been one of my best nights of the trip so far - and that is saying a lot. Jan is amazing and I'm going to miss him a lot. So sad we only got to spend a couple days with him. Hopefully he will come to the states and visit us soon! *hint, hint Jan - :)*
I slept in until 11:30 after getting to bed around 5:30 and the morning consisted of eating, packing and going to the train station. Our train was at 1:45. We didn't have any trouble making it and our now on our way to Sweden to meet Hilary's family. We only have 2 countries left: Sweden and France but a whole 3.5 weeks. This is the slowest part of the trip for us. I think the tempo and the vibe is going to change a lot but it will be a welcome change. Slowing things down for a little bit and being with Hilary's family will be really nice. I am in desperate need of doing laundry as well, so that'll be exciting as well. It really is all about the little things when you're traveling.
Once we were done with the beers we headed to Jan's place. We found out we are his first CSers - yay! We love popping the CS cherry, haha. This is the second time it has happened. He surfed in other places but just recently got the OK from his landlord and roommates to finally start hosting. So glad he did cause he is amazing and a great host. He is super energetic and the type of person who is just really fun to be around. When we got to his place we made tacos for dinner, yum. And then headed to a bar in his neighborhood for a drink. Unfortunately, Hilary is getting sick so we only stayed out for one beer.
The next morning we got a late start. Since Hilary is sick she slept in until 11 and I didn't want to wake her so I just found random things around the apartment to occupy my time with until she got up and we could get going for the day.
We wanted to check out a boat tour around the city that Jan recommended and after a few wrong turns on the bus we made it there. The tour was cheap so we jumped on and spent the next hour or so on the water learning about the town. The tour was in 3 languages so I fell asleep a couple times in the warm sun while the tour guide wasn't speaking English. It was really nice being on the water and finally having sun to enjoy.
After the boat ride, there was a museum Hilary wanted to check out that housed sculptures of one of her favorite artists. Her guide book told her the museum was free on Wednesdays so we headed that way. Turns out her guide book was wrong. It is free on Sundays. But, it happened to be the crown prince's birthday this particular Wednesday and all the museums were free, sweet. We wandered around the museum until we both got our fill and then headed out.
It was time for food and some random walking around the city center so we headed to the main area and hung out there for awhile. We couldn't find any cheap food that looked good so once we had pretty much gone the whole day without eating we headed back to Jan's for dinner. He ended up making us some delicious Rosti. This was the second time we'd had it, but his was for dinner and full of vegetables and eggs, not just potatoes. It was great. We were supposed to meet up with some of Jan's friends for drinks but ended up eating so late and talking we just decided to stay in and have a calm night.
The next morning we made it out of the house much earlier, and headed to Christiania. Essentially this is described as a hippie commune that is pretty much self governed separate from Copenhagen since the 60s. It is a described as a 'social experiment'. It is definitely different from any community I had ever seen before. It is exactly how one would picture a hippie commune set up in the 60s. There is graffiti everywhere, parks, bars, all the buildings are painted bright colors, people selling drug paraphernalia and of course lots of hippies walking around. It was really cool. I can definitely see more than a few people back in Seattle fitting in here.
After that we got lunch and then went to meet Jan for a tour of Carlsburg brewery. A few wrong turns and 20 minutes late we got there and paid $10 for the tour which Hilary's guide book had told her was free - wrong again. This wasn't so bad in the end though cause we got 2 free beer tickets. We learned a ton about the factory and the brewing process and then rewarded ourselves with some good beer. There is an area right before the bar that allows you to smell 20 different aromas and then mark down if you like them or not. Then they lay out each beer they have and you can see which one you want based on what aromas you liked. It was a really cool experiment. I'm not sure if it worked 100% but fun to do at least.
Next on our list for the day was the Tivoli theme park. Theme park! Yay! I LOVE rides and theme parks so I was really excited about this. It wasn't cheap, but after we paid the entrance fee and got an unlimited ride ticket the major money spending was over and we got to ride everything as much as we wanted, score. The lines were nice and short so we got to do just about everything we wanted and some of them twice. I even got Hilary to do a ride where you drop straight down from a pretty high distance in the air. Brought back memories of sky diving - loved it! The three of us were essentially middle schoolers again running around the park. I could not have asked for a better time or better company. :)
Once the park closed and kicked us out food was our next objective. We found a restaurant that was still open, had our fill, got a student discount and then headed to a bar. We stayed at bar #1 for one beer and a shot then moved on to meet up with Jan's friend at another bar. We stayed there just long enough to pick up his friend and head to the next place. Bar #3 was more of a club which we stayed at for awhile. Jan's friend and I got into some good conversation, I liked him a lot. After that we were back to the second bar until around 3am and then headed out to the beach to watch the sun rise.
We ended up taking a taxi to get to the beach. It was so beautiful. We were the only people on the beach. I love nature when it is untouched. We watched the waves roll in, the birds fly about and the sky gradually turn from dark blue, to a rainbow of colors and finally the sun rose over the water. Absolutely gorgeous. We ended up being out there for an hour and a half since we misjudged when we thought the sun would rise; but other than being pretty cold it was perfect. Watching the sun rise is one of my favorite things to do. Everyone can watch the sun set, but only a small percentage of people really get to enjoy the sun rise often. I love it.
The sun was finally up and we were freezing our asses off so we headed back to Jan's place. I was tired but really happy. This had probably been one of my best nights of the trip so far - and that is saying a lot. Jan is amazing and I'm going to miss him a lot. So sad we only got to spend a couple days with him. Hopefully he will come to the states and visit us soon! *hint, hint Jan - :)*
I slept in until 11:30 after getting to bed around 5:30 and the morning consisted of eating, packing and going to the train station. Our train was at 1:45. We didn't have any trouble making it and our now on our way to Sweden to meet Hilary's family. We only have 2 countries left: Sweden and France but a whole 3.5 weeks. This is the slowest part of the trip for us. I think the tempo and the vibe is going to change a lot but it will be a welcome change. Slowing things down for a little bit and being with Hilary's family will be really nice. I am in desperate need of doing laundry as well, so that'll be exciting as well. It really is all about the little things when you're traveling.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Hamburg
I was not kidding about a whirlwind time in Hamburg. We got there and our host, Martin, picked us up. He is 29 and really into outdoor activities, especially climbing. One of the more interesting things about him was that he was born in East Germany and grew up there during the East and West separation and remembered times before and after the fall of the wall. It was super interesting to hear what he had to say about day to day life on the East side of Germany during those times.
We got settled, had some food and then headed out on the town to see the night life in Hamburg. They have a mini red light district which doesn't even compare to Amsterdam's but was entertaining to walk through still. The area we were in was mostly discos and places to dance but neither of us were into that, especially Hilary who hates dancing, so we walked around for awhile until we found a bar that hand comfy seats to sit and talk. That lasted about 10 minutes before we found a foosball table. Turns out Martin is amazing at foosball. He plays a lot at his job - which happens to be consulting for companies like Microsoft, haha. After awhile of some foosball action and beer we headed home. Hilary is starting to get sick now and I have been super tired lately. I think fighting off actually getting sick is taking a lot out of my body so I'm trying to sleep as much as possible. 9 weeks of traveling is really starting to take its toll on me. My body is telling me to slow down and all I want to do is keep moving. Hopefully once we get to Sweden where Hilary's family is I'll be able to take a day or two and just do nothing, which would be aaaamazing.
The next day was crazy. We had gotten a message from a guy on CS named Alex who offered to take us on a guided tour of the city. Since we were only in Hamburg for one full day and a couple half days we thought this would be great. It was a holiday so Martin came along with us. We met Alex for breakfast and right away we knew it was going to be an interesting day. He is quite the character. Very boisterous and full of energy. Always cracking a joke and almost seemed more like an animated voice at times. He had a car so the day consisted of driving around the city and him showing us everything there is to see. This was the first day we had spent the entire day in a car and only the third time we'd been in one at all this whole trip. It was nice being able to see everything on one hand, but on the other we went through everything so fast it's hard to remember much. The other major upside was the weather was crap and raining on us all day so it was nice not have to be out in that. Driving definitely gives you a much different perspective of the city than walking everywhere. I prefer walking.
We headed back to Martin's in the late afternoon, walked around some gardens he has out in the neighborhood he lives in then along the riverbank and finally back to his place for dinner. Dinner was great. Martin made us meat, bread with tomatoes, fresh strawberries and homemade raspberry ice cream, along with some wine of course. We haven't eaten that complete of a meal in so long, it was delicious. At this point two other CS girls originally from Peru that Martin had also accepted to host that night showed up. Hilary was behind on her blog so she did that for the rest of the night and the girls, Martin and I were up talking for awhile. It was a really fun and relaxing night. Definitely needed after the day we had.
The next morning we got up and Martin had to work so we went to the train station to put our bags in lockers and wander around the city a little more before our train at 1:30 to Copenhagen. The weather still wasn't amazing so our wandering around turned in to stopping at a purse store, H&M and finally a food market area where we hung out for a good 2 hours until it was time to catch our train. The train ride was really beautiful. It was actually sunny all day and the landscape was full of flowers and water everywhere. At one point we had to take a ferry ride to get in to Denmark - I did not realize this. So they literally drove the train on to the ferry and then we all had to get off for the 45min ride across the water. We have now been on a bus that drove on to a train and a train that drove on to a ferry - so bizarre, but fun!
We got settled, had some food and then headed out on the town to see the night life in Hamburg. They have a mini red light district which doesn't even compare to Amsterdam's but was entertaining to walk through still. The area we were in was mostly discos and places to dance but neither of us were into that, especially Hilary who hates dancing, so we walked around for awhile until we found a bar that hand comfy seats to sit and talk. That lasted about 10 minutes before we found a foosball table. Turns out Martin is amazing at foosball. He plays a lot at his job - which happens to be consulting for companies like Microsoft, haha. After awhile of some foosball action and beer we headed home. Hilary is starting to get sick now and I have been super tired lately. I think fighting off actually getting sick is taking a lot out of my body so I'm trying to sleep as much as possible. 9 weeks of traveling is really starting to take its toll on me. My body is telling me to slow down and all I want to do is keep moving. Hopefully once we get to Sweden where Hilary's family is I'll be able to take a day or two and just do nothing, which would be aaaamazing.
The next day was crazy. We had gotten a message from a guy on CS named Alex who offered to take us on a guided tour of the city. Since we were only in Hamburg for one full day and a couple half days we thought this would be great. It was a holiday so Martin came along with us. We met Alex for breakfast and right away we knew it was going to be an interesting day. He is quite the character. Very boisterous and full of energy. Always cracking a joke and almost seemed more like an animated voice at times. He had a car so the day consisted of driving around the city and him showing us everything there is to see. This was the first day we had spent the entire day in a car and only the third time we'd been in one at all this whole trip. It was nice being able to see everything on one hand, but on the other we went through everything so fast it's hard to remember much. The other major upside was the weather was crap and raining on us all day so it was nice not have to be out in that. Driving definitely gives you a much different perspective of the city than walking everywhere. I prefer walking.
We headed back to Martin's in the late afternoon, walked around some gardens he has out in the neighborhood he lives in then along the riverbank and finally back to his place for dinner. Dinner was great. Martin made us meat, bread with tomatoes, fresh strawberries and homemade raspberry ice cream, along with some wine of course. We haven't eaten that complete of a meal in so long, it was delicious. At this point two other CS girls originally from Peru that Martin had also accepted to host that night showed up. Hilary was behind on her blog so she did that for the rest of the night and the girls, Martin and I were up talking for awhile. It was a really fun and relaxing night. Definitely needed after the day we had.
The next morning we got up and Martin had to work so we went to the train station to put our bags in lockers and wander around the city a little more before our train at 1:30 to Copenhagen. The weather still wasn't amazing so our wandering around turned in to stopping at a purse store, H&M and finally a food market area where we hung out for a good 2 hours until it was time to catch our train. The train ride was really beautiful. It was actually sunny all day and the landscape was full of flowers and water everywhere. At one point we had to take a ferry ride to get in to Denmark - I did not realize this. So they literally drove the train on to the ferry and then we all had to get off for the 45min ride across the water. We have now been on a bus that drove on to a train and a train that drove on to a ferry - so bizarre, but fun!
Berlin
The train ride to Berlin was pretty uneventful. We got in and to our CSer's place without any major problems. Steffi is our current host. She is 25, originally from Vienna and is studying in Berlin. Once we got to her place we ended up going over to her friend's place who lives in her building for dinner. There was a bunch of people getting together so there ended up being us and about 10 other guys all sitting around eating pizza, drinking beer and having ice cream for desert. Apparently this is something that is universal among male college students, haha. They were really fun and interesting to talk to and we ended up staying there late in to the night talking about traveling and politics and anything other topic you can think of. Once we got back to Steffi's we just talked a little longer and then headed to bed.
The next morning we got up for a free walking tour of Berlin. We didn't have a map or anything so I had to look up directions and pray that I could figure it all out in time for the tour. It all went pretty smoothly though. The tour was amazing. Berlin has SO much history to it. We literally covered around 800 years in about 3.5 hours. A lot of the focus was on WWI, WWII and the cold war obviously. Our tour guide, Stephanie was from New Zealand and was amazing. She's a history buff with a journalism degree and is currently writing a book. I can't believe how much she knows about the city and it's history.
After the tour she invited everyone out for some German schnitzel and beer. Only 4 of us ended up taking her up on her offer but I'm so glad we did. We all ended up talking for 2.5 hours and we decided to go on a tour to the concentration camps with her the next day. She is super outgoing (which you obviously have to be to be a tour guide) and was a ton of fun to talk to.
On the tour I started talking to a guy, Oliver, and found out he is from Texas. He's on a 6 week trip around Europe and had just gotten in the night before. He came out to eat with us and joined us for the concentration camp guide as well, so that's awesome. Love meeting random people! I also got to impart my traveling knowledge with him. He's only been to Scotland with his family so the whole backpacking trip thing was new to him. I love feeling like a veteran now, haha.
The tour and food pretty much took up our day so we just headed back to Steffi's place for dinner and to meet the new CSer that is staying with her. Nadine is originally from Egypt but living in Berlin and is backpacking around Europe for a couple of months. The night was a calm one. We were getting up early the next day and I am still trying to fight off getting sick so sleep was necessary.
I got up at 6:45 today in order to go to the Reichstag which is Berlin's parliamentary building that has a huge class dome on top where people can walk around and see a panoramic view of the city. It opens at 8 but the lines can get huge and we were leaving for the concentration camp Sachsenhausen at 11 so we wanted to get there asap. I think we made it there around 8:30. We being Hilary, me and our new CS friend Nadine. Nadine got in the night before and is originally from Cairo, Egypt but has been living in Munich for a while and was backpacking around Europe.
8:30 was the perfect time to show up. We got right in, walked around and were out within an hour/hour and a half. The dome was a lot better than I expected it to be. It is free and they give you an audio tour guide. There is a platform that gradually winds around the dome as it goes higher. The audio guide talks about the history and all of the buildings you see as you walk around the dome. There are sensors that tell the audio guide where you are in the dome so it knows what you're looking at - very handy. The day was cloudy but there was only 1 building I couldn't really see, so not a huge deal.
After that we went on a search for food and then met up with our tour at 11. There was almost 40 people going to the concentration camp so it was a little less personal than the walking tour which only had 20, but it was still fun getting to hang out with Stephanie another day, I really liked her. Oliver met up with us and then on the train to the camps I started talking to another girl, Ashley who was there with her husband. Loved them!
