all caught up

from salzburg we took the train to vienna. it was a terrible train ride. the train was way too full for its own good so we had to sit on the floor next to the WCs with passengers using the facilities every 3-5 minutes, not joking. then to make matters worse, we had a really creepy man sitting right across from us just staring. he was not swayed by our dirty looks so i just buried my face in my scarf to avoid it. in vienna, we walked all over the city and used rick steves walking tour so that we knew what we were seeing one of which was a pretty famous balcony where hitler addressed his adoring throngs. it might sound stupid but i didnt really expect to hear about WWII in every single location we visited but that is exactly what happened. even in the small towns, we heard about the war history and how it affected each community. for dinner in vienna, we met up with a few people from previous hostels and the current hostel to go out for wiener schnitzel. HUGE portions at the place we went to! it was crazy. 

next we went to prague and we somehow managed to snag a cabin all to ourselves! it was just like harry potter with the separate cabins or carriages and i was in heaven. i wanted to climb up on the top of the luggage rack and cover myself with a coat and pretend the i was hp eavesdropping on malfoy. i dont think the rack wouldve held me though and i wasnt willing to pay for the damages that may or may not have been incurred so i regretfully decided against it. we stayed with my cousin greg's girlfriend's brother's old roommate in prague (think about it for a while), and he was really nice and took us out to a local beer garden and introduced us to his friends - all english speaking and all fun! most of them are living in prague teaching english as a second language through the TEFL organization. anna and i think this is a good idea so we may be going on another adventure in the next few years... stay tuned. the next day (my birthday!) we went on a free tour of prague and hit up all the important stuff that we didnt know about before we were told it was important. prague has such a rich history and i only knew small fractions of a few parts of the history so it was really great to go on a tour. hitler actually really loved prague and wanted to retire there. everything in the jewish quarter was kept intact. this was done intentionally because hitler wanted to make it into a museum for an extinct race. so menacing to think about that. we walked along the charles bridge - the oldest bridge in prague. it was pretty great. we went out to celebrate my birthday and another guy's birthday by going to a tiny bar and doing karaoke all night. it was fantastic! 

rothenburg was next and it was a great little medieval town that is pretty well preserved because an american general and his mom really liked it so they swung it so that the american troops didnt destroy it if the german general surrendered (which he did). it was a really relaxing time and we only spent one night there. then we went to bacharach which was also a cute little town, right on the rhine river. our hostel was a 12th century castle on top of a hill that we had to climb to with our packs on. it was worth the walk up though and we only stopped for 2 short breaks! the next day we went on a rhine river cruise up to koblenz. due to train schedules, we didnt have time to get off the boat to explore any of the numerous castles along the river but we saw all of them at a distance while we were getting a tan on the deck and rick steves gave us the run down on each castle as we passed them. thanks rick! we caught the train to bruges, belgium and decided to pretend that we were a traveling band so we practiced our songs while waiting for trains. im sure everyone around us enjoyed it immensely. we arrived in bruges to find that it was quite busy. we didnt realize the busy factor would be a problem until we showed up at a hostel without a reservation and were told that all of bruges was booked. every hostel, hotel, and b&b were full. so we pulled an all nighter in the hostel until they closed at 6am. then we went to a little park and fell asleep next to the river. hard core travelers (that should be our band name!). we stayed another night in bruges except this time we had a room at a pretty cool little hostel. then we woke up early to go to paris. 

we met up with some other calvin students in paris, took another free walking tour and saw all the big stuff: the louvre (which we went through), tuileries garden (where we ate some crepes), notre dame (there was a lady singing for a service when we were there!), eiffel tower, arc de triomphe, moulin rogue (anna and i performed a song from the movie while standing in front of it), and the opera house that the phantom of the opera was written about! last night, we had a little picnic with baguettes, cheese, salami, and french wine underneath the eiffel tower that night and saw the light show that happens every hour. the eiffel tower is already lit up but on the hour, it sparkles all over and it was so great! this afternoon, anna and i took the chunnel to london and tomorrow morning at 7am we will be on a plane to belfast. busy 24 hours! 

there. now im all caught up and so are you.

munich and salzburg

munich was great! the first night we were there we decided to go to the augustiner beerhall. we sat at the same table as some german men and they were so fun and so nice and they paid for our dinner and taught us german drinking songs! the next morning we went on a tour to dachau. there were five people in our tour group which was nice because it was easier to hear what our very knowledgable tour guide had to say. the concentration camp was attached to the ss headquarters and while the concentration camp has been preserved and changed into a memorial, the ss headquarters part of the camp is being used as training grounds for the riot police. twisted. and embarrassing for the germans. we went to the hofbrauhaus that night and listened to the men in lederhosen play their traditional german tunes.

