A whole mess of posts from our last few weeks of travel!

I tried to keep updating my posts throughout our travels so it might be a mess...but here it is! ---------------------- April 29 2013 Vienna! Arrived in Vienna later on in the evening…around 7 pm or so. Checked into our hostel which was located right next to this HUGE market. It wasn’t going on at that time but we went to it the next day and it was absolutely awesome. That night we went to a neat little café/pub type place for an Austrian dinner. It was decent and enjoyable. Didn’t do anything too crazy this night. April 30 2013 We were able to make some meals in this hostel (Wombat hostel) which was really nice. Ended up meeting some other people from around the world while making food…it was nice. Justin rented a bike and gave himself a little tour around Vienna while I hung out at the hostel and finished my final paper for Winchester. I got in done ….thank goodness! Completely finished with my undergrad . When Justin came back we hung out for a bit, went to the market, and then made a nice homemade dinner. It’s so great to avoid eating out all the time. The market was different than any we had been to because within the area were a bunch of different cafes, restaurants, food stands….etc. We definitely tried some things and walked up and down a couple times to decide what we wanted for an afternoon snack. Eventually we settled for some hummus and falafel. After dinner we walked around Vienna to check out the night life and had a drink near the river. It wasn’t a crazy, huge city like the others we had visited but it was nice to break away from the tourists and venders trying to sell you worthless items. May 1 2013 CAN’T EVEN BELIIEEVVVE it’s May. Only 14 days left of our travels. This morning we got up to do the free walking tour around Vienna. It was kind of dry – not the best – but totally fine. After the walking tour we made a quick lunch and got on the train to Prague. Our hostel in Prague was realllly nice… St. Christophers Inn Mosaic House…recommended to us by our previously met friends Jonathon and Nikkita. We ate dinner in the restaurant/bar area of our hostel since it was pretty convenient. I wasn’t feeling very good – I think eating warm hummus made my stomach upset – so I just sat in the room and chatted with some of our roommates while Justin took a walk around the block. We headed to bed and planned for an adventures day to come! May 2 2013 Free Walking Tour – not my favorite again but it was alright. We had an awesome lunch with our tour guide at a local Czech pub/restaurant. I had a Pork Goulash with Dumplings - . After lunch we hung out for a bit …did some shopping… and then we met up with some people in the hostel to go out for our own little pub crawl. This guy that is a paid tour guide in Prague said he would take us out (we were with a group of other people – including a couple from Canada). We went to some cool cave-like pubs and had a kebab plate at a street stand. Our tour guide pooped out a little earlier than we expected but Justin and I tried to stay out a little longer. -Then we met a random group of people in our hostel and went to the 5 story club. Each floor, different music/theme. May 3 2013 Checked out, went to a different hostel. Tried to do laundry at a Laundromat and failed horribly. All of clothes were still wet. Went to the Louvre Café and got this hot chocolate that our friends Jonathon and Nikkita recommended. Also got a meal and this crazy carrot cake. Actually made of carrots Toured around by ourselves for a while in the Old Town. Went to some Absintheries. Gave ourselves our own pub crawl and went to some places that were recommended to us. (After we got caught trying to share a bed in the hostel – oops… embarrassing). We went to a Vodka bar called Propoganda, Chapeau Rouge (a pub/club), the Roxbury (thought we were somewhere else), club Roxy  huge club with some sweet music and lights…an actual DJ. After these crazy places we went to ‘Burrito Loco’. Stopped at a place called ‘Vargo’ on the way back and saw some crazy headbangers. (Ran into some girls that we met in Budapest and Vienna) Didn’t get back to the hostel until 5 a.m. or so and had to be up by 9:30 a.m. to check out the hostel by 10. May 4 2013 Got another burrito from Burrito Loco. Walked around the town again and headed up to the other side of the river towards the castle. Stopped at a beer garden, hung out in the park, and then made our way to the castle. (ran into the girls from Budapest/Vienna again – small world). Crossed the famous Charles bridge and then went to a Tesco (grocery store) and picked up some good looking food from the deli area but it ended up being pretty disgusting. Our train didn’t leave until 10:30 p.m. so we killed some time and crushed some more food before we headed to the train station. Boarded our first night train! We were in a sleeper cabin with two ladies that didn’t speak any English. We heard some horror stories about people getting their stuff stolen in the night trains but fortunately nothing like that happened to us. Ran into some weird situations though because our eurail passes supposedly didn’t work in Poland so we got woken up at 4 am and asked to buy a ticket. Quite a scary moment because I couldn’t remember what the conversion for polish zloty to the us dollar was. It all worked out though and we made it to Poland by 6 am. May 5 2013 Checked in to our hostel, made breakfast, took a little