They are only 23 years old but have been together since there were 26 and married since 20 or 21. Normally I would like something like this is crazy and give them another couple of years before they are divorced cause they are so young, but this is not the case with them. They seriously were the cutest couple and seemed so happy and right for each other. Now, I was only with them for about a day and a half, but it is really hard to convince me that a couple is 'right for each other' at this age. It is also really unusual to meet a couple where you like both people, but Ashley and Andy were also the exception for this. The 6 of us - Hilary, Nadine, Oliver, Ashley, Andy and I - all hung out for the day and I got to talk to both of them together and apart. Andy is a carpenter and Ashley works at a bank. They are spending 6 months traveling around Europe together just because they wanted to. Awesome! I really hope one day I find someone willing to do something that amazing and travel with me. Neither of them have traveled much and Andy even said he doesn't have a huge desire to travel, but Ashley wanted to and he said okay so now they're in Europe. They both seem to be having a great time so far and are even considering the far-fetched idea of moving over here. Andy has a UK passport so it would be entirely possible - very jealous. Anyways, to sum it up I'm so glad I met them and they give me hope for the possibility of finding someone in the future... very strange idea for me, but I guess it's gotta happen at some point, right? :)
Sachsenhausen was different than Auschwitz. It was a work camp, not an extermination camp, and it housed only men. It was also the main camp set up so the Nazi's could figure out how to 'perfect' all other concentration camps. It almost seemed impossible at this point to learn anything new about the Holocaust but unbelievably I did. For example, there were gas vans that some camps used to kill people when they didn't have gas chambers. They would load people into the van and then direct the exhaust pipe into the van and leave it running until everyone suffocated to death - awful. There is obviously a lot more to Sachsenhausen but like Auschwitz to much to put in a blog. I feel like I am close to being an expert on the subject now and am not afraid to talk about it so if you want to know more and pick my brain when I get home, feel free.
After the concentration camp we invited Oliver, Ashley and Andy to come with Nadine, Hilary and I to a museum we heard about which was set up in the Nazi point of view. Most museums are from the victim's view, so we thought it'd be interesting to check tihs one out. All 6 of us headed down there. The museum was cool and again, learned even more. Especially about the Nazi propaganda and the people that were involved in making decisions.
Next on our stop was food. Oliver had a bus to catch to Amsterdam so we said our goodbyes and were down to 5. We found a restaurant and the rest of the night was a lot of fun and therapeutic. We were all really open about everything we had seen that day and how we felt about it. It turns out Andy's grandfather's both fought in the war, but for different sides. One of them was from Ukraine and was an intelligence officer for the Nazi's. The other was a fighter pilot for Canada. Very interesting to hear what he knew about their experiences. We also had a lot of conversation based around the Nazi soldiers themselves and how so many of them could have done such awful things. We learned that most of them had been in training since the age of 12 which means there was probably some major brain washing involved. Again, I won't get in to all of this but it was great being able to hash it out with people who saw the same things we did and were experiencing the same emotions.
The next day we were so physically and emotionally drained we slept in until noon. We were finally up and out of the house by 1:30. We went to see the memorial for murdered Jews in the center of Berlin. The memorial is really different. It is in a huge square right outside the Brandenburger Tor which is the iconic gate for Berlin. It is composed of hundreds of big blocks of cement all spaced equally apart from each other but they are different heights. The artist is American actually, that was surprising to me, and he said he wanted to leave the memorial up for interpretation. Some people see Jews lined up in a row to be murdered, others see soldiers marching, others see tombstones, etc, etc. I'd suggest looking it up if you get the urge to google something. It's really interesting to look at and it was to big to take a good picture. I don't know the official name but memorial to the Jews in Berlin should probably get you to the right spot.
After that Hilary wanted to check out the Berlin MoMa. It was Thursday so the museums were free. So glad. If I had paid for that MoMa I'd been so mad. Modern Art is just not my thing. So many super bizarre things that just aren't art to me. I'm a big believer of 'to each their own' so I won't say that they aren't art in generally cause obviously a lot of people think they are since they were in the Berlin MoMa, but it just doesn't interest me in the slightest.
Next was the Pergamon museum. Here we randomly ran in to Ashley and Andy again and spent some time walking around with them. The Pergamon is most famous for the Gates of Ishtar in Babylon and the Pergamon Alter. Both were really cool and overwhelming in size. But they were all reconstructions of the originals. Original pieces were put in to the reconstructions so that was cool, but obviously not as impressive if they were originals.
We were meeting up with the girls we met in Prague that night so we said goodbye to Ashley and Andy and went home to change and attempt to make ourselves look half-way decdent which we don't do often. We met up with everyone at a bar called Madam Claude's and spent the night drinking a couple of beers and meeting lots of new people. Since it was a Thursday the transportation systems stop running regularly around 12:30 so we had to leave around midnight to catch everything we needed to get home.
Friday our first stop was the East Side Gallery. This is the longest stretch of the Berlin wall still in tact. It is 1.3km if I remember correctly - which honestly is about a 50/50 chance. The city contracted a bunch of different artists from all over the wall to paint on it. The result is a really cool strip of really interesting art. I loved it. If I lived in Berlin I'd go there all the time. Definitely a must see.
After that we headed to a bombed out church we heard about but that ended up being a disappointment so we went straight to Tiergarten which is the major park in Berlin. It is huge and in the middle of it is a monument called the Victory Tower. We wanted to see it but it is under construction right now so it was pretty much completely covered up - fail. Next was the Berlin castle (every major city in Prague has one, of course). I wasn't really up for seeing another castle and/or garden area but we didn't really have anything else to do and I knew Hilary wanted to go so we went. I'm glad we did. It wasn't the best castle I've seen, but the gardens were beautiful and the sun was out so we just hung out by the water fountain and took a stroll around the area for awhile.
Our last stop was to the last remaining part of the Berlin wall we hadn't seen yet. It was different than the other two (the first one we saw on the free walking tour the first day) because it had part of the death strip still in tact. The Berlin wall actually two walls in its final stage. There was an inner wall and an outer wall and the area between was called the death strip. It was called this because the soldiers had a shoot to kill policy at anyone who entered the death strip. I think 136 people died in the death strip trying to escape to West Berlin. There was a memorial set up here with all of their pictures. I was surprised at how many were children and young adults. This was the most impactful part of the wall by far and there was a lot of information signs posted everywhere so it was really informative as well.
That night we wanted to take our host, Steffi, out for cocktails (she's not a beer person). We decided to hit up the Carnival of Cultures which is a huge once a year carnival that happened to be going on right now - score. We got there around 11 and it stopped at 12 so we didn't do much but we got to see the crazy night life there which was fun. After that we headed to a cocktail bar that had happy hour all night. We hung out there until around 3:30 or 4 when they finally kicked us out. It was a really fun night being able to hang out with just our host.
After getting to bed around 5am we slept in until 1ish I think. It was our last full day in Berlin but we didn't really have all that much left to do so it was pretty much our day to relax which was great. We went to a main square called Alexanderplatz and then went on a wild goose chase around the city for some souvenirs. That ended in semi-success and we headed back to our host's place for a BBQ and to watch a soccer game between Milan and Munich that apparently all of Europe was watching that night.
Once we got back to Steffi's she had invited over a couple of other CSers who had requested to stay with her but couldn't since we were there. They were two guys from CA, Wolfgang and Kip. Yep, best names ever. Wolfgang's real name in Jacob but when he got to university he thought it'd be funny to try and introduce himself as Wolfgang. The joke worked too well and now that's what he is known as. Kip is short for Christopher I guess, never heard that before. Later their CS host, Sarah showed up and we all went to the store to get food and then headed to the BBQ in Steffi's garden which the rest of the boys we had met the first night in Berlin.
Hilary and the Berlin boys were all really in to the soccer game but me, Steffi, Sarah and the Cali boys could car less so we all hung out during the game and talked. I talked to Sarah most of the time and had a really interesting conversation with her about Germany and repercussions of WWII. Pretty intense but very enlightening to hear it from someone German born. She said they are still very much taught that they should almost be ashamed of being German because of the war and what they grandparents did. People even tell them to say they are from a different country when they travel. Reminded me a lot of how a lot of people from the states say they are Canadian when they travel. Anyways, we had a good couple of hours talking about everything there is to talk about. Once the game was over and the food and beer were gone, Sarah and the boys left and we crashed.
Sunday was our last day in Berlin. We got up and met up with Nicole which was one of the girls we met in Prague that is studying in Berlin. The three of us went to a major flea market that happens on Sundays just to check it out. There is apparently karaoke usually out in the middle of the park in an amphitheater-like area which would have been really cool to see. Unfortunately, because of the Carnival going on there wasn't any, sad. So we ended up going to the Carnival to see the major parade that was going on. We met up with Sarah and the Cali boys again and tried to get close enough to see the parade but that failed miserably. There were thousands and thousands of people around and even trying to move 10 feet took forever. Eventually we gave up and decided to go back to Steffi's to finish packing and catch our train to Hamburg.
We said goodbye to Steffi, got our bags and took a picture with the local Doner Kebab man that we had befriended during our time in Berlin. He owned a shop around the corner that had the best Kebab's ever for only 2 euro. I think I had one every day I was there and one day I had two making it literally all I ate that day. So delicious. Plus it had carbs, meat and vegetables - totally well balanced, healthy meal! Anyways, we got our last kebab, took our picture with him and then headed to the train. This is where I currently am. We got lucky and got a whole cabin to ourselves again. The train ride is only 2 hours though. We are hopefully going to be meeting up with our host Martin when we get there and then have a whirlwind time of a little under 2 days in Hamburg. Should be fun.
The next morning we got up for a free walking tour of Berlin. We didn't have a map or anything so I had to look up directions and pray that I could figure it all out in time for the tour. It all went pretty smoothly though. The tour was amazing. Berlin has SO much history to it. We literally covered around 800 years in about 3.5 hours. A lot of the focus was on WWI, WWII and the cold war obviously. Our tour guide, Stephanie was from New Zealand and was amazing. She's a history buff with a journalism degree and is currently writing a book. I can't believe how much she knows about the city and it's history.
After the tour she invited everyone out for some German schnitzel and beer. Only 4 of us ended up taking her up on her offer but I'm so glad we did. We all ended up talking for 2.5 hours and we decided to go on a tour to the concentration camps with her the next day. She is super outgoing (which you obviously have to be to be a tour guide) and was a ton of fun to talk to.
On the tour I started talking to a guy, Oliver, and found out he is from Texas. He's on a 6 week trip around Europe and had just gotten in the night before. He came out to eat with us and joined us for the concentration camp guide as well, so that's awesome. Love meeting random people! I also got to impart my traveling knowledge with him. He's only been to Scotland with his family so the whole backpacking trip thing was new to him. I love feeling like a veteran now, haha.
The tour and food pretty much took up our day so we just headed back to Steffi's place for dinner and to meet the new CSer that is staying with her. Nadine is originally from Egypt but living in Berlin and is backpacking around Europe for a couple of months. The night was a calm one. We were getting up early the next day and I am still trying to fight off getting sick so sleep was necessary.
I got up at 6:45 today in order to go to the Reichstag which is Berlin's parliamentary building that has a huge class dome on top where people can walk around and see a panoramic view of the city. It opens at 8 but the lines can get huge and we were leaving for the concentration camp Sachsenhausen at 11 so we wanted to get there asap. I think we made it there around 8:30. We being Hilary, me and our new CS friend Nadine. Nadine got in the night before and is originally from Cairo, Egypt but has been living in Munich for a while and was backpacking around Europe.
8:30 was the perfect time to show up. We got right in, walked around and were out within an hour/hour and a half. The dome was a lot better than I expected it to be. It is free and they give you an audio tour guide. There is a platform that gradually winds around the dome as it goes higher. The audio guide talks about the history and all of the buildings you see as you walk around the dome. There are sensors that tell the audio guide where you are in the dome so it knows what you're looking at - very handy. The day was cloudy but there was only 1 building I couldn't really see, so not a huge deal.
After that we went on a search for food and then met up with our tour at 11. There was almost 40 people going to the concentration camp so it was a little less personal than the walking tour which only had 20, but it was still fun getting to hang out with Stephanie another day, I really liked her. Oliver met up with us and then on the train to the camps I started talking to another girl, Ashley who was there with her husband. Loved them!
They are only 23 years old but have been together since there were 26 and married since 20 or 21. Normally I would like something like this is crazy and give them another couple of years before they are divorced cause they are so young, but this is not the case with them. They seriously were the cutest couple and seemed so happy and right for each other. Now, I was only with them for about a day and a half, but it is really hard to convince me that a couple is 'right for each other' at this age. It is also really unusual to meet a couple where you like both people, but Ashley and Andy were also the exception for this. The 6 of us - Hilary, Nadine, Oliver, Ashley, Andy and I - all hung out for the day and I got to talk to both of them together and apart. Andy is a carpenter and Ashley works at a bank. They are spending 6 months traveling around Europe together just because they wanted to. Awesome! I really hope one day I find someone willing to do something that amazing and travel with me. Neither of them have traveled much and Andy even said he doesn't have a huge desire to travel, but Ashley wanted to and he said okay so now they're in Europe. They both seem to be having a great time so far and are even considering the far-fetched idea of moving over here. Andy has a UK passport so it would be entirely possible - very jealous. Anyways, to sum it up I'm so glad I met them and they give me hope for the possibility of finding someone in the future... very strange idea for me, but I guess it's gotta happen at some point, right? :)
Sachsenhausen was different than Auschwitz. It was a work camp, not an extermination camp, and it housed only men. It was also the main camp set up so the Nazi's could figure out how to 'perfect' all other concentration camps. It almost seemed impossible at this point to learn anything new about the Holocaust but unbelievably I did. For example, there were gas vans that some camps used to kill people when they didn't have gas chambers. They would load people into the van and then direct the exhaust pipe into the van and leave it running until everyone suffocated to death - awful. There is obviously a lot more to Sachsenhausen but like Auschwitz to much to put in a blog. I feel like I am close to being an expert on the subject now and am not afraid to talk about it so if you want to know more and pick my brain when I get home, feel free.
After the concentration camp we invited Oliver, Ashley and Andy to come with Nadine, Hilary and I to a museum we heard about which was set up in the Nazi point of view. Most museums are from the victim's view, so we thought it'd be interesting to check tihs one out. All 6 of us headed down there. The museum was cool and again, learned even more. Especially about the Nazi propaganda and the people that were involved in making decisions.
Next on our stop was food. Oliver had a bus to catch to Amsterdam so we said our goodbyes and were down to 5. We found a restaurant and the rest of the night was a lot of fun and therapeutic. We were all really open about everything we had seen that day and how we felt about it. It turns out Andy's grandfather's both fought in the war, but for different sides. One of them was from Ukraine and was an intelligence officer for the Nazi's. The other was a fighter pilot for Canada. Very interesting to hear what he knew about their experiences. We also had a lot of conversation based around the Nazi soldiers themselves and how so many of them could have done such awful things. We learned that most of them had been in training since the age of 12 which means there was probably some major brain washing involved. Again, I won't get in to all of this but it was great being able to hash it out with people who saw the same things we did and were experiencing the same emotions.
The next day we were so physically and emotionally drained we slept in until noon. We were finally up and out of the house by 1:30. We went to see the memorial for murdered Jews in the center of Berlin. The memorial is really different. It is in a huge square right outside the Brandenburger Tor which is the iconic gate for Berlin. It is composed of hundreds of big blocks of cement all spaced equally apart from each other but they are different heights. The artist is American actually, that was surprising to me, and he said he wanted to leave the memorial up for interpretation. Some people see Jews lined up in a row to be murdered, others see soldiers marching, others see tombstones, etc, etc. I'd suggest looking it up if you get the urge to google something. It's really interesting to look at and it was to big to take a good picture. I don't know the official name but memorial to the Jews in Berlin should probably get you to the right spot.