in salzburg we wandered around to find a place to eat forever! we finally found a little italian place called pasta and vino. after some confusion due to language barriers, we were seated and served a delicious meal. after we left, we read about the restaurant and it said that it was a reservations only place. i guess that just shows the power of a smile and being naive! we went back to our hostel and found a friend from the previous week in interlaken! we had no idea that he was going to be in salzburg so it was a huge and pleasant surprise! the next day, anna and kaitlin and i went on the sound of music tour and it was fabulous! we were the only ones singing but it was still really fun! we were dubbed the SOM experts and we became famous because a school group was taping some things about the tour and they asked us to sing 16 going on 17 a capella in front of the famous gazebo (we complied) and then they interviewed us later. fun day!

swisssssss

geneva was great! we got there on thursday. anna and i had our second couch surfing experience and it went just as well as the first one! christos was our host and he was originally from greece. we were his first american couch surfers and i think we made a good impression! we met the other girls (kaitlin, jessie, grace, and karie) in geneva on saturday and then kaitlin, anna and i went to interlaken. we are staying in balmers which is the same hostel that my parents stayed at wayyyy back in the day. its a really cool place! not very busy but we made some friends. us three girls took the train to lauterbrunnen which is a little town that is slightly higher up in the mountains than interlaken but still warm enough to wear shorts and tank tops and for kaitlin to get burned. we just wandered through the countryside with the rolling green hills in between us and the steep cliffs of the mountains. there were waterfalls all over the area we were in. very cool. switzerland is a very beautiful place! i couldnt help stopping every three steps to take another picture of the gorgeous scenery! it rained today but we went to bern for a while to explore and then came back and hung out with our hostel companions. on to munich tomorrow!

over the span of three countries

anna and i left london on saturday (april 2) and flew to barcelona. we met paloma - our first couchsurfing host - and she was SO nice! she was hanging out with another guy from cs named miguel (from madrid) and they threw together a paella type dish. unbeknownst to me, there were three tiny and extremely hot peppers in it. i ended up with two of the three peppers on my plate and i ate both. they were really really really hot but i didnt say anything because i didnt want to be the wimpy american! after everyone was finished eating paloma and miguel told us that there were some peppers in it and they thought it was soooo funny that i ate them because you are not supposed to eat them. terrible trick to play! but it was kinda funny... we went out together that night and met up with some of paloma's friends who were very nice. we were at a pub until 3am and then paloma suggested we go to a club after that so we went to bed at 6am that night! the spaniards are loco! 

the next day (with about 4 hours of sleep to sustain us), anna and i walked to parc guell which was really cool but we didnt realized that it would be a looong walk and COMPLETELY uphill. the entire way. im not kidding. since we were lacking sleep, we were slap-happy the whole way so it was a pretty hilarious day. we saw a lot of gaudi architecture like la sagrada familia and casa batllo and everything in parc guell. for dinner, we went out with paloma and her friend carlos and carlos's couchsurfer kayla. we had tapas and it included several seafood items which is slightly unfortunate because neither anna nor i enjoy seafood. but we were good travelers and went outside of our comfort zone to try the cultural food. we had baby squid that looked exactly like you would expect a baby squid to look like except that it was on my plate instead of in the sea. i also tried codfish and mussels which is normal for most people but not to a non-seafood person. the best tasting one of the three was the squid. that doesnt mean i had seconds though. after dinner we went out salsa dancing and it was SO MUCH FUN!!! paloma is a phenomenal salsa dancer! it was fun to watch her when anna and i werent dancing.

on the following day, monday, we walked to the beach. on the way there we saw barcelonas arc de triomf and walked through a couple really cool parks. went to the beach and laid on some chairs for a while, got sunburned, then walked down la rambla and then through a famous market which had tons of fruits and veggies and nuts and meat. the meat consisted of tongue, stomach, heads of sheep with eyes in them, feet, and the nose of a cow. im sure there were a lot of other things like that but we couldnt identify them. 

i am now in marseille, france in a hostel that is 5 minute walk from the harbor. anna and i took a ferry out to the chateau d'if which is the setting for the count of monte cristo. it was built in the 16th century as a fortress of defense for the unprotected city of marseille. it was really cool and it was a beautiful day so we were happy. now we are on our way to geneva, switzerland! updates to come.