nap, chatted with some crazy stag party Irish guys, and then went on a bus tour to Auschwitz! It’s hard to even explain all the things we saw at Auschwitz. ELABORATE Had a Polish meal for dinner – perioigis! May 6 2013 Went for a run around the city of Krakow. Got ready for our day and make some breakfast in the hostel. Left our bags there while we bummed around the city. Our train wasn’t until 11 pm that night. We ate lunch at a really weird Polish cafeteria type place. It wasn’t really a cafeteria but that’s what it felt like. Saw the castle (only went in part of it since it was free), sat in some green area by the river and later grabbed some periogis at the 24 hour periogi place before we got our bags and headed to the train station. This time we didn’t have a sleeper cabin but we got a 6 person seated cabin all to ourselves so we spread out on the seats and got in a decent night’s sleep. Unfortunately our passes didn’t work and the cheapest/quickest way to get to Berlin was by heading in the opposite direction to Warsaw and then taking a train at 5 am from Warsaw to Berlin where we got in around 11 am the next day. May 7 2013 We didn’t really do too much when we arrived in Berlin. Checked in to our hostel, grabbed some dinner and then hung out. The map of Berlin was so overwhelming and we didn’t really have an idea of where we wanted to go. For lunch we ate at a cheap Asian place and then for dinner we had these huge greasy burgers that were suggested to us. The place was called ‘Burgermeister’ and it use to be an old public toilet but got turned into a popular burger joint. Typical greasy burger but I was so hungry that it didn’t matter what I ate! May 8 2013 Tried to use some vouchers that I had found in Florence, Italy (we stayed at a hostel owned by the same company) for the buffet breakfast. Didn’t work unfortunately but at least we could fill up before we started our long day. We tried to catch the free walking tour at 11 am but missed it and ended up doing the one at 1 pm. In the mean time we tried to search for shoes (this has been a long process). My flats that I would wear out at night got destroyed in Prague and I really needed a cheap new pair. Fortunately I eventually found a pair! Justin was relieved . The walking tour was great – we had a British tour guide from Manchester so it was easy to understand him. He did a really great job. My two favorite walking tours that I’ve been on are the ones I did in Berlin and Amsterdam. It’s nice when they can give you some history about the city while providing interesting and humorous stories. After the 3 hour tour we grabbed a drink with the group/tour guide…met some guy from Seattle that gave us some suggestions for things to do. Post drinks we grabbed some food at a local bakery and then headed back to the hostel. For dinner Justin and I made our own little salads out of veggies we bought from a local market. Later that night…definitely the most interesting night we have had … we met two guys from New York. We invited them to come out of with us to find some different clubs and pubs that we had marked down on our map. The first place we went to didn’t really have much going on… some live music was supposed to start but we just moved on to see what else there was. From there we found a place that had free shots and entry so we decided to check it out. On our way in we randomly met this German guy that said he had lived in Eau Claire for a year! What a freaking coincidence. So we went inside this pub and he bought us some drinks…we talked about some things from Eau Claire and ended up spending the rest of the night with this guy. Along the way he picked up a few friends that stuck with us and we headed to a club. The place we went to was called “Cloud covered” and it was like a giant pillow fight (but people weren’t really fighting I guess). The floor was covered up to our ankles in feathers and random pillows were being thrown around. It was so cool. The music was great and the lighting and smoke effects with all of the feathers looked so awesome. We wanted to stay longer but we ended up leaving because the German that lived in Eau Claire, named Matt, had left and we didn’t want to lose track of him. We ended up finding him outside with some Australian and we moved along to the next place. We stopped at little markets and he introduced us to some German style drinking. Pretty interesting. The process of getting to the next club ended up taking way longer than it should have because the train was out of service and we had to wait a while for a bus. Soon the sun started to come up and we couldn’t even believe how late it had gotten. We stopped for some sandwiches at a small gas station – which everyone ordered a honey chicken sandwhich and no one got anything close to that. Pretty funny. We finally got to this strange bar – Fuzzy pink carpet on the walls and weird decorations…I couldn’t even believe this was still open and people were still out. We decided to leave after a while and try to get into this well known club called ‘Berghain’. It’s been named the BEST club in the WORLD and is extremely difficult to get in to. There’s no real way to explain how to get in. It’s not a gay club but it’s gay friendly and they look for an interesting array of people to get in. We got denied because we were in too big of a group but we’ve heard that they like just singles or couples…and I think they pretty much turn you down if you don’t speak German. It