After that Hilary wanted to check out the Berlin MoMa. It was Thursday so the museums were free. So glad. If I had paid for that MoMa I'd been so mad. Modern Art is just not my thing. So many super bizarre things that just aren't art to me. I'm a big believer of 'to each their own' so I won't say that they aren't art in generally cause obviously a lot of people think they are since they were in the Berlin MoMa, but it just doesn't interest me in the slightest.
Next was the Pergamon museum. Here we randomly ran in to Ashley and Andy again and spent some time walking around with them. The Pergamon is most famous for the Gates of Ishtar in Babylon and the Pergamon Alter. Both were really cool and overwhelming in size. But they were all reconstructions of the originals. Original pieces were put in to the reconstructions so that was cool, but obviously not as impressive if they were originals.
We were meeting up with the girls we met in Prague that night so we said goodbye to Ashley and Andy and went home to change and attempt to make ourselves look half-way decdent which we don't do often. We met up with everyone at a bar called Madam Claude's and spent the night drinking a couple of beers and meeting lots of new people. Since it was a Thursday the transportation systems stop running regularly around 12:30 so we had to leave around midnight to catch everything we needed to get home.
Friday our first stop was the East Side Gallery. This is the longest stretch of the Berlin wall still in tact. It is 1.3km if I remember correctly - which honestly is about a 50/50 chance. The city contracted a bunch of different artists from all over the wall to paint on it. The result is a really cool strip of really interesting art. I loved it. If I lived in Berlin I'd go there all the time. Definitely a must see.
After that we headed to a bombed out church we heard about but that ended up being a disappointment so we went straight to Tiergarten which is the major park in Berlin. It is huge and in the middle of it is a monument called the Victory Tower. We wanted to see it but it is under construction right now so it was pretty much completely covered up - fail. Next was the Berlin castle (every major city in Prague has one, of course). I wasn't really up for seeing another castle and/or garden area but we didn't really have anything else to do and I knew Hilary wanted to go so we went. I'm glad we did. It wasn't the best castle I've seen, but the gardens were beautiful and the sun was out so we just hung out by the water fountain and took a stroll around the area for awhile.
Our last stop was to the last remaining part of the Berlin wall we hadn't seen yet. It was different than the other two (the first one we saw on the free walking tour the first day) because it had part of the death strip still in tact. The Berlin wall actually two walls in its final stage. There was an inner wall and an outer wall and the area between was called the death strip. It was called this because the soldiers had a shoot to kill policy at anyone who entered the death strip. I think 136 people died in the death strip trying to escape to West Berlin. There was a memorial set up here with all of their pictures. I was surprised at how many were children and young adults. This was the most impactful part of the wall by far and there was a lot of information signs posted everywhere so it was really informative as well.
That night we wanted to take our host, Steffi, out for cocktails (she's not a beer person). We decided to hit up the Carnival of Cultures which is a huge once a year carnival that happened to be going on right now - score. We got there around 11 and it stopped at 12 so we didn't do much but we got to see the crazy night life there which was fun. After that we headed to a cocktail bar that had happy hour all night. We hung out there until around 3:30 or 4 when they finally kicked us out. It was a really fun night being able to hang out with just our host.
After getting to bed around 5am we slept in until 1ish I think. It was our last full day in Berlin but we didn't really have all that much left to do so it was pretty much our day to relax which was great. We went to a main square called Alexanderplatz and then went on a wild goose chase around the city for some souvenirs. That ended in semi-success and we headed back to our host's place for a BBQ and to watch a soccer game between Milan and Munich that apparently all of Europe was watching that night.
Once we got back to Steffi's she had invited over a couple of other CSers who had requested to stay with her but couldn't since we were there. They were two guys from CA, Wolfgang and Kip. Yep, best names ever. Wolfgang's real name in Jacob but when he got to university he thought it'd be funny to try and introduce himself as Wolfgang. The joke worked too well and now that's what he is known as. Kip is short for Christopher I guess, never heard that before. Later their CS host, Sarah showed up and we all went to the store to get food and then headed to the BBQ in Steffi's garden which the rest of the boys we had met the first night in Berlin.
Hilary and the Berlin boys were all really in to the soccer game but me, Steffi, Sarah and the Cali boys could car less so we all hung out during the game and talked. I talked to Sarah most of the time and had a really interesting conversation with her about Germany and repercussions of WWII. Pretty intense but very enlightening to hear it from someone German born. She said they are still very much taught that they should almost be ashamed of being German because of the war and what they grandparents did. People even tell them to say they are from a different country when they travel. Reminded me a lot of how a lot of people from the states say they are Canadian when they travel. Anyways, we had a good couple of hours talking about everything there is to talk about. Once the game was over and the food and beer were gone, Sarah and the boys left and we crashed.
Sunday was our last day in Berlin. We got up and met up with Nicole which was one of the girls we met in Prague that is studying in Berlin. The three of us went to a major flea market that happens on Sundays just to check it out. There is apparently karaoke usually out in the middle of the park in an amphitheater-like area which would have been really cool to see. Unfortunately, because of the Carnival going on there wasn't any, sad. So we ended up going to the Carnival to see the major parade that was going on. We met up with Sarah and the Cali boys again and tried to get close enough to see the parade but that failed miserably. There were thousands and thousands of people around and even trying to move 10 feet took forever. Eventually we gave up and decided to go back to Steffi's to finish packing and catch our train to Hamburg.
We said goodbye to Steffi, got our bags and took a picture with the local Doner Kebab man that we had befriended during our time in Berlin. He owned a shop around the corner that had the best Kebab's ever for only 2 euro. I think I had one every day I was there and one day I had two making it literally all I ate that day. So delicious. Plus it had carbs, meat and vegetables - totally well balanced, healthy meal! Anyways, we got our last kebab, took our picture with him and then headed to the train. This is where I currently am. We got lucky and got a whole cabin to ourselves again. The train ride is only 2 hours though. We are hopefully going to be meeting up with our host Martin when we get there and then have a whirlwind time of a little under 2 days in Hamburg. Should be fun.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Prague
Karel was our first host in Prague. He lived a little outside the city so it took us awhile to find his place. We were running on little sleep so that probably didn't help things either. We got to his place a little after 1pm and discovered he only had one small bed for the both of us. That's fine, one of us could sleep on the floor - we've done it before. But the floor was pretty dirty so we weren't particularly looking forward to it. Karel is 26 and single so his place was a bachelor pad to the max.
We went to get food with him at the local bar around the corner which is where Karel spends a lot of his time. Two of his friends were there so we sat down next to them. Unfortunately we weren't really clicking very well with Karel and his friends. I don't think his friends spoke english and we didn't really have anything in common to talk about. I tried really hard to keep asking questions and get Karel to open up but he would usually just answer and then not really reciprocate anything. It was a little odd. I guess I assume with CS most people are going to be outgoing but this is obviously a generalization that doesn't apply to everybody. Karel is a nice guy, but we just didn't really have anything in common with him so it was hard to figure out how to act around him or what to say.
After lunch we headed into the city for our traditional day of getting lost a lot, finding a map hopefully and just acclimating ourselves to the new city. We found an information center and while we were there a girl came in to ask some questions. She was American and had a big backpack on so she was obviously traveling. The lady in the information center was really, really rude to her and I felt bad for her since she seemed to be traveling alone. When I stepped out of the info center she was still outside looking up some ticket prices for a black light show that was next door so I struck up a convo with her. Her name is Jacquelyn and it turns out she was couchsurfing around Europe as well! She is originally from Chicago, in her second year of school and had been studying abroad in Rome. We invited her to hang out with us for the day and that turned in to hanging out for the entire time she was there.
In our wanderings we happened upon a candy store. Inside the people were actually making the candy right in front of us. It was this hard candy stuff that I'd never seen before and the two boys making it were pretty much hired to be the eye candy in a candy store. One especially was very pretty. I found myself watching him more than the candy making, haha. We got some samples as well and it was delicious. After a while we finally pulled ourselves out of the shop, walked around some more, got dinner and then planned to meet up with Jackie again the next morning before she headed off to her couchsurfers place.
We got back to Karel's and when I got online another girl I had requested to stay with had emailed me and said that her CS guests had car problems and weren't going to stay with her anymore so she had room for us if we still needed a place. Since she could sleep both of us and was closer to the city we decided to take her up on her offer hoping Karel would understand.
The next day we met up with Jackie and found out her CS host was awful. He had forgot she was coming, forgot her name, treated her rudely, didn't have a clean place for her to sit and all in all was just not okay. When I heard this I invited her to come stay with us. The girl who we were going to meet up with later in the day, Leah, originally was going to host 4 guys and none of them showed up so I assumed she'd have room for Jackie and us now. I went out on a limb with this assumption but I feel like that is what CS is all about. Also - we were going to the Prague CS meeting that night so if Leah didn't have room for her hopefully she could have found a place to stay there.
That morning we crossed the famous Charles bridge which is lines with 30 statues that can be considered the catholic church hall of fame. Then we headed up to the castle to look around. The Prague castle is apparently the biggest in the world. The area it covers is huge, but it doesn't really look like an ancient castle in the same way some of the other really impressive ones have, so the fact that it was the biggest in the world didn't really seem apparent to an onlooker. After that we went to check out this building called the dancing building and then headed up to the main square to meet up with Leah for the first time.
When we got to where we were supposed to meet with Leah and found out she could host Jackie and was hosting another guy at the same time who was meeting us as well. He showed up a couple minutes later and when I saw him I instantly had to stop myself from laughing out loud. His name was David and he is originally from Jerusalem. He's been travelling through the Baltic region and Prague was the most northwest he was getting. That's not why I wanted to laugh though. Here's the story:
CouchSurfing is a great website. Whenever people log on it tells you other surfers in the area that are logged on as well or who have recently logged on. This is helpful because people can send each other messages as they travel to see if anyone wants to meet up and travel together or hang out for the day. A great way to get to know people when you are travelling alone. Unfortunately, as with everything else in life, sometimes this system gets abused. In just about every country I get messages from people travelling or who live in the city we are currently in who want to meet up and hang out - all from boys of course. Some of the are really genuine and they do just want to get a drink and show me their city. Some however are pretty much just boys asking me out on a date; definitely not what CS was set up for. Since I have limited time on the computer I usually don't answer these messages unless it is someone really involved with CS who seems like they want to show us around and we want to meet up with them.
Anyways, I had gotten one in Budapest from a guy who said he was going to be in Budapest in three days and was wondering if I wanted to travel with him. The message was really sweet and nice but I wasn't going to be in Budapest anymore by the time he got there and at the time I read it thinking he wanted me to pick up and travel the rest of the way with him. Looking back at it I think he just meant hanging out for the day or while we were in Budapest, which would make much more sense. well this guy ended up being David. When I first saw him with Hilary, Leah and Jackie I wasn't 100% sure it was him so I didn't say anything. The more the day when on though and the more I learned about him I knew it had to be the same guy. The names matched, he was from Jerusalem, he was a professional chess player, the countries he travelled to were the same. I went back later that night and checked on my computer before I said anything to Hilary but when I confirmed it was him I couldn't help but laugh and tell Hilary about it. David is super sweet and I really liked him, so the fact that I had ignored his message to me made me feel a little bad about the situation. Hilary made me tell Leah the story and she thought it was hilarious. She said it was the second best CS story she's heard.
I meant to tell David about this at some point while we were staying together but I never did. Whoops. I wasn't sure if he'd remember, made the connection or what so I just figured it was easier and less awkward not to bring it up unless it was good timing. Still a funny story in the end though. Small world. I'm really glad it worked out the way it did though. Like I said, I really liked David and am super glad we ended up travelling together after all. :)
Ok, back to meeting Leah. She is a girl full of energy and fire. So talkative and easy to laugh with. A big contrast from Karel. She took us to food and beer right away, and made all 4 of us super comfortable with staying with her. This was the turning point of Prague. Yay! After lunch we parted ways and planned to meet up with Leah again at 8:30. David went with Leah and Jackie and us hung out a bit more until we had to go back to Karel's to get our stuff. I was dreading this as I had no idea how to tell Karel the situation without offending him. He was a nice guy, nothing bad happened, we just wanted to be closer to the city, have a bed we both fit on and be around someone who would have more in common with us. Plus Jackie was staying with Leah now and we wanted to stay with her and David. The more people there are the more fun it usually is.
We told Karel and he seemed to be understanding. He's a quiet guy with not much emotion towards us so it was hard to tell if he cared or not, but hopefully he understood our intentions. We told him about the CS meeting we were going to that night and that he should come join us. He said he would although I didn't really think the chances of that were high. Hilary thought otherwise and really believed he was going to show up. She didn't understand why I thought otherwise. I didn't know either, I just did. I tend to read people pretty well and can tell when they are being genuine about something. Karel just didn't seem all that interested to the point is where he was going to take all the necessary transportation trips out to the meeting. In the end he didn't end up showing up but did send me an email about it and proposed meeting up on Saturday, that didn't end up happening either but at least we both made the effort.
We got to Leah's on time and settled in to her place, which was much bigger and cleaner. :) Her flatmate is also a CSer, Reuben, and was welcoming to us. The two of them host people all of the time and it seemed like they have a full house of 2-4 extra people constantly so they have extra sets of keys, towels, shampoo, etc. They are also super laid back about their CSers. Both of their lives are busy and I get the feeling they both like to party so there were a couple nights where one of them didn't come home and even one night where neither of them came home until the next morning. So they literally just had 4 people staying at their place never knowing how was coming or going or what we were doing. I love it. They are so trusting. I hope that never ends negatively for them. Their attitudes are ones I hope to have someday.
We talked with Leah for awhile and then headed to the CS meeting at a pub which wasn't to far away. We went with David and were meeting Jackie there. When we got there I found Jackie and she seemed like she was in distress. I instantly gave her a hug and asked her what happened. Turns out her CS host was not home and not answering her calls so she couldn't get into his place to get her stuff. She was worried to the point of contemplating calling the cops on him if she couldn't get a hold of him by the next day. Luckily, that wasn't necessary. After the bar the four of us headed to her host's place, got her stuff and we all went back to Leah's.
The CS meeting was a TON of fun. I wish we had gone to more of these in each city. The group of people you meet at these meetings are all great people and a very eclectic group who welcomes anyone and everyone. I ended up meeting a lot of people there, but got into a longer discussion with David and a guy from Germany. It was really interesting learning everything they had to tell me about their home countries. In Israel everyone is required to do military service - women 2 years, men 3. So David was telling us a lot about that and his experience with it. All eye opening information I had no idea about before. One of the things I love about traveling is getting to talk to citizens from these countries I know little about and getting a mini education with every conversation. I feel like I have learned more about the world in the past two months than I did four years sitting in college classrooms. Totally different type of education. Plus, I was sitting with a guy from German and a guy from Israel in a bar in Prague speaking English. I don't think you can get more random and international than that!
After the meeting we got Jackie's bag and went back to Leah's. I was exhausted so I went to bed pretty quickly after Hilary. The next morning I found out Leah, Jackie and David had stayed up until 4am talking. Impressive. I wish I would have been able to stay away, but I've been on the verge of getting sick so I needed sleep!
David had told us about these free tours of Prague so the next day Hilary, Jackie and I all got up to hop on the 11:45 city tour. Normally we stay away from those kinds of things but Prague has so much history to it and Leah said it was really good so we decided to give it a try. I'm so glad we did. The tour guide was really good and we learned a ton about everything we had already seen that we had no idea about before. It was so good we decided to go on the 3pm castle tour as well. These free tours are in practically every major city and now I really wish we would have done more of them. It's something I would definitely suggest to people. You learn so much more about the history and significance of things.
We met a group of people who were mostly American students studying in Berlin that had taken a weekend trip to Prague on these tours. Hilary had been talking to one girl most of the tours and by the second I ended up talking for most of the time to her friend. They were really sweet girls and offered to show us around when we get to Berlin, score!