london recently

since my last post, i have wandered the streets of london with nikki and anna and successfully seen much of the city. i saw big ben, the london eye, where the harry potter cast and crew taped shots inside gringotts bank, buckingham palace, one of the oldest pubs in london which was frequented by great authors such as dickens, tennyson and twain, covent gardens, trafalgar square, 10 downing street, st pauls, millennium bridge (also appeared in the harry potter movies), and westminster abbey. speaking of westminster... i attended the evening service there. no big deal. its only the location of the quickly approaching nuptials of kate and prince william! so i walked down the aisle that kate will walk down! it was exciting. another cool experience we had was walking towards the westminster bridge and seeing countless policemen lined up across the bridge with three helicopters hovering above. we talked to one of the cops and he asked if we were with the protest (we werent) so he suggested that we walk to the next bridge over to cross. we saw the hoards of people protesting against the government cutting the funding for services and the hundreds of police cars and policemen. it was crazyyyyy! its a beautiful day outside today so anna and i are going to abbey road and tonight, i am planning on going to les miserables!

foreign cuisine

since my last post in leiden, i have been to england and scotland and the weather has been absolutely perfect! i am trying to experience each culture to a higher degree. in order to do that, i have been experimenting with the local cuisine. in holland, i ate poffertjes (mini pancake type things), pannekoeken (dutch pancakes that are really thin and have different stuff in them like bacon and cheese), and the delicious traditional dishes that gert and monique made for us - mashed potatoes with cabbage type stuff in it, sausage, and a vegetable dish. in amsterdam, we had a heineken. i also ate a bite of herring. for those who dont know what herring is, its a fish with its head cut off and sliced in half length-wise.

it actually wasnt bad tasting, i just couldnt get over the mental barrier of eating raw fish, holding its tail, and dangling it over my mouth to take a chomp. 

in england, i ate crumpets with nutella, went to a tea room and had tea with milk like the british do, i tried nikkis fish and chips, and had yorkshire pudding. 

the haggis is the one that looks like a veggie burger

in scotland (nikki and i went to edinburgh for the day), we asked the waitress what a scottish person would traditionally order for breakfast and she suggested a plate with bacon, pita bread, an egg, toast, sausage, baked beans, a tomato, and something called haggis. she described the haggis as a mixture of meat and oats and spices so we decided to get that. it wasnt our favorite meal and we didnt love the taste of the haggis so we each only ate about half. we also had some scottish whiskey which wasnt a favorite either. the next day when we were telling the girls in england what we ate, we discovered what the "meat" portion of the haggis consisted of: sheeps heart, lungs, and liver which is traditionally simmered in a sheeps stomach. we thought she was kidding but she wasnt... she wasnt. 

first few days summary

the netherlands is great so far! have only taken 265 pictures. thursday was spent exploring haarlem then me and nikki got up early and met the girls in amsterdam. went through the anne frank house for 8.50 euros and it was pretty cool! a lot bigger than i expected actually. i took the train from amsterdam to heemsteede alone and sat across from an unfriendly dutch couple. when i got off the train, my distant cousin erik was there to meet me. we recognized each other from facebook pictures so that was kind of cool and fun! had dinner at their house which was very big and beautiful. a couple other relatives (gert and his daughter fleur) came for dinner as well. for dinner, we had an indonesian dish - a dutch colonial heritage dish. they really liked the gifts i gave them and charlotte (another "cousin") gave me the top 100 dutch songs! i went to a gymnastics competition this morning for kiki, gert's 7 year old daughter. then i went to leiden which is a university town and met up with all of the other girls and sean, the guy who they are staying with. its been a long day of walking through the streets and the market but it was fun! ill probably be sore tomorrow. definitely be sore tomorrow.

itinerary

I LEAVE TODAY!!!
heres a brief run down of my general schedule if youre interested:


