Berlin

Berlin. The last stop. Wow. Where the heck did the time go?

As I mentioned a bit ago, I decided to cut my trip short for a multitude of reasons. I burnt out pretty quickly. I probably should have taken some time just after graduation to just sleep and things before I took off on this adventure, but you live and you learn. I’m still perfectly happy with having traveled for 6 weeks and there isn’t a single place that I say “boo, I wish I’d gotten to go to X before I left” – and I think that’s the ideal point to wrap up my European Adventure.

I knew coming into Berlin that it was going to be a much larger city than what I’d seen during the rest of my trip, but I really wasn’t expecting it to be this modern. It was a lot like New York City at points, but less crowded and generally more pleasant (though drivers are just about the same). I guess it makes sense though, since the figure is something like 70% of the city was destroyed during WWII.

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Prague

After some much needed downtime/”me” time in Vienna, I was excited to move on to Prague and hopefully meet some people to hang around with. But, that would have to wait until I actually found the hostel – which was quite a challenge, let me tell you.

I got off of the train from Vienna sometime around 5PM I think. I had directions to the hostel this time, which was helpful, but they weren’t exactly step-by-step, which would have been nice in Prague considering I don’t speak an ounce of Czech. So after getting off of the train, I followed my instructions and found my way to the tram that would take me to my hostel. One problem: I needed a ticket for the train. And the ticket machine only takes Czech Koruna (Crown). Soooo I had to walk all the way back into the station (about 5 minutes and up and down more stairs than I’d prefer) to find an ATM. I was prompted to select how much money I wanted to withdraw: 200, 500, 1000, 1500, 2000. Hmm… 200 sounds good, right? OK, that done I headed back to the machine that sells tram tickets. Down more stairs, up more stairs, and what do you know? The machine only takes coins! All I had was a 200 Crown note. Alllllrighty then.

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Vienna

I had interesting expectations for Vienna. Based on what I’d heard and read and even seen on occasion, I really expected Vienna to be a very “European” city. I don’t exactly know what makes one city more European than another, but I figured I’d know it when I saw it.

I wasn’t exactly disappointed by Vienna, but it definitely wasn’t the type of city I expected it to be. It was actually very American. It reminded me a lot of San Francisco and even some parts of NYC at times. Sure it had the cool architecture going for it in places, but overall I was pretty underwhelmed.

Rewinding: My first night in Vienna was pretty mellow. Actually it was very mellow. I went to the grocery store next to the hostel, grabbed myself some yogurt and muesli and pretty much just settled in and sorted out what to do over the next 2 days.

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Salzburg

The train ride to Salzburg was quite beautiful. Well, for the parts that I managed not to sleep through…

Because I had decided to go to Salzburg at the last minute (I love spontanaeity, especially when traveling!) I had to find myself a hostel – a task that is becoming increasingly difficult as we reach the high season. Hostelworld only listed about 5 hostels in Salzburg, 2 of which didn’t have any ratings at all. The best rated hostel (YoHo) was all booked out. Nathan and I settled on the next best one and booked our beds. It wasn’t in the most central location, but it was better than sleeping on a bench.

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Munich

The trip to Munich was short and sweet. We made two pit stops: the first in Lucerne and the second in Liechtenstein.

Lucerne is probably a very cute little town, but since we were there on a Sunday morning and there had been a festival that weekend, the town was pretty much shut down and it smelled of urine and vomit. Fun times…

Liechtenstein was just a stop for funsies – just so we can say we’ve been there. I think we stopped for all of 2 hours, enough to grab some lunch and, if we wanted to pay the 2 Euro, get our passports stamped (I did it. It’s about time I got another stamp!). It, too, was a cute little town (err..country?). Definitely more lively than Lucerne, but still swamped with tourists.

We stayed at the Wombat’s hostel in Munich. It’s in a great location and they have a nifty little common area in their “winter garden” – free wifi, hammocks, and lounge chairs, and closed off from the elements but still feels like it’s outside. I was a fan.

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