After the tour Jackie, Hilary and I went to a pub/brewery that was on the castle grounds and had freshly brewed monk beer at it. We had to sit outside so it was cold, but the beer was good. Next on our list was to go to a Black Light Show. Prague is famous for originating these so we felt we should check it out. I was pretty iffy about it and felt that I could do with or without it. It was $20 so not that expensive but when travelling every dollar makes a difference. We ended up going though and I'm still not really sure how I feel about this. The show itself was bizarre and neither Hilary nor I could make sense of it. The black lights and animations and puppetry were all very unique and something I'll probably never see again on one stage so I guess I'm glad for that part of it. But literally, after the show Hilary and I walked out and all we could do was laugh because we were so confused at what had just happened the past hour. Oh well. All part of the experience.
After the show we met up with Jackie again. She was leaving to Amsterdam on a midnight bus so we had just enough time to grab a drink and see her off. We all tried Pilsner since that is what Czech is famous for. Turns out it still tastes the same. Definitely the worst beer I've had in Prague since there are SO many delicious beers, but it wasn't that bad. I like blonds so that helps. Hilary doesn't so she was not pleased with it at all. From there on out I stuck to mostly darks and Hilary to her ambers. It had been a long day so we headed home for some good sleep after the drinks. The next day was the Prague Beer Festival so we wanted to be nice and rested for it. :)
I stayed up later that planned talking to David and the next morning ended up sleeping in until around 11:30. It was Saturday though so I figured it was okay since it was a weekend, ha. Hilary - the crazy girl - stayed up until 5am blogging and such on the computer so she slept in until 1pm. We got a late start on the day, but the great thing about staying in countries for 6 to 7 days is we can do that and not feel rushed. Leah had recommended a place for lunch and we all had beer goulash soup which was warm and delicious and then a Velvet dark beer which was probably the smoothest beer I've ever had. Yum.
After our lunch Hilary and I headed to the beer festival. The place wasn't as lively as we were hoping so we only stayed for a beer and then planned to come back later in the night when hopefully things would be a little more exciting. We met up with David to check out this water fountain we had heard about that was supposed to be really cool with lights and music and people dancing. When we got there though we were disappointed with it and decided not to pay the money to get inside. Especially when we found out the show we were there for was playing Metallica. Thanks, but no thanks. Instead we talked David into going back to the beer festival with us and ended up having a good time and great beer. The festival actually had less people when we got back but they were more drunk and up and dancing now so there was some good people watching opportunities. Once Hilary and I had our fill - 4 beers total and a bowl of garlic soup. We headed back to Leah's.
At the metro station we saw a guy walk past us with one of the Prague beer cups and Hilary yelled at him asking how he stole that. He ended up coming over and spoke perfect english to us. He friends then came over to join us - all with stolen mugs in their hands. Jealous! We ended up talking to them the metro ride home having a good 'ol drunken time. They offered us drinks of their beer and then two of them actually gave me their cups. Sweet! We later found out that all of the beer drinking we were doing on the metro was very illegal and we would have gotten in big trouble if we'd been caught. Whoops. I plead ignorance on that one.
Miguel was the guy we originally met. He was half American, half Mexican working and living in Prague. The girl he was with was Tonielle who was an Aussie who's been travelling and working around Europe the past year. She met Miguel in a hostel for one day a year ago in London. They stayed friends and she was visiting him for a couple days. How cool. Hilary got their information and we planned to call them and hang out the next day.
I was so tired when we got home and David had jumped in the shower so I ended up falling asleep without brushing my teeth or washing my face. Stale beer in your mouth is a great feeling to wake up to. We had another later start the next day and David was leaving so we ended up going to another restaurant by suggestion of Reuben, had huge potato pancakes with meat, onions and cheese. They were so big Hilary and I split one and were each nicely full. We got up, gave David a hug goodbye and he left. I really hope I get to see him again someday. I guess I'll just have to figure out a way to make it to Jerusalem!
We were meeting Miguel and Tonielle at 5:30 so we spent the down time until then shopping for our souvenirs and walking around a little more. At 5:30 we ended up meeting up with the other two and headed to a famous restaurant/pub that Hilary had gotten a recommendation to go to. Their beers were a little more expensive than everything else we've been drinking. Most beers here are around $1 for a half liter. This was around $2.50. But the beer was delicious. They also had these shots which I still don't really know what they were exactly. We hung out there for a while getting to know our new friends and before we new it we'd all had 4 beers and 3 shots and were nicely feeling the effects.
Miguel wanted us all to go back to his place to hang out some more so we stopped by a convenience store to get more beer and snacks. Then a quick side trip to his friends how to pick up some very legal weed :) from a friend of his and headed back to his place. Hilary was pretty beat by the time we got there so she crashed in Miguel's flatmate's bed. The other three of us ended up staying up until 4ish. Quite a random night.
We woke up in the morning around 7:30 (it's Monday now), woke up Miguel and Tonielle and asked them to tell us how to get home, haha. We pretty much had no idea where we were and in all honesty we were just laughing at everything that had happened the night before that led us to where we were. Good times. We had originally planned to leave around 9:30am to Berlin, but considering the circumstance the chances of that happening were slim to none. We went back to Leah's, packed said goodbye to her and headed out for the 12:30 train.
Overall Prague was amazing. We met some cool people, did a lot of really good beer drinking and just had a blast in general going with the flow. I'm going to miss Prague! But Berlin, here we come...
We went to get food with him at the local bar around the corner which is where Karel spends a lot of his time. Two of his friends were there so we sat down next to them. Unfortunately we weren't really clicking very well with Karel and his friends. I don't think his friends spoke english and we didn't really have anything in common to talk about. I tried really hard to keep asking questions and get Karel to open up but he would usually just answer and then not really reciprocate anything. It was a little odd. I guess I assume with CS most people are going to be outgoing but this is obviously a generalization that doesn't apply to everybody. Karel is a nice guy, but we just didn't really have anything in common with him so it was hard to figure out how to act around him or what to say.
After lunch we headed into the city for our traditional day of getting lost a lot, finding a map hopefully and just acclimating ourselves to the new city. We found an information center and while we were there a girl came in to ask some questions. She was American and had a big backpack on so she was obviously traveling. The lady in the information center was really, really rude to her and I felt bad for her since she seemed to be traveling alone. When I stepped out of the info center she was still outside looking up some ticket prices for a black light show that was next door so I struck up a convo with her. Her name is Jacquelyn and it turns out she was couchsurfing around Europe as well! She is originally from Chicago, in her second year of school and had been studying abroad in Rome. We invited her to hang out with us for the day and that turned in to hanging out for the entire time she was there.
In our wanderings we happened upon a candy store. Inside the people were actually making the candy right in front of us. It was this hard candy stuff that I'd never seen before and the two boys making it were pretty much hired to be the eye candy in a candy store. One especially was very pretty. I found myself watching him more than the candy making, haha. We got some samples as well and it was delicious. After a while we finally pulled ourselves out of the shop, walked around some more, got dinner and then planned to meet up with Jackie again the next morning before she headed off to her couchsurfers place.
We got back to Karel's and when I got online another girl I had requested to stay with had emailed me and said that her CS guests had car problems and weren't going to stay with her anymore so she had room for us if we still needed a place. Since she could sleep both of us and was closer to the city we decided to take her up on her offer hoping Karel would understand.
The next day we met up with Jackie and found out her CS host was awful. He had forgot she was coming, forgot her name, treated her rudely, didn't have a clean place for her to sit and all in all was just not okay. When I heard this I invited her to come stay with us. The girl who we were going to meet up with later in the day, Leah, originally was going to host 4 guys and none of them showed up so I assumed she'd have room for Jackie and us now. I went out on a limb with this assumption but I feel like that is what CS is all about. Also - we were going to the Prague CS meeting that night so if Leah didn't have room for her hopefully she could have found a place to stay there.
That morning we crossed the famous Charles bridge which is lines with 30 statues that can be considered the catholic church hall of fame. Then we headed up to the castle to look around. The Prague castle is apparently the biggest in the world. The area it covers is huge, but it doesn't really look like an ancient castle in the same way some of the other really impressive ones have, so the fact that it was the biggest in the world didn't really seem apparent to an onlooker. After that we went to check out this building called the dancing building and then headed up to the main square to meet up with Leah for the first time.
When we got to where we were supposed to meet with Leah and found out she could host Jackie and was hosting another guy at the same time who was meeting us as well. He showed up a couple minutes later and when I saw him I instantly had to stop myself from laughing out loud. His name was David and he is originally from Jerusalem. He's been travelling through the Baltic region and Prague was the most northwest he was getting. That's not why I wanted to laugh though. Here's the story:
CouchSurfing is a great website. Whenever people log on it tells you other surfers in the area that are logged on as well or who have recently logged on. This is helpful because people can send each other messages as they travel to see if anyone wants to meet up and travel together or hang out for the day. A great way to get to know people when you are travelling alone. Unfortunately, as with everything else in life, sometimes this system gets abused. In just about every country I get messages from people travelling or who live in the city we are currently in who want to meet up and hang out - all from boys of course. Some of the are really genuine and they do just want to get a drink and show me their city. Some however are pretty much just boys asking me out on a date; definitely not what CS was set up for. Since I have limited time on the computer I usually don't answer these messages unless it is someone really involved with CS who seems like they want to show us around and we want to meet up with them.
Anyways, I had gotten one in Budapest from a guy who said he was going to be in Budapest in three days and was wondering if I wanted to travel with him. The message was really sweet and nice but I wasn't going to be in Budapest anymore by the time he got there and at the time I read it thinking he wanted me to pick up and travel the rest of the way with him. Looking back at it I think he just meant hanging out for the day or while we were in Budapest, which would make much more sense. well this guy ended up being David. When I first saw him with Hilary, Leah and Jackie I wasn't 100% sure it was him so I didn't say anything. The more the day when on though and the more I learned about him I knew it had to be the same guy. The names matched, he was from Jerusalem, he was a professional chess player, the countries he travelled to were the same. I went back later that night and checked on my computer before I said anything to Hilary but when I confirmed it was him I couldn't help but laugh and tell Hilary about it. David is super sweet and I really liked him, so the fact that I had ignored his message to me made me feel a little bad about the situation. Hilary made me tell Leah the story and she thought it was hilarious. She said it was the second best CS story she's heard.
I meant to tell David about this at some point while we were staying together but I never did. Whoops. I wasn't sure if he'd remember, made the connection or what so I just figured it was easier and less awkward not to bring it up unless it was good timing. Still a funny story in the end though. Small world. I'm really glad it worked out the way it did though. Like I said, I really liked David and am super glad we ended up travelling together after all. :)
Ok, back to meeting Leah. She is a girl full of energy and fire. So talkative and easy to laugh with. A big contrast from Karel. She took us to food and beer right away, and made all 4 of us super comfortable with staying with her. This was the turning point of Prague. Yay! After lunch we parted ways and planned to meet up with Leah again at 8:30. David went with Leah and Jackie and us hung out a bit more until we had to go back to Karel's to get our stuff. I was dreading this as I had no idea how to tell Karel the situation without offending him. He was a nice guy, nothing bad happened, we just wanted to be closer to the city, have a bed we both fit on and be around someone who would have more in common with us. Plus Jackie was staying with Leah now and we wanted to stay with her and David. The more people there are the more fun it usually is.
We told Karel and he seemed to be understanding. He's a quiet guy with not much emotion towards us so it was hard to tell if he cared or not, but hopefully he understood our intentions. We told him about the CS meeting we were going to that night and that he should come join us. He said he would although I didn't really think the chances of that were high. Hilary thought otherwise and really believed he was going to show up. She didn't understand why I thought otherwise. I didn't know either, I just did. I tend to read people pretty well and can tell when they are being genuine about something. Karel just didn't seem all that interested to the point is where he was going to take all the necessary transportation trips out to the meeting. In the end he didn't end up showing up but did send me an email about it and proposed meeting up on Saturday, that didn't end up happening either but at least we both made the effort.
We got to Leah's on time and settled in to her place, which was much bigger and cleaner. :) Her flatmate is also a CSer, Reuben, and was welcoming to us. The two of them host people all of the time and it seemed like they have a full house of 2-4 extra people constantly so they have extra sets of keys, towels, shampoo, etc. They are also super laid back about their CSers. Both of their lives are busy and I get the feeling they both like to party so there were a couple nights where one of them didn't come home and even one night where neither of them came home until the next morning. So they literally just had 4 people staying at their place never knowing how was coming or going or what we were doing. I love it. They are so trusting. I hope that never ends negatively for them. Their attitudes are ones I hope to have someday.
We talked with Leah for awhile and then headed to the CS meeting at a pub which wasn't to far away. We went with David and were meeting Jackie there. When we got there I found Jackie and she seemed like she was in distress. I instantly gave her a hug and asked her what happened. Turns out her CS host was not home and not answering her calls so she couldn't get into his place to get her stuff. She was worried to the point of contemplating calling the cops on him if she couldn't get a hold of him by the next day. Luckily, that wasn't necessary. After the bar the four of us headed to her host's place, got her stuff and we all went back to Leah's.
The CS meeting was a TON of fun. I wish we had gone to more of these in each city. The group of people you meet at these meetings are all great people and a very eclectic group who welcomes anyone and everyone. I ended up meeting a lot of people there, but got into a longer discussion with David and a guy from Germany. It was really interesting learning everything they had to tell me about their home countries. In Israel everyone is required to do military service - women 2 years, men 3. So David was telling us a lot about that and his experience with it. All eye opening information I had no idea about before. One of the things I love about traveling is getting to talk to citizens from these countries I know little about and getting a mini education with every conversation. I feel like I have learned more about the world in the past two months than I did four years sitting in college classrooms. Totally different type of education. Plus, I was sitting with a guy from German and a guy from Israel in a bar in Prague speaking English. I don't think you can get more random and international than that!
After the meeting we got Jackie's bag and went back to Leah's. I was exhausted so I went to bed pretty quickly after Hilary. The next morning I found out Leah, Jackie and David had stayed up until 4am talking. Impressive. I wish I would have been able to stay away, but I've been on the verge of getting sick so I needed sleep!
David had told us about these free tours of Prague so the next day Hilary, Jackie and I all got up to hop on the 11:45 city tour. Normally we stay away from those kinds of things but Prague has so much history to it and Leah said it was really good so we decided to give it a try. I'm so glad we did. The tour guide was really good and we learned a ton about everything we had already seen that we had no idea about before. It was so good we decided to go on the 3pm castle tour as well. These free tours are in practically every major city and now I really wish we would have done more of them. It's something I would definitely suggest to people. You learn so much more about the history and significance of things.
We met a group of people who were mostly American students studying in Berlin that had taken a weekend trip to Prague on these tours. Hilary had been talking to one girl most of the tours and by the second I ended up talking for most of the time to her friend. They were really sweet girls and offered to show us around when we get to Berlin, score!
After the tour Jackie, Hilary and I went to a pub/brewery that was on the castle grounds and had freshly brewed monk beer at it. We had to sit outside so it was cold, but the beer was good. Next on our list was to go to a Black Light Show. Prague is famous for originating these so we felt we should check it out. I was pretty iffy about it and felt that I could do with or without it. It was $20 so not that expensive but when travelling every dollar makes a difference. We ended up going though and I'm still not really sure how I feel about this. The show itself was bizarre and neither Hilary nor I could make sense of it. The black lights and animations and puppetry were all very unique and something I'll probably never see again on one stage so I guess I'm glad for that part of it. But literally, after the show Hilary and I walked out and all we could do was laugh because we were so confused at what had just happened the past hour. Oh well. All part of the experience.