**itinerary is susceptible to change**


march 16: fly out of chicago to amsterdam

march 17: arrive in amsterdam

march 18: netherlands

march 19: netherlands

march 20: netherlands

march 21: netherlands and then fly to london at night

march 22: bus to york, england

march 23: day trip to edinburgh, scotland

march 24: york, england

march 25: bus back to london, england

march 26: london with possible day trips

march 27: london with possible day trips

march 28: london with possible day trips

march 29: london with possible day trips

march 30: london with possible day trips

march 31: london with possible day trips

april 1: london, england

april 2: fly to barcelona, spain

april 3: barcelona, spain

april 4: montpellier, france

april 5: montpellier, france

april 6: marseille, france

april 7: marseille, france

april 8: marseille to geneva, switzerland

april 9: geneva, switzerland

april 10: interlaken, switzerland

april 11: interlaken, switzerland with possible day trips

april 12: interlaken, switzerland with possible day trips

april 13: munich, germany

april 14: munich, germany with day trip to dachau

april 15: salzburg, austria

april 16: salzburg, austria

april 17: vienna, austria

april 18: vienna, austria

april 19: prague, czech republic

april 20: prague, czech 

april 21: rothenburg, germany

april 22: heidelberg and bacharach

april 23: rhine river cruise from bacharach to koblenz

april 24: brugge, belgium

april 25: paris

april 26: paris

april 27: chunnel to london for the night

april 28: fly to belfast, ireland and go to derry

april 29: derry and northern coast

april 30: northern coast of ireland

april 31: northern coast of ireland

may 1: galway or dingle

may 2: galway or dingle

may 3: dublin

may 4: fly home in the morning, be in chicago right around noon!

soon and very soon

another john denver song has recently paralleled my life: all my bags are packed, i'm ready to go! the 30 year old backpack has been washed and waterproofed. another patch was found and added to its already impressive collection. pre-switzerland patch:

i finished up some last minute duties like purchasing tickets to edinburgh and a flight to belfast and revamping my blog page with a few songs. i also made a cute cover strap for my camera. you can now add "seamstress" to the list of my many talents and abilities! :)

in conclusion, i leave in 6 days! and i have completed almost everything on the numerous to-do lists that are scattered around my house. im feelin pretty good!

2 weeks notice

i am at the two week mark. the home stretch. i feel as though the planning has come so far and yet there is so much that still needs to be accomplished. this past week has been productive, though perhaps not quite as productive as i had hoped. i bought my eurail pass, a financially exhilarating process; started booking some hostels; bought a physical journal to write down more thoughts that don't make the cut onto the viral journal; and purchased les miserables from bargain books, my new favorite place. im excited about reading les mis because a) its a french novel and i will be spending a little over a week in the country in question b) its a challenging read so hopefully it'll last me through most of my trip and i'll only need to take the one book c) i haven't seen the musical yet but i plan to someday so it will be nice to know the story intimately.

now for the things that still need to be done:
- make a list of things that i think i need to bring and then cut the list in half (im nervous about this one)
- book more hostels
- purchase miscellaneous tickets for trains (pre-eurail validation), buses, and a flight from london to belfast

wish me luck!

a surge of productivity

the first leg of the trip starts in the netherlands. since it is the fastest approaching part of the journey, you would think that it would have been planned first. apparently that's not how i process things. all attempts thus far to plan the netherlands, have been thwarted. i am trying to plan it with my good friend nikki but to no avail. be it a 2 hour skype call to our girls in england or an episode of the bachelor, nikki and i have not been able to get in touch with our organizational functioning. 

my goal this week is to tap into planning mode and create a new and thorough spreadsheet. this shouldn't be too difficult because i am surprisingly organized with this trip. and once i reach into my traveler's brain, i can't stop the productivity that surges from it. that's why i am writing this post at 2am. i came home from a failed planning meeting at nikki's house tonight and dove into the new spreadsheet - detailing the dates, locations, and sleeping arrangements. before i knew it, 3 hours had passed. it felt like maybe 30 minutes. i love the feeling of productivity! it's been so elusive recently. let's hope it sticks around for a few days; after all, i only have 22 days until departure.

29 days and counting

my backpack and i will be boarding a plane to europe in exactly 29 days. woah. im mostly excited with a little bit of anxiety mixed in (but only a little). i have been planning for months without ceasing. thank goodness i havent had a job for those months otherwise i would have been money-ahead, and who needs more money when youre traveling? that being said, it is my hope that i will adequately couple logic and frugality with flexibility and a strong sense of adventure. i believe that these are some important factors in maintaining a functioning budget while on my travels. i think they will also help me gain as much from this amazing experience as possible. i hope that i can come back from the netherlands, england, scotland, spain, france, switzerland, austria, czech republic, germany, and ireland (maybe belgium too); knowing more about how the world outside of the states operates and, more importantly, knowing more about myself.

to do or not to do?

today i was researching tickets for europe and i came across a site that, when i was waiting for results from a search, listed several random things to do while traveling. i thought some of them were funny, some of them were ridiculous, and some of them were attainable. here are some of the