looks like the sketchiest place ever and you seriously would never know that a club is located inside this building. It was the weirdest thing ever and I wish we could’ve gotten inside. After getting denied Addison, Sebastian (the two New Yorkers), Justin and myself went to grab some street food before heading back to the hostel to get some sleep. Mind you….this was at like 830 in the morning. I’ve never had a night quite like that. It was crazy, fun, and totally different than anything I’ve experienced. May 9 2013 Didn’t get out of bed until 5 pm. Ouch. Longest I’ve ever slept in I think. All four of us went to swim and cleanse in the sauna. It got packed so we ended up leaving. Round II night out in Berlin. Grabbed some dinner at a thai place and then wandered around to find some pubs and clubs. The first place we went to was an upside bar…so all kinds of stuff was on the ceiling. It wasn’t as cool as Justin thought it was going to be (he did the research and saw pictures of it online) but it was still fun. Later we split up from Addison and Sebastian so that we could get into this bar on a boat on the canal. It was a neat little place. Everything in Berlin is so dark and underground…very artsy I suppose you could say. A lot of graffiti everywhere and things seem kind of run down but it totally suits the city. Around 130 am I decided to go to bed… I was still wiped out from the night before. Justin went back out to see some other places and actually ended up running into Addison and Sebastian. May 10 2013 Today we grabbed a Kebab for breakfast – as Berlin is like the capital city for Kebab’s. Now we are on the train to Amsterdam where we will meet my brother Jay for our last weekend in Europe . I’m so sad to be returning to the states in 4 days. I’ve had an awesome time in Europe and I would easily stay if I could buttttt time to go back to the states and get ready to move to Atlanta in less than 2 months. -Met Jay at the Best Western in Amsterdam…the hotel was right near Vondelpark where I stayed the last time when I was in Amsterdam. Grabbed Italian for dinner and then got some sleep. Jay was pretty wiped from a busy week, as we were too. May 11 2013 Found an amazing Pancake place for breakfast!!! Then we went on the Heineken tour. Walked around Amsterdam. Found some pubs and grabbed some snacks – nachos at one place and then beer sausage at another. Went out for a big dinner after being turned down at a few places (busy on a Saturday night!) Of course we walked around the red light district – ended our night at a saloon but grabbed a kebab before bed! May 12 2013 Had a Dutch pancake breakfast again but this place wasn’t as good. We slept in a little later than expected so breakfast had to be close to the hostel. Justin went on a walking tour since I really enjoyed the one that I did the first time I visited. While Justin did that Jay and I went to the newly reopened Rijksmuseum. Around 3 pm Jay had to catch a train to the airport and I checked Justin and myself in to a hostel. We decided to stay in Amsterdam another night instead of go to Brussels. I picked the same hostel that I’ve been too since it was close by and I couldn’t get any internet service. For the remainder of the day we walked around Amsterdam to find some food and see some famous or popular places. We ate dinner at a pub and later went back to that kebab place. Justin also got me the most amazing apple dessert type thing. What a great boyfriend! It was a really good day. We headed back to the hostel around 11 pm and rested up for our final full day in Europe. May 13 2013 Enjoyed a great breakfast at the hostel…probably one of the better one’s we’ve had. Then made our way to the train station to leave for Brussels. We thought we would have enough time to maybe venture around Brussels but we really only had 2 hours in between our arrival and departure on the Eurostar. We walked around outside of the train station to find food but we really didn’t see anything so we just had some sandwiches in the station. Our Eurostar ride went pretty quick. Got into London around 8 pm. After changing into some different clothes (finally!) at Jay’s flat we met up with his girlfriend Jenna to say our goodbyes and then the 3 of us went out for a big Indian dinner. It was an amazing and HUGE final dinner in London...This trip would not have been nearly as awesome without my brother Jay! So glad he was there to help me out. With full bellies we all went to sleep. Our last night  May 14 2013 Sitting in the airport, finishing this blog…I couldn’t be more confused about my feelings. It was such an amazing past couple months in Europe. I’m excited to go home to see my friends and family, to wash all of my clothes like 3 times over, get back to a normal routine in life, and prepare my things to move to Atlanta…but I wish my trip wasn’t over. I’ve seen so many great things and learned so much about this continent…I wish it was never ending. I am so glad that Justin was able to come to England to visit me and to stay long enough to travel around Europe together. I wouldn’t change it for anything! I appreciate Justin for putting up with me and for being so on top of things. I would’ve ended up wandering around cities for days just because I have serious problems with reading a map . The only thing I can do is return to Europe again and do all of the things that I wasn’t able to. The world doesn’t seem so big anymore, but my world has gotten so much bigger.