After the show we met up with Jackie again. She was leaving to Amsterdam on a midnight bus so we had just enough time to grab a drink and see her off. We all tried Pilsner since that is what Czech is famous for. Turns out it still tastes the same. Definitely the worst beer I've had in Prague since there are SO many delicious beers, but it wasn't that bad. I like blonds so that helps. Hilary doesn't so she was not pleased with it at all. From there on out I stuck to mostly darks and Hilary to her ambers. It had been a long day so we headed home for some good sleep after the drinks. The next day was the Prague Beer Festival so we wanted to be nice and rested for it. :)
I stayed up later that planned talking to David and the next morning ended up sleeping in until around 11:30. It was Saturday though so I figured it was okay since it was a weekend, ha. Hilary - the crazy girl - stayed up until 5am blogging and such on the computer so she slept in until 1pm. We got a late start on the day, but the great thing about staying in countries for 6 to 7 days is we can do that and not feel rushed. Leah had recommended a place for lunch and we all had beer goulash soup which was warm and delicious and then a Velvet dark beer which was probably the smoothest beer I've ever had. Yum.
After our lunch Hilary and I headed to the beer festival. The place wasn't as lively as we were hoping so we only stayed for a beer and then planned to come back later in the night when hopefully things would be a little more exciting. We met up with David to check out this water fountain we had heard about that was supposed to be really cool with lights and music and people dancing. When we got there though we were disappointed with it and decided not to pay the money to get inside. Especially when we found out the show we were there for was playing Metallica. Thanks, but no thanks. Instead we talked David into going back to the beer festival with us and ended up having a good time and great beer. The festival actually had less people when we got back but they were more drunk and up and dancing now so there was some good people watching opportunities. Once Hilary and I had our fill - 4 beers total and a bowl of garlic soup. We headed back to Leah's.
At the metro station we saw a guy walk past us with one of the Prague beer cups and Hilary yelled at him asking how he stole that. He ended up coming over and spoke perfect english to us. He friends then came over to join us - all with stolen mugs in their hands. Jealous! We ended up talking to them the metro ride home having a good 'ol drunken time. They offered us drinks of their beer and then two of them actually gave me their cups. Sweet! We later found out that all of the beer drinking we were doing on the metro was very illegal and we would have gotten in big trouble if we'd been caught. Whoops. I plead ignorance on that one.
Miguel was the guy we originally met. He was half American, half Mexican working and living in Prague. The girl he was with was Tonielle who was an Aussie who's been travelling and working around Europe the past year. She met Miguel in a hostel for one day a year ago in London. They stayed friends and she was visiting him for a couple days. How cool. Hilary got their information and we planned to call them and hang out the next day.
I was so tired when we got home and David had jumped in the shower so I ended up falling asleep without brushing my teeth or washing my face. Stale beer in your mouth is a great feeling to wake up to. We had another later start the next day and David was leaving so we ended up going to another restaurant by suggestion of Reuben, had huge potato pancakes with meat, onions and cheese. They were so big Hilary and I split one and were each nicely full. We got up, gave David a hug goodbye and he left. I really hope I get to see him again someday. I guess I'll just have to figure out a way to make it to Jerusalem!
We were meeting Miguel and Tonielle at 5:30 so we spent the down time until then shopping for our souvenirs and walking around a little more. At 5:30 we ended up meeting up with the other two and headed to a famous restaurant/pub that Hilary had gotten a recommendation to go to. Their beers were a little more expensive than everything else we've been drinking. Most beers here are around $1 for a half liter. This was around $2.50. But the beer was delicious. They also had these shots which I still don't really know what they were exactly. We hung out there for a while getting to know our new friends and before we new it we'd all had 4 beers and 3 shots and were nicely feeling the effects.
Miguel wanted us all to go back to his place to hang out some more so we stopped by a convenience store to get more beer and snacks. Then a quick side trip to his friends how to pick up some very legal weed :) from a friend of his and headed back to his place. Hilary was pretty beat by the time we got there so she crashed in Miguel's flatmate's bed. The other three of us ended up staying up until 4ish. Quite a random night.
We woke up in the morning around 7:30 (it's Monday now), woke up Miguel and Tonielle and asked them to tell us how to get home, haha. We pretty much had no idea where we were and in all honesty we were just laughing at everything that had happened the night before that led us to where we were. Good times. We had originally planned to leave around 9:30am to Berlin, but considering the circumstance the chances of that happening were slim to none. We went back to Leah's, packed said goodbye to her and headed out for the 12:30 train.
Overall Prague was amazing. We met some cool people, did a lot of really good beer drinking and just had a blast in general going with the flow. I'm going to miss Prague! But Berlin, here we come...
Wroclaw
Ros was our host in Wroclaw. He stayed with the boys from Krakow the week before so they called him up for us to see if we could stay with him. He's fairly new to CS but was an awesome host. Him and a friend of his from Ukraine picked us up from the station and drove us to his place. We are not in cars often so it is always a luxury to not take public transportation. After getting settled we headed to the river and rented a motor boat to see the city. Wroclaw is old and beautiful so that was a lot of fun. Ros had to go home so it was just us three girls (all blonds) trying to maneuver the boat around the river. Good times. When Ros met back up with us we went to get some food and drinks from the store and headed to the city college park where it is "legal" to drink outside and had a cute little picnic until it got to cold to stay outside any longer. We headed back to Ros's for a calm night in.
The next morning we headed to the main square to meet up with a couple of CSers that offered to show us around the city while Ros had class. Marta was a seasoned CSer and told us a lot about the history of the town. She was super sweet and I really enjoyed hanging out with her for the afternoon. Karol was brand new to CS - he just joined the day before. He was able to hang out with us longer and ended up spending the entire day together and then meeting back up to go out for drinks with us. It was a nice day, yay!, so the four of us just walked around the city and saw all the major sites.
One of the attractions of Wroclaw that we got a kick out of was that they have little dwarf statues all over the city. Legend has it that the dwarfs come out at night while the rest of the city sleeps. The little statues are really cute and each one is different based on where they are located. For example one outside of the bank is on an ATM machine and one outside of the university is sitting on books and papers. So creative.
After seeing most of the major sites Ros met up with us and we headed back to his place for a quick dinner and then out for drinks with him and Karol. It was a Monday night so there wasn't much going on. We ended up at a pretty empty bar just sitting around and talking the night away. When that bar closed we had intentions of going home but ended up stopping in another bar and dancing the rest of the night.
We were planning on leaving Wednesday afternoon to head to Prague. Ros took us to the train statiion (thank god!) we asked around trying to figure out which train was ours. Got on one. Then realized about 5 minutes before it was leaving that it was headed to Dresden, which is in Germany. We were going to have to transfer trains from Dresden to get to Prague. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. The train pass that we had didn't work for Germany. Once we realized where the train was headed we jumped off and spent the next 3 hours trying to figure out how to get out of Poland. If we didn't have Ros there with us to do the translating we would have probably ended up in Germany and paying some ridiculous fine for having the wrong tickets. He was our hero that day. After talking to a number of people Ros finally figured out the trains we needed to get from Wroclaw to Prague without going through Germany. Problem was it was the next day - at 6am, yikes.
Back to Ros's place we went. While we were hoping to get to Prague that day, in the end it wasn't that big of a deal. The whole trip our motto has been that the only place we HAVE to be is in Paris on June 21st for my flight out. Other than that schedules are flexible and going with the flow is part of the deal.
The upside to the situation was that Wroclaw's Juwenalia celebration was that night. Juwenalia round 2 here we go. Ros has 4 flatmates, none of which we had really spoken to the whole time we were there. Ros said they were all to shy to use their english. For some reason people are really self conscious about that when they speak to native speakers. I always tell them that their english is better than my (insert foreign language here) so they shouldn't be worried about it. Anyways, they all were going to Juwenalia with Ros so it was us and the 5 boys.
We got to the bus station and when our bus pulled up it was packed. I mean PACKED. I'd never seen any one vehicle full of so many people. I almost didn't get on the bus. But one of the boys literally wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me on through the closing bus doors. The bus ride was hilarious cause every time we'd pull up to a stop there would be a huge group of students trying to get on but it was so full the doors wouldn't even open. And every time people wanted to get off they would have to push their way through any narrow opening they could find between all of the people. We were so squished together no one had to hold on to anything to prevent from falling cause there wasn't any room to even move. The one good thing from all of that was it was instant bonding with the flatmates. Ros had gotten on a different door so he was at the back of the bus and all the flatmates and us were in the middle. By the end of the ride we were laughing at the ridiculousness of it all and some of the boys were speaking a little in english to us.
Wroclaw's Juwenalia was not as intense as Krakow's but there was an added bonus of a light show on the side of one of their huge dorm buildings. The light show was interesting. A lot of it was humor that neither of us understood so people around us would be laughing hysterically and Hilary and I woudl look at each other in confusion. It was also a bit more violent than what would have ever been allowed in the states. One of the first scenes was of a man with a machine gun shooting at people. There were more scenes of guns, people choking each other, men dying from the guns, blood... It wasn't like that the whole time just random scenes here and there, but a little shocking every time it popped up.
Once the light show was over everyone started to leave. We started pushing ourselves through the masses and Ros's flatmates were so cute. There were two in particular that kept watching out for us. One kept an eye on Hilary more and one kept an eye on me more. I'm not sure if they knew we noticed, but one would always make sure he was behind us and when we started to separate he grabbed my waist and I grabbed Hilary and he pulled us out of the crowd with him and one of the other flatmates. So the four of us got separated from the other three. This was a fun time cause only one of them spoke a bit of English to us. There was a lot of hand movements and laughing going on in an attempt to communicate to each other while we were looking for Ros and the other two. The boys were super sweet though and I had a lot of fun hanging out with them for the night. Turns out speaking the same language is highly overrated.
The boys were hungry on the walk back so they wanted to stop for food. All of the sudden we were at a KFC. Yuck. I've made it a personal mission to never eat at any of the American fast food places when I'm out of the states. So far in all my travels I have been successful at this. I'd never even stepped foot in one. So when I found out I was going to have to go inside I was a little upset. If it weren't so cold and late I probably would have stayed outside. But in I went, pouting silently to myself and wanting to get out asap. I didn't get any food and just went and sat down until all the boys were ready to go. It was a slightly traumatic food event, I won't lie.
We got back around 1am and went down for a 4 hour nap before we had to get up at 5am to catch our 6am train. So early. We were able to get up easier than expected though and Ros came with us again - such a good guy! This time we knew what we were doing and didn't have any problems. The train was pretty empty so we got a cabin to ourselves and were able to spread out and sleep the whole way.
The next morning we headed to the main square to meet up with a couple of CSers that offered to show us around the city while Ros had class. Marta was a seasoned CSer and told us a lot about the history of the town. She was super sweet and I really enjoyed hanging out with her for the afternoon. Karol was brand new to CS - he just joined the day before. He was able to hang out with us longer and ended up spending the entire day together and then meeting back up to go out for drinks with us. It was a nice day, yay!, so the four of us just walked around the city and saw all the major sites.
One of the attractions of Wroclaw that we got a kick out of was that they have little dwarf statues all over the city. Legend has it that the dwarfs come out at night while the rest of the city sleeps. The little statues are really cute and each one is different based on where they are located. For example one outside of the bank is on an ATM machine and one outside of the university is sitting on books and papers. So creative.
After seeing most of the major sites Ros met up with us and we headed back to his place for a quick dinner and then out for drinks with him and Karol. It was a Monday night so there wasn't much going on. We ended up at a pretty empty bar just sitting around and talking the night away. When that bar closed we had intentions of going home but ended up stopping in another bar and dancing the rest of the night.
We were planning on leaving Wednesday afternoon to head to Prague. Ros took us to the train statiion (thank god!) we asked around trying to figure out which train was ours. Got on one. Then realized about 5 minutes before it was leaving that it was headed to Dresden, which is in Germany. We were going to have to transfer trains from Dresden to get to Prague. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. The train pass that we had didn't work for Germany. Once we realized where the train was headed we jumped off and spent the next 3 hours trying to figure out how to get out of Poland. If we didn't have Ros there with us to do the translating we would have probably ended up in Germany and paying some ridiculous fine for having the wrong tickets. He was our hero that day. After talking to a number of people Ros finally figured out the trains we needed to get from Wroclaw to Prague without going through Germany. Problem was it was the next day - at 6am, yikes.
Back to Ros's place we went. While we were hoping to get to Prague that day, in the end it wasn't that big of a deal. The whole trip our motto has been that the only place we HAVE to be is in Paris on June 21st for my flight out. Other than that schedules are flexible and going with the flow is part of the deal.
The upside to the situation was that Wroclaw's Juwenalia celebration was that night. Juwenalia round 2 here we go. Ros has 4 flatmates, none of which we had really spoken to the whole time we were there. Ros said they were all to shy to use their english. For some reason people are really self conscious about that when they speak to native speakers. I always tell them that their english is better than my (insert foreign language here) so they shouldn't be worried about it. Anyways, they all were going to Juwenalia with Ros so it was us and the 5 boys.
We got to the bus station and when our bus pulled up it was packed. I mean PACKED. I'd never seen any one vehicle full of so many people. I almost didn't get on the bus. But one of the boys literally wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me on through the closing bus doors. The bus ride was hilarious cause every time we'd pull up to a stop there would be a huge group of students trying to get on but it was so full the doors wouldn't even open. And every time people wanted to get off they would have to push their way through any narrow opening they could find between all of the people. We were so squished together no one had to hold on to anything to prevent from falling cause there wasn't any room to even move. The one good thing from all of that was it was instant bonding with the flatmates. Ros had gotten on a different door so he was at the back of the bus and all the flatmates and us were in the middle. By the end of the ride we were laughing at the ridiculousness of it all and some of the boys were speaking a little in english to us.
Wroclaw's Juwenalia was not as intense as Krakow's but there was an added bonus of a light show on the side of one of their huge dorm buildings. The light show was interesting. A lot of it was humor that neither of us understood so people around us would be laughing hysterically and Hilary and I woudl look at each other in confusion. It was also a bit more violent than what would have ever been allowed in the states. One of the first scenes was of a man with a machine gun shooting at people. There were more scenes of guns, people choking each other, men dying from the guns, blood... It wasn't like that the whole time just random scenes here and there, but a little shocking every time it popped up.
Once the light show was over everyone started to leave. We started pushing ourselves through the masses and Ros's flatmates were so cute. There were two in particular that kept watching out for us. One kept an eye on Hilary more and one kept an eye on me more. I'm not sure if they knew we noticed, but one would always make sure he was behind us and when we started to separate he grabbed my waist and I grabbed Hilary and he pulled us out of the crowd with him and one of the other flatmates. So the four of us got separated from the other three. This was a fun time cause only one of them spoke a bit of English to us. There was a lot of hand movements and laughing going on in an attempt to communicate to each other while we were looking for Ros and the other two. The boys were super sweet though and I had a lot of fun hanging out with them for the night. Turns out speaking the same language is highly overrated.
The boys were hungry on the walk back so they wanted to stop for food. All of the sudden we were at a KFC. Yuck. I've made it a personal mission to never eat at any of the American fast food places when I'm out of the states. So far in all my travels I have been successful at this. I'd never even stepped foot in one. So when I found out I was going to have to go inside I was a little upset. If it weren't so cold and late I probably would have stayed outside. But in I went, pouting silently to myself and wanting to get out asap. I didn't get any food and just went and sat down until all the boys were ready to go. It was a slightly traumatic food event, I won't lie.
We got back around 1am and went down for a 4 hour nap before we had to get up at 5am to catch our 6am train. So early. We were able to get up easier than expected though and Ros came with us again - such a good guy! This time we knew what we were doing and didn't have any problems. The train was pretty empty so we got a cabin to ourselves and were able to spread out and sleep the whole way.
Krakow
After sleeping the first morning away due to my lack of sleep on the overnight train - whoops. we headed out of the house around 1pm to get food and walk around the city. Jacek, one of the flatmates of Pawel's that is also on CS and became our co-host for the week took us around. He's a little shy with his English skills so the first hour or so was pretty silent but as the week went on and he got more comfortable with us he spoke a lot more. His English is really good, he just doesn't have very much confidence in his language skills. Hopefully CS will help him become more comfortable because he did great this week with us and as much as we tried to convince him of this he wasn't convinced unfortunately. But once he did start to open up more and we got to talking he definitely became one of my favorite people so far. He is so sweet. Most of the Polish boys we came across were actually. They kept saying it's "Polish Hospitality" at first I wasn't sure if this was true or not, but there is something about the Polish boys here that is different from all of the other countries we've been to so far. The biggest example of this is that they would literally run in front of us in order to open the door for us. And once the door was open by one of them, the rest would stop and make sure that we went through the door first. I guess it was a ladies first mentality. It was sort of ridiculous how often this happened and every time I was thrown off by it. The boys in America I know are not like this. Not that they aren't polite, it's just that the boys here were so aggressive about it. It almost became comical by the end of it, but it was a lot of fun being treated like a 'lady' haha.
Anyways, the first day was just a lot of walking around, seeing the local Castle and center square. Then we made dinner and planned out what we wanted to do the rest of the week. The weather wasn't great and we wanted to do a couple big trips to the salt mines and Aucshwitz Concentration Camps so we had to do a little more planning than necessary. After this we were both tired and had a long week ahead of us (little did we know how long it was going to be...) so we headed to bed.
The next day Pawel was our own personal tour guide and took us around the Jewish Quarter, which included a Synagogue and cemetary plus just the general area where everyone lived, worked and drank. For lunch we headed for some street food called zanipanki. It was essentially their version of a french bread pizza. But with weird toppings cause everything in other countries has bizarre toppings compared to what we are used to, ha. Throughout the week we found out that Poland is in love with mushrooms and cabbage. This had it's positive and negative sides. The negative: I don't like cabbage at all so I had to find things without cabbage or look like a child and not eat it. Hilary had the same problem with mushrooms. Every time there were mushrooms on something (and they often didn't tell us when it was on something, it was just assumed it was going to be) she had to pick each mushroom off. She got made fun of a couple of times for it, I felt bad for her. Cabbage was easier to not seem picky about cause I just didn't order things with cabbage on the side. The positive of this was that I have never been a huge fan of mushrooms either. It's not so much the taste that gets me, but the texture. But here, it was on so much and I didn't want to go through the process of picking them off that I just ate them. I think I've trained myself to eat them now. Not sure if I could do it plain still, but I can successfully eat them in pasta, pizza, omelettes and anything else they are included in. Yay. Go me for slowly but surely becoming an adult... ew, actually I don't know if I like that now that I've written it down. :/
That afternoon was pretty bad weather so we ended up just going back to the boys' place and hanging out for awhile. We haven't had that much downtime during the day the whole trip. It was weird cause I was so used to going and it felt like there was a whole city out there waiting to be explored and we were just chillen inside. On the other hand, Poland was our halfway point so it was sort of nice taking things slow and relaxing a bit. It was especially a good idea with the night we had. It started with a couple beers at home. Then we went to a bar to meet some of their friends and had another. The bar was karaoke that night though so we moved on the a club. The club was pretty empty when we first got there, but a couple of more beers later we were all on the dance floor having a blast. We even got Hilary to dance...thanks to the help of alcohol. The boys were really fun to dance with. Especially Jacek. He seemed to end up to be my partner that night and he spent the night spinning me around the dance floor. So much fun. By the end of the night we had even made up a secret handshake that somehow included an awkward turtle, haha. Love that guy. At the club we somehow ended up having four more rounds of beer in addition to everything else. The end of the night was sort of a mess. We got everyone home...although some dragging was involved. Not by me though :) I held up nicely thank god. But I was definitely more drunk than usual at 7 beers. I guess I probably shouldn't admit this, but I've have my fair share of beer filled nights and usually 7 over a course of an entire night does not affect me the way it did that night.
The next morning (or should I say afternoon) we woke up not feeling our usual 100%. I was still confused by how drunk we had gotten. After doing a little more investigative work it turns out Polish beers are on average TWICE as strong as American beers. Awesome. So instead of having 7 I pretty much had an equivalent alcohol amount of 14 beers! Well, that explains that. I guess alcohol content is something we should start noticing before we start drinking. You live, you learn...
Our plan was to go to Aucshwitz today (it is now Thursday) but we wanted a full day there and it was noon by the time we got out of bed so we decided on the salt mines instead. We took a bus there and made it in time for the last tour of the day. Tour guides were required to enter. The tour itself was pretty cool. It's like an entire underground city down there. Salt lined the walls, obviously, and throughout the years the miners had carved out figures going as far as creating an entire snow white and seven doors theme. There were also several chapels and even a huge church in the middle of the mine. This church was seriously the size of a normal gigantic church, but hundreds of meters in the ground and made entirely out of salt. Ridiculously cool. It is one of the most unique and breathtaking things I've seen so far. There were carvings along all the walls, statues of all the normal religious figures and even gigantic chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Apparently a lot of people get married there as well. I can see why, it is gorgeous.
After the salt mines the boys had already eaten dinner so Hilary and I set out on our own. We eventually found a restaurant that looked good and walked in. The whole trip we have been eating pretty cheaply and good food but not anything like steaks and whatnot. Well we decided to change that here. Poland is the cheapest country we've been to and since it was our halfway point (this was our excuse for splurging on things) we decided to treat ourselves. Oh. My. God. I am so lucky we did. I had garlic cream soup, Gypsy steak which was a cut of pork wrapped in bacon and topped with fried onions and garlic butter -- hello heart attack on a plate -- and we shared the 7 colors of the rainbow desert which was 7 scoops of ice cream with fruit and chocolate and caramel toppings. Talk about a mouth orgasm. Each course was so amazing. I'm really sad we couldn't go back there. Definitely the best 2 eating hours of my life. My mouth is watering again right now just thinking about it.
That night Jacek went to a bbq and invited us along but we were getting up early to go to Auschwitz and were still trying to recover from the night before so we passed and went to bed instead.
Friday morning we successfully got up early and made our bus to Auschwitz thanks to some frantic walking through town with a map while it was raining on us. The comical part was we realized the bus stopped at the stop right next to the boys' house after we had walked about 30min to get to the main station. It wasn't so comical at the time, unfortunate. Oh well. All part of traveling. The bus ride was about an hour and a half and we also were required to have a tour guide here so we made it in time for the 10:30 English tour.
Auschwitz was something both of us had been preparing for most of the trip. Hilary has Jewish heritage and I've always been really interested in WWII so this was something we both really wanted to experience. The camp itself is now a museum for people to visit and learn about how it was run and the affect it had on the lives (and deaths) of millions of people during WWII. During their operation, the camps were split into 3 different subcamps. Two of them are set up for visiting now. Our tour guide was really good and gave a lot of interesting information. It is the once place I really wanted a guide for that reason. The 'museum' itself was packed though. A ton of people were visiting and all being hurded along having to follow their respective guide. Because there were so many people we didn't really get to look at all the artifacts and read the information as thoroughly as I would have liked.
It is a draining day hearing about all the awful things the people at this camp were put through. All the torture, starvation, experimentation, punishment and death that took place is overwhelming. Especially because of the petty reasons these people were put through all of this. We heard all of the statistics, saw the pictures of people being led to the gas chambers, children and mothers being convinced they were just taking a shower and a half an hour later 2,000 dead people were being checked for gold teeth, their jewelry being removed, their hair shaved to sell and their bodies thrown in to crematories and their ashes spread in the local lake. Awful. The most surreal part of it was being inside of the gas chambers. They actually take you through it and you see where the holes were that they'd drop the poison in and where they then took the bodies to be burned. Standing in this room made of bricks underground and looking up at the little holes of light and realizing that this is where hundreds of thousands of people were killed over a span of 4 years.
I could talk about this more but it really just continues to be depressing and hopefully most of you know the basics of the Holocaust. Anyone that wants to know more though can definitely email me or I will tell you about it in person in a few weeks.
That night the boys were going to a concert which they bought us tickets for and then to some parties for Juwenalia, which is a student's week in Poland where everyone pretty much just parties for an entire week every year. I think the closest equivalent we have is Spring Break, but Juwenalia happens while they still have classes. Except they all get Friday off to celebrate the annual 'holiday'. The concert was fun and there were a ton of people there. We got there during the first band, which was actually really awful, but the second band was a lot better and fun to listen to. Of course it was in Polish so I couldn't understand anything that was going on. We successfully pushed our way up to the stage though and then ended up in a Polish mosh pit - sweet. I felt like Hilary's boyfriend though trying to keep her from getting hurt, haha. I love being the man in our traveling relationship. Once the second band was over with the boys wanted to leave to go to a "bar-b-que" at the dorms. Now I quote this because this is the loosest form of the word BBQ I have ever heard.
We leave the concert, pick up alcohol and head to the dorms. I figured this was just going to be a bunch of college kids hanging out on a porch or something grilling some sausages. Oh. My. God. Was I wrong. We walk up on to the front lawn and through the passage way between the dorms and walk into a huge open grass area that is filled with thousands of students. Literally thousands. I think the estimate was around 4,000 total. Amazing. People were drinking, dancing, singing, grilling and generally just having the time of their lives. It was around 11 or midnight at this point so it was pretty dark out, there was music and lights coming from a stage someone on the grass area that we never made it to and people had been drinking all day so this was essentially a huge Polish shit-show. I loved it. I met a TON of people there, most of them drunk boys. I even got proposed to twice, so that's cool, haha. I tried some genuine delicious polish vodka and learned how to drink it correctly. The night was a great success.
The next morning was full of more walking around and souvenir shopping. We had sunshine though so it was really nice to see the city with some light finally. Poland is apparently known for their Amber so Hilary and I both got some jewelry in addition to our normal souvenirs. I got a ring which I really like and am excited for. It needs to be resized when I get home but I hardly ever find jewelry that I can see myself wearing constantly and I'm hoping this will be one of those rare finds!
That night we went to a house party of Pawel's friends. This was a huge contrast to the "BBQ" we were at the night before as there were 10ish of us total. It was a ton of fun though getting to know everyone and actually being able to have real conversations. We also drank the traditional Polish way where there is only 1 shot glass and everyone takes turns drinking in a circle until all the alcohol was gone. It was great. We literally sat in a circle, got a bunch of snack foods and put them in the middle for everyone to eat and then just passed around the shot glass for a couple of hours. Once in a while people would get lost in conversation and it'd go 20 minutes or so without a shot being taken and then finally someone would take it and pass it on. I love this way of drinking and am in full support of bringing it back to the states. It's a great way to just have a bunch of people get together for a fun night of drinking without getting overly trashed.
The next morning was Sunday and we randomly decided to go to another city in Poland called Wroclaw for the night so we caught an early train there which meant we had to get up at 7:30 - ouch. The boys escorted us to the train station and we caught a 9am train to a new city in Poland. The train ride was much less eventful than the last one. I pretty much just slept uncomfortably the whole way.
Anyways, the first day was just a lot of walking around, seeing the local Castle and center square. Then we made dinner and planned out what we wanted to do the rest of the week. The weather wasn't great and we wanted to do a couple big trips to the salt mines and Aucshwitz Concentration Camps so we had to do a little more planning than necessary. After this we were both tired and had a long week ahead of us (little did we know how long it was going to be...) so we headed to bed.
The next day Pawel was our own personal tour guide and took us around the Jewish Quarter, which included a Synagogue and cemetary plus just the general area where everyone lived, worked and drank. For lunch we headed for some street food called zanipanki. It was essentially their version of a french bread pizza. But with weird toppings cause everything in other countries has bizarre toppings compared to what we are used to, ha. Throughout the week we found out that Poland is in love with mushrooms and cabbage. This had it's positive and negative sides. The negative: I don't like cabbage at all so I had to find things without cabbage or look like a child and not eat it. Hilary had the same problem with mushrooms. Every time there were mushrooms on something (and they often didn't tell us when it was on something, it was just assumed it was going to be) she had to pick each mushroom off. She got made fun of a couple of times for it, I felt bad for her. Cabbage was easier to not seem picky about cause I just didn't order things with cabbage on the side. The positive of this was that I have never been a huge fan of mushrooms either. It's not so much the taste that gets me, but the texture. But here, it was on so much and I didn't want to go through the process of picking them off that I just ate them. I think I've trained myself to eat them now. Not sure if I could do it plain still, but I can successfully eat them in pasta, pizza, omelettes and anything else they are included in. Yay. Go me for slowly but surely becoming an adult... ew, actually I don't know if I like that now that I've written it down. :/
That afternoon was pretty bad weather so we ended up just going back to the boys' place and hanging out for awhile. We haven't had that much downtime during the day the whole trip. It was weird cause I was so used to going and it felt like there was a whole city out there waiting to be explored and we were just chillen inside. On the other hand, Poland was our halfway point so it was sort of nice taking things slow and relaxing a bit. It was especially a good idea with the night we had. It started with a couple beers at home. Then we went to a bar to meet some of their friends and had another. The bar was karaoke that night though so we moved on the a club. The club was pretty empty when we first got there, but a couple of more beers later we were all on the dance floor having a blast. We even got Hilary to dance...thanks to the help of alcohol. The boys were really fun to dance with. Especially Jacek. He seemed to end up to be my partner that night and he spent the night spinning me around the dance floor. So much fun. By the end of the night we had even made up a secret handshake that somehow included an awkward turtle, haha. Love that guy. At the club we somehow ended up having four more rounds of beer in addition to everything else. The end of the night was sort of a mess. We got everyone home...although some dragging was involved. Not by me though :) I held up nicely thank god. But I was definitely more drunk than usual at 7 beers. I guess I probably shouldn't admit this, but I've have my fair share of beer filled nights and usually 7 over a course of an entire night does not affect me the way it did that night.
The next morning (or should I say afternoon) we woke up not feeling our usual 100%. I was still confused by how drunk we had gotten. After doing a little more investigative work it turns out Polish beers are on average TWICE as strong as American beers. Awesome. So instead of having 7 I pretty much had an equivalent alcohol amount of 14 beers! Well, that explains that. I guess alcohol content is something we should start noticing before we start drinking. You live, you learn...
Our plan was to go to Aucshwitz today (it is now Thursday) but we wanted a full day there and it was noon by the time we got out of bed so we decided on the salt mines instead. We took a bus there and made it in time for the last tour of the day. Tour guides were required to enter. The tour itself was pretty cool. It's like an entire underground city down there. Salt lined the walls, obviously, and throughout the years the miners had carved out figures going as far as creating an entire snow white and seven doors theme. There were also several chapels and even a huge church in the middle of the mine. This church was seriously the size of a normal gigantic church, but hundreds of meters in the ground and made entirely out of salt. Ridiculously cool. It is one of the most unique and breathtaking things I've seen so far. There were carvings along all the walls, statues of all the normal religious figures and even gigantic chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Apparently a lot of people get married there as well. I can see why, it is gorgeous.
After the salt mines the boys had already eaten dinner so Hilary and I set out on our own. We eventually found a restaurant that looked good and walked in. The whole trip we have been eating pretty cheaply and good food but not anything like steaks and whatnot. Well we decided to change that here. Poland is the cheapest country we've been to and since it was our halfway point (this was our excuse for splurging on things) we decided to treat ourselves. Oh. My. God. I am so lucky we did. I had garlic cream soup, Gypsy steak which was a cut of pork wrapped in bacon and topped with fried onions and garlic butter -- hello heart attack on a plate -- and we shared the 7 colors of the rainbow desert which was 7 scoops of ice cream with fruit and chocolate and caramel toppings. Talk about a mouth orgasm. Each course was so amazing. I'm really sad we couldn't go back there. Definitely the best 2 eating hours of my life. My mouth is watering again right now just thinking about it.
That night Jacek went to a bbq and invited us along but we were getting up early to go to Auschwitz and were still trying to recover from the night before so we passed and went to bed instead.
Friday morning we successfully got up early and made our bus to Auschwitz thanks to some frantic walking through town with a map while it was raining on us. The comical part was we realized the bus stopped at the stop right next to the boys' house after we had walked about 30min to get to the main station. It wasn't so comical at the time, unfortunate. Oh well. All part of traveling. The bus ride was about an hour and a half and we also were required to have a tour guide here so we made it in time for the 10:30 English tour.
Auschwitz was something both of us had been preparing for most of the trip. Hilary has Jewish heritage and I've always been really interested in WWII so this was something we both really wanted to experience. The camp itself is now a museum for people to visit and learn about how it was run and the affect it had on the lives (and deaths) of millions of people during WWII. During their operation, the camps were split into 3 different subcamps. Two of them are set up for visiting now. Our tour guide was really good and gave a lot of interesting information. It is the once place I really wanted a guide for that reason. The 'museum' itself was packed though. A ton of people were visiting and all being hurded along having to follow their respective guide. Because there were so many people we didn't really get to look at all the artifacts and read the information as thoroughly as I would have liked.
It is a draining day hearing about all the awful things the people at this camp were put through. All the torture, starvation, experimentation, punishment and death that took place is overwhelming. Especially because of the petty reasons these people were put through all of this. We heard all of the statistics, saw the pictures of people being led to the gas chambers, children and mothers being convinced they were just taking a shower and a half an hour later 2,000 dead people were being checked for gold teeth, their jewelry being removed, their hair shaved to sell and their bodies thrown in to crematories and their ashes spread in the local lake. Awful. The most surreal part of it was being inside of the gas chambers. They actually take you through it and you see where the holes were that they'd drop the poison in and where they then took the bodies to be burned. Standing in this room made of bricks underground and looking up at the little holes of light and realizing that this is where hundreds of thousands of people were killed over a span of 4 years.
I could talk about this more but it really just continues to be depressing and hopefully most of you know the basics of the Holocaust. Anyone that wants to know more though can definitely email me or I will tell you about it in person in a few weeks.
That night the boys were going to a concert which they bought us tickets for and then to some parties for Juwenalia, which is a student's week in Poland where everyone pretty much just parties for an entire week every year. I think the closest equivalent we have is Spring Break, but Juwenalia happens while they still have classes. Except they all get Friday off to celebrate the annual 'holiday'. The concert was fun and there were a ton of people there. We got there during the first band, which was actually really awful, but the second band was a lot better and fun to listen to. Of course it was in Polish so I couldn't understand anything that was going on. We successfully pushed our way up to the stage though and then ended up in a Polish mosh pit - sweet. I felt like Hilary's boyfriend though trying to keep her from getting hurt, haha. I love being the man in our traveling relationship. Once the second band was over with the boys wanted to leave to go to a "bar-b-que" at the dorms. Now I quote this because this is the loosest form of the word BBQ I have ever heard.
We leave the concert, pick up alcohol and head to the dorms. I figured this was just going to be a bunch of college kids hanging out on a porch or something grilling some sausages. Oh. My. God. Was I wrong. We walk up on to the front lawn and through the passage way between the dorms and walk into a huge open grass area that is filled with thousands of students. Literally thousands. I think the estimate was around 4,000 total. Amazing. People were drinking, dancing, singing, grilling and generally just having the time of their lives. It was around 11 or midnight at this point so it was pretty dark out, there was music and lights coming from a stage someone on the grass area that we never made it to and people had been drinking all day so this was essentially a huge Polish shit-show. I loved it. I met a TON of people there, most of them drunk boys. I even got proposed to twice, so that's cool, haha. I tried some genuine delicious polish vodka and learned how to drink it correctly. The night was a great success.
The next morning was full of more walking around and souvenir shopping. We had sunshine though so it was really nice to see the city with some light finally. Poland is apparently known for their Amber so Hilary and I both got some jewelry in addition to our normal souvenirs. I got a ring which I really like and am excited for. It needs to be resized when I get home but I hardly ever find jewelry that I can see myself wearing constantly and I'm hoping this will be one of those rare finds!
That night we went to a house party of Pawel's friends. This was a huge contrast to the "BBQ" we were at the night before as there were 10ish of us total. It was a ton of fun though getting to know everyone and actually being able to have real conversations. We also drank the traditional Polish way where there is only 1 shot glass and everyone takes turns drinking in a circle until all the alcohol was gone. It was great. We literally sat in a circle, got a bunch of snack foods and put them in the middle for everyone to eat and then just passed around the shot glass for a couple of hours. Once in a while people would get lost in conversation and it'd go 20 minutes or so without a shot being taken and then finally someone would take it and pass it on. I love this way of drinking and am in full support of bringing it back to the states. It's a great way to just have a bunch of people get together for a fun night of drinking without getting overly trashed.
The next morning was Sunday and we randomly decided to go to another city in Poland called Wroclaw for the night so we caught an early train there which meant we had to get up at 7:30 - ouch. The boys escorted us to the train station and we caught a 9am train to a new city in Poland. The train ride was much less eventful than the last one. I pretty much just slept uncomfortably the whole way.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Budapest to Krakow
Oh man. Our train ride from Budapest to Krakow. What a journey. This is where I have been writing the past two posts from. I think I started around 9:30pm and it is now 3am. So much for sleeping at all. Who needs sleep? Overrated, haha. When we first got on the train we ended up in a crochet with two other girls about our age. One was from Italy and the other originally from Ethiopia but had grown up in Norway from the age of 16. They were both studying medicine in Krakow and had gone to Budapest for a holiday. They were really nice and fun to talk to.
Once it started getting late we all went to bed and I started blogging. Not much later we stopped in Slavokia and two other boys came into our crochet. They were Slovakians, studying Japanese and on their way to Krakow for some conference in Japanese with 6 of their female friends - random. They came with alcohol and somehow Hilary and I ended up taking some shots of homemade Pear liquor. The night went on from there and now I am up with the boys and everyone else is asleep. Is anyone surprised by this? Probably not. All in all though the train ride ended up being much more eventful than I expected it to be. You'll need to ask for a story beyond this. It is now 7:30am and I'm pretty sure I slept a total of 20 minutes. Yay me. Off to bed now at our host's place.
PS - our host is a student at school here. He lives with 4 other boys. They are seriously the sweetest boys I've ever met. I love them. Might never leave!
Once it started getting late we all went to bed and I started blogging. Not much later we stopped in Slavokia and two other boys came into our crochet. They were Slovakians, studying Japanese and on their way to Krakow for some conference in Japanese with 6 of their female friends - random. They came with alcohol and somehow Hilary and I ended up taking some shots of homemade Pear liquor. The night went on from there and now I am up with the boys and everyone else is asleep. Is anyone surprised by this? Probably not. All in all though the train ride ended up being much more eventful than I expected it to be. You'll need to ask for a story beyond this. It is now 7:30am and I'm pretty sure I slept a total of 20 minutes. Yay me. Off to bed now at our host's place.
PS - our host is a student at school here. He lives with 4 other boys. They are seriously the sweetest boys I've ever met. I love them. Might never leave!
Budapest
Getting into the station in Budapest was interesting. We didn't have any money. There was no ATM machine. No one could speak English so we couldn't figure out what to do. After an hour of trying to figure out what to do we eventually just jumped on a bus to get to our hosts place and hoped no one would catch up without a ticket. It worked. We got there eventually and when we walked in to our hosts place, Bernhard. We knew that there were going to be other people there when we arrived but we walked in to a room full couchsurfers. There were two girls from Canada, one guy from Japan and then our host Bernhard who was born in Budapest but raised in Germany but now back in Budapest. The six of us hung out for the night and went on an adventure to get food which ended up being a very interesting night.
The next day Hilary and I explored the Buda side of Budapest. This mostly means the Castle district whcih believe it or not is where the castle is. The castle is on a hill so we climbed our way up and enjoyed the views from the top, which were gorgeous. After hanging out at the castle for awhile we headed into what we think is downtown Buda and eventually ended up at a restaurant that was advertising a Napi Menu which we later found out was translated into a Daily Menu. This is essentially a dinner for a really really cheap price. It was great. We could get a two or three course meal for $4. Love it! We did this a couple times while we were in Vienna and ended up having some amazing meals. If you are ever in Vienna I highly recommend these.
After lunch we got lost a time or two and eventually ended up on a bridge that took us to a little island in the middle of the city. The Danube river runs through the middle of Buda and Pest and the island was in the middle of the Danube. It was a really cool island which was essentially a really big park for the city. We walked around it for awhile and kept discovering new and random things on the island. It was a really nice day so there were a ton of people out running, biking, kayaking and just hanging out. I love people watching.
We finally decided to head back to our hosts place which took us 2 hours to walk to. The great part was that once we got there we discovered the Canadian girls were making pasta and garlic bread for dinner. Yay! Once Bernhard got home from work we all sat down for a nice little family meal. Afterward none of us felt like going out so we played a couple of games of Uno and then headed to bed.
The Canadian girls left today (Thursday) so we said goodbye to them and then headed to the Pest side of the city to explore. Of course on our way into the city we ended up getting check by the transportation people to see if we had tickets. Along with getting jaded as we travel we have discovered that you don't really have to pay for most transportation in the city. If you are just watchful for the people who check on the public buses, trams and metros you can really get by without paying at all. This may be the unethical thing to do, but when you are short on cash and everyone else around you is doing the same thing, sometimes ethics gets thrown out of the window. Everything is relative I guess. However, we didn't know what to look for yet at this point so we didn't know how to spot the ticket checkers. Luckily, I'm really good at playing dumb. So when the guy came up to me to ask for our tickets I pulled off dumb like you have never seen dumb pulled off before.
The ticket guy came up and started talking in Hungarian. At first I didn't know what he wanted and was confused. Then I finally realized that he was checking for tickets. I got out the packet of tickets our host had given us just in case and ripped off one then gave it to him acting like I didn't know what the hell I was doing. He then tried to inform me that I was supposed validate it. Validate it? I ask with innocent eyes acting like I don't know what he is talking about. He then points at the machine and I shrug my shoulders asking him which way to put the ticket in. The whole time Hilary is trying not to laugh at me. I'm not sure how I pulled it off without laughing but thank god I did. I should probably have felt bad about scamming the system, but I'm poor and the system is easy to rip off. I say, not my fault. :) Anyways, the guy validated our tickets for us and the said "next time" and I agreed. Ha.
On to Hero's Square and the city park. We walked around a lot as usual. Saw the sights. Found another Napi place because it is so inexpensive there is no reason not to. And it is delicious. Score. After lunch we walked around some more. Did some research on the Turkish baths Hilary wanted to go to the next day and then visited a castle that was just hanging out in the park. We headed back to our host's place for dinner and he took us to some Hungarian buffet place that was not that good but we were told it was filling. I stayed to mostly the potato dish which was the best of everything else. After that he took us on a 'walk' up a hill that was to steep to be considered a normal walk. We headed to the Citadel where their holds a statue of a lady holding a palm leaf looking over the city. On the way back we stopped at a Teahaz which we would visit another two times before we left. It was good, and cheap. Good tea. Good cake. Yum all around.
The next day we headed to the major central market. There was a lot of food and a lot of souvenirs to buy. Hilary tried some pepper cabbage concoction and then we went to get some gyros and headed to the underground caves of Budapest. It was a trip and a half with all of the buses and trams we had to take to get up to the caves. The caves were cool. The tour was slightly disappointing. They did it in Hungarian first and the English. Somehow the English version was usually about a fourth as long as the Hungarian version. We got jipped. Oh well. Who doesn't like being in caves, right?
At night we went out with a bunch of our CS host's friends to these things called ruin pubs. Essentially they are bars in run down buildings that are no longer lived in. The ruin bars hang out there for a few months until they either get caught and are thrown out or the building is knocked down. Sweet. We got home around 4 or so in the morning and then slept in nicely the next day. Love sleeping in!
The next day was Saturday. The three of us got up, had breakfast, laid around the house for awhile and then finally got our act together and headed out to rent bikes for the day. We rode around the city and I tried not to kill myself or other people. I hadn't been on a bike in about 6 years and was not comfortable at all, but I sucked it up and everyone is still alive so the mission was a success. Although of course I got the bike that was out to get me. The seat screw was not tight enough so it kept moving on me until we found someone in the park that could fix it. Then one of the wires came lose and I thought it was going to get stuck in the tires and cause them to stop working. In the end I made it though. After that we headed to Bernhard's friend's place for a BBQ and out for the night.
Sunday Hilary really wanted to go to a Turkish bath and I wasn't as interested so we decided to spend the first day in 6 weeks apart. Probably a good idea. She went. I slept in. It was great. We both enjoyed our days. When she got back we went on a hung for a grocery store to get food to cook traditional hungarian food. Since it was Sunday not all of the stores were open so it took us a couple tries before we found everything that we needed. Bernhard didn't really let us do much of the cooking so we just hung out, skinned some potatoes and then ate his food. If I could remember what the name of what he made was I would tell you. But I can't. It was good though. We had it for dinner and then for breakfast the next day. Yum. I love cheap, good food.
Monday we went back to the market to get souvenirs for ourselves and family, then headed back to the Teahaz once again. We sat and talked for couple of hours, I really enjoyed staying in a country long enough to go back to one place multiple times and really enjoy ourselves. Then we went back to our hosts, made food, packed, hung out and eventually headed to our train from Budapest to Krakow. It as an overnight train that we boarded at 8pm and was getting into Krakow at 6:30am.
The next day Hilary and I explored the Buda side of Budapest. This mostly means the Castle district whcih believe it or not is where the castle is. The castle is on a hill so we climbed our way up and enjoyed the views from the top, which were gorgeous. After hanging out at the castle for awhile we headed into what we think is downtown Buda and eventually ended up at a restaurant that was advertising a Napi Menu which we later found out was translated into a Daily Menu. This is essentially a dinner for a really really cheap price. It was great. We could get a two or three course meal for $4. Love it! We did this a couple times while we were in Vienna and ended up having some amazing meals. If you are ever in Vienna I highly recommend these.
After lunch we got lost a time or two and eventually ended up on a bridge that took us to a little island in the middle of the city. The Danube river runs through the middle of Buda and Pest and the island was in the middle of the Danube. It was a really cool island which was essentially a really big park for the city. We walked around it for awhile and kept discovering new and random things on the island. It was a really nice day so there were a ton of people out running, biking, kayaking and just hanging out. I love people watching.
We finally decided to head back to our hosts place which took us 2 hours to walk to. The great part was that once we got there we discovered the Canadian girls were making pasta and garlic bread for dinner. Yay! Once Bernhard got home from work we all sat down for a nice little family meal. Afterward none of us felt like going out so we played a couple of games of Uno and then headed to bed.
The Canadian girls left today (Thursday) so we said goodbye to them and then headed to the Pest side of the city to explore. Of course on our way into the city we ended up getting check by the transportation people to see if we had tickets. Along with getting jaded as we travel we have discovered that you don't really have to pay for most transportation in the city. If you are just watchful for the people who check on the public buses, trams and metros you can really get by without paying at all. This may be the unethical thing to do, but when you are short on cash and everyone else around you is doing the same thing, sometimes ethics gets thrown out of the window. Everything is relative I guess. However, we didn't know what to look for yet at this point so we didn't know how to spot the ticket checkers. Luckily, I'm really good at playing dumb. So when the guy came up to me to ask for our tickets I pulled off dumb like you have never seen dumb pulled off before.
The ticket guy came up and started talking in Hungarian. At first I didn't know what he wanted and was confused. Then I finally realized that he was checking for tickets. I got out the packet of tickets our host had given us just in case and ripped off one then gave it to him acting like I didn't know what the hell I was doing. He then tried to inform me that I was supposed validate it. Validate it? I ask with innocent eyes acting like I don't know what he is talking about. He then points at the machine and I shrug my shoulders asking him which way to put the ticket in. The whole time Hilary is trying not to laugh at me. I'm not sure how I pulled it off without laughing but thank god I did. I should probably have felt bad about scamming the system, but I'm poor and the system is easy to rip off. I say, not my fault. :) Anyways, the guy validated our tickets for us and the said "next time" and I agreed. Ha.
On to Hero's Square and the city park. We walked around a lot as usual. Saw the sights. Found another Napi place because it is so inexpensive there is no reason not to. And it is delicious. Score. After lunch we walked around some more. Did some research on the Turkish baths Hilary wanted to go to the next day and then visited a castle that was just hanging out in the park. We headed back to our host's place for dinner and he took us to some Hungarian buffet place that was not that good but we were told it was filling. I stayed to mostly the potato dish which was the best of everything else. After that he took us on a 'walk' up a hill that was to steep to be considered a normal walk. We headed to the Citadel where their holds a statue of a lady holding a palm leaf looking over the city. On the way back we stopped at a Teahaz which we would visit another two times before we left. It was good, and cheap. Good tea. Good cake. Yum all around.
The next day we headed to the major central market. There was a lot of food and a lot of souvenirs to buy. Hilary tried some pepper cabbage concoction and then we went to get some gyros and headed to the underground caves of Budapest. It was a trip and a half with all of the buses and trams we had to take to get up to the caves. The caves were cool. The tour was slightly disappointing. They did it in Hungarian first and the English. Somehow the English version was usually about a fourth as long as the Hungarian version. We got jipped. Oh well. Who doesn't like being in caves, right?
At night we went out with a bunch of our CS host's friends to these things called ruin pubs. Essentially they are bars in run down buildings that are no longer lived in. The ruin bars hang out there for a few months until they either get caught and are thrown out or the building is knocked down. Sweet. We got home around 4 or so in the morning and then slept in nicely the next day. Love sleeping in!
The next day was Saturday. The three of us got up, had breakfast, laid around the house for awhile and then finally got our act together and headed out to rent bikes for the day. We rode around the city and I tried not to kill myself or other people. I hadn't been on a bike in about 6 years and was not comfortable at all, but I sucked it up and everyone is still alive so the mission was a success. Although of course I got the bike that was out to get me. The seat screw was not tight enough so it kept moving on me until we found someone in the park that could fix it. Then one of the wires came lose and I thought it was going to get stuck in the tires and cause them to stop working. In the end I made it though. After that we headed to Bernhard's friend's place for a BBQ and out for the night.
Sunday Hilary really wanted to go to a Turkish bath and I wasn't as interested so we decided to spend the first day in 6 weeks apart. Probably a good idea. She went. I slept in. It was great. We both enjoyed our days. When she got back we went on a hung for a grocery store to get food to cook traditional hungarian food. Since it was Sunday not all of the stores were open so it took us a couple tries before we found everything that we needed. Bernhard didn't really let us do much of the cooking so we just hung out, skinned some potatoes and then ate his food. If I could remember what the name of what he made was I would tell you. But I can't. It was good though. We had it for dinner and then for breakfast the next day. Yum. I love cheap, good food.
Monday we went back to the market to get souvenirs for ourselves and family, then headed back to the Teahaz once again. We sat and talked for couple of hours, I really enjoyed staying in a country long enough to go back to one place multiple times and really enjoy ourselves. Then we went back to our hosts, made food, packed, hung out and eventually headed to our train from Budapest to Krakow. It as an overnight train that we boarded at 8pm and was getting into Krakow at 6:30am.
Vienna
This is the start of my new format of just doing a quick summary of the countries I go to instead of a day-by-day account. For those of you that still want more detail Hilary's blog will probably do the trick:
Vienna was great. We had two hosts there: Nathalie and Veronika. Nathalie was our first. She's 19, still in school and has a really fun laid back spirit about her. The first night we were there she took us to a CS meet up that happens weekly in Vienna. She is really involved in the community there and all the people we meet were really cool. There was obviously a communication barrier going on and the group was really close so it was hard to understand all of their inside jokes and such but I enjoy people watching and there was definitely a lot to watch at this gathering.
The next morning we awoke to an amazing breakfast Nathalie made for us. As most of you probably know I LOVE breakfast so I was a happy happy girl. There was this special German bread in particular that was sweet and delicious. It was like eating candy. I could not get enough of it. During the day we went to a castle on the outskirts of the city Schonbrunn. It was beautiful. Lots of gardens and monuments. Huge. There was a zoo in it even. Oh the things they do for tourists, haha. After Schonbrunn we walked around the city, got lunch, coffee, cake, people watched, the whole nine yards. It was great. That night we were lame and spent at our host's place. We had planned to go out but it is hard constantly being on the move and I think we both wanted a night of good sleep and calm.
Our host had gone out with her friends to a movie and then out after wards and she was still up earlier than us and had breakfast ready again in the morning. Apparently she hates to sleep, which worked out well for us! Love love love her for this. :) We were staying with a different host that night so we had to figure out our whole bag transportation situation. Long story short, we were meeting up with a girl named Heather and she let us store our bags at her place for the day until we met up with our new host Veronika once she got home from work. Heather took us all around the city showing us the sites with her adorable son Hegan all day. Hanging out with them really made me miss my sister and nephew. :(:(
Quick, super embarrassing story. While we were out with them we stopped at a cafe to get pizza. The pizza wasn't cute when we got it since they don't do that in Italy and Italy is so close that the pizza's are more legit. So I'm cutting away at my pizza when my knife slips, knocking my plate over the table. I reach out to try and save everything but end up only being able to grab on to the pizza and the plate goes crashing to the floor and shatters everywhere. Awesome. Way to not bring attention to yourself, Laura. So stupid me is sitting there with the pizza in my hand and no plate as the waiter comes over to see what all the commotion is about. He was a really good sport about it and started laughing when he saw the pathetic site. He got me a new plate and I promptly put my still edible pizza on top of it. Ha. Ya. Embarrassing.
We walked around some more and then eventually met up with our new host, Veronika. She had told us she was going to make her grandma's favorite Austrian dish so we were really excited about that. It was essentially a meatloaf and really really delicious. There was also a chocolate mousse that I could not get enough of. We late found out after we had devoured everything on the table that we ate 8-12 servings worth of food. I never knew I was capable of eating so much. Apparently I am. Something I wish I didn't know about myself, haha.
Veronika is 26, working and studying for her PHD. I had a ton of fun talking and getting to know her. The presidential election was going on so at one point we had a really good talk on the politics of Austria and the history of the Nazi party, WWII and how it affected her family specifically. The great thing about CS is being able to get this type of information. Never would we be able to hear such stories without staying with people actually from the countries we are visiting.
The next day (Saturday) we made a slight impulse decision and headed to Slovakia. Why? Cause we could. Awwwwesome. Seriously. Just a random trip to Slovakia because it is so close there is no reason not to. We went to Bratislava, which was only a 1 hour bus ride one way and 11 euro round trip. It was a really cute town and a fun day trip. We also got to see some really young, uncoordinated Slovakians dancing to Michael Jackson. How many people can say that, really?
That night we went out with Heather again for some Viennese nightlife. The night didn't go exactly as we had hoped/planned but we got to see a lot of nightlife on goings which was really cool. The pitcher of daiquiris wasn't all that bad either. :)
Sunday was pretty much the most pointless day on the trip thus far. Everything closes down so everything we tried to do was a complete fail. And I mean complete fail. Luckily Hilary and I are both really easy going and don't mind walking aimlessly for hours so essentially it just ended up being another adventure and we got to see a lot of the city again. This was the night we got to talk to and learn a lot about Veronika which was great. She then took us to a bar called Tunnel where we had some great Austrian food. I stuffed myself to the brim again...goodness. We were going to listen to some live jazz as well but it ended up getting canceled so that was unfortunate.
Monday morning. OMG. Heather was amazing and offered to make us an American brunch. So delicious!! Thank you so much Heather. I was craving that so much. We had pancakes, muffins, biscuits and gravy, fruit, deliciousness everywhere! From there we went to a market to get food to cook Veronika finally and then went on a mission to find patches because both of our jeans have holes in them. Yay for my one pair of jeans trying to die on me one month into the trip. I have a nice big rip in the crotch of my jeans that doesn't make me seem very lady like when I go out in public. Luckily I'm not so obsessed with being lady like so it isn't that big of a deal except I am afraid the entire pant leg is going to rip off eventually and that could be a bit embarrassing.
After our errands we went back to Veronika's for dinner. She is a little protective of her kitchen so she didn't let us really cook anything. I'm not the expert cook. Or even a beginner cook. In fact, I am a self proclaimed ignorant in the kitchen, so I didn't really mind. The food was delicious of course. We had some anti-pastas and then pasta. Yum yum yum. After dinner we headed to this thing called a Heuriger that Hilary really wanted to go to. Turns out it was a great decision. It is essentially a place connected to a winery that then sells their 'wine of the month' for ridiculously cheap prices. It was great. We sat and had some wine and some great conversation. I love that we have been traveling for so long but still have stuff to talk about. It's great.
Tuesday we got up, went to an amazing all you can eat Afghan restaurant. You can eat whatever you want. As much as you want. And pay whatever you want. It's great. I would go there everyday if I could. Something like this needs to be brought to Seattle. I have no idea how it makes money, but somehow... It'll work. After that we headed to get some ice cream from the so called best gelato place in Vienna. It was delicious. Cause all ice cream is delicious. Especially in Europe. Then back to Veronika's to pack up and head to Budapest. Dun dun dun.
Vienna was great. We had two hosts there: Nathalie and Veronika. Nathalie was our first. She's 19, still in school and has a really fun laid back spirit about her. The first night we were there she took us to a CS meet up that happens weekly in Vienna. She is really involved in the community there and all the people we meet were really cool. There was obviously a communication barrier going on and the group was really close so it was hard to understand all of their inside jokes and such but I enjoy people watching and there was definitely a lot to watch at this gathering.
The next morning we awoke to an amazing breakfast Nathalie made for us. As most of you probably know I LOVE breakfast so I was a happy happy girl. There was this special German bread in particular that was sweet and delicious. It was like eating candy. I could not get enough of it. During the day we went to a castle on the outskirts of the city Schonbrunn. It was beautiful. Lots of gardens and monuments. Huge. There was a zoo in it even. Oh the things they do for tourists, haha. After Schonbrunn we walked around the city, got lunch, coffee, cake, people watched, the whole nine yards. It was great. That night we were lame and spent at our host's place. We had planned to go out but it is hard constantly being on the move and I think we both wanted a night of good sleep and calm.
Our host had gone out with her friends to a movie and then out after wards and she was still up earlier than us and had breakfast ready again in the morning. Apparently she hates to sleep, which worked out well for us! Love love love her for this. :) We were staying with a different host that night so we had to figure out our whole bag transportation situation. Long story short, we were meeting up with a girl named Heather and she let us store our bags at her place for the day until we met up with our new host Veronika once she got home from work. Heather took us all around the city showing us the sites with her adorable son Hegan all day. Hanging out with them really made me miss my sister and nephew. :(:(
Quick, super embarrassing story. While we were out with them we stopped at a cafe to get pizza. The pizza wasn't cute when we got it since they don't do that in Italy and Italy is so close that the pizza's are more legit. So I'm cutting away at my pizza when my knife slips, knocking my plate over the table. I reach out to try and save everything but end up only being able to grab on to the pizza and the plate goes crashing to the floor and shatters everywhere. Awesome. Way to not bring attention to yourself, Laura. So stupid me is sitting there with the pizza in my hand and no plate as the waiter comes over to see what all the commotion is about. He was a really good sport about it and started laughing when he saw the pathetic site. He got me a new plate and I promptly put my still edible pizza on top of it. Ha. Ya. Embarrassing.
We walked around some more and then eventually met up with our new host, Veronika. She had told us she was going to make her grandma's favorite Austrian dish so we were really excited about that. It was essentially a meatloaf and really really delicious. There was also a chocolate mousse that I could not get enough of. We late found out after we had devoured everything on the table that we ate 8-12 servings worth of food. I never knew I was capable of eating so much. Apparently I am. Something I wish I didn't know about myself, haha.
Veronika is 26, working and studying for her PHD. I had a ton of fun talking and getting to know her. The presidential election was going on so at one point we had a really good talk on the politics of Austria and the history of the Nazi party, WWII and how it affected her family specifically. The great thing about CS is being able to get this type of information. Never would we be able to hear such stories without staying with people actually from the countries we are visiting.
The next day (Saturday) we made a slight impulse decision and headed to Slovakia. Why? Cause we could. Awwwwesome. Seriously. Just a random trip to Slovakia because it is so close there is no reason not to. We went to Bratislava, which was only a 1 hour bus ride one way and 11 euro round trip. It was a really cute town and a fun day trip. We also got to see some really young, uncoordinated Slovakians dancing to Michael Jackson. How many people can say that, really?
That night we went out with Heather again for some Viennese nightlife. The night didn't go exactly as we had hoped/planned but we got to see a lot of nightlife on goings which was really cool. The pitcher of daiquiris wasn't all that bad either. :)
Sunday was pretty much the most pointless day on the trip thus far. Everything closes down so everything we tried to do was a complete fail. And I mean complete fail. Luckily Hilary and I are both really easy going and don't mind walking aimlessly for hours so essentially it just ended up being another adventure and we got to see a lot of the city again. This was the night we got to talk to and learn a lot about Veronika which was great. She then took us to a bar called Tunnel where we had some great Austrian food. I stuffed myself to the brim again...goodness. We were going to listen to some live jazz as well but it ended up getting canceled so that was unfortunate.
Monday morning. OMG. Heather was amazing and offered to make us an American brunch. So delicious!! Thank you so much Heather. I was craving that so much. We had pancakes, muffins, biscuits and gravy, fruit, deliciousness everywhere! From there we went to a market to get food to cook Veronika finally and then went on a mission to find patches because both of our jeans have holes in them. Yay for my one pair of jeans trying to die on me one month into the trip. I have a nice big rip in the crotch of my jeans that doesn't make me seem very lady like when I go out in public. Luckily I'm not so obsessed with being lady like so it isn't that big of a deal except I am afraid the entire pant leg is going to rip off eventually and that could be a bit embarrassing.
After our errands we went back to Veronika's for dinner. She is a little protective of her kitchen so she didn't let us really cook anything. I'm not the expert cook. Or even a beginner cook. In fact, I am a self proclaimed ignorant in the kitchen, so I didn't really mind. The food was delicious of course. We had some anti-pastas and then pasta. Yum yum yum. After dinner we headed to this thing called a Heuriger that Hilary really wanted to go to. Turns out it was a great decision. It is essentially a place connected to a winery that then sells their 'wine of the month' for ridiculously cheap prices. It was great. We sat and had some wine and some great conversation. I love that we have been traveling for so long but still have stuff to talk about. It's great.
Tuesday we got up, went to an amazing all you can eat Afghan restaurant. You can eat whatever you want. As much as you want. And pay whatever you want. It's great. I would go there everyday if I could. Something like this needs to be brought to Seattle. I have no idea how it makes money, but somehow... It'll work. After that we headed to get some ice cream from the so called best gelato place in Vienna. It was delicious. Cause all ice cream is delicious. Especially in Europe. Then back to Veronika's to pack up and head to Budapest. Dun dun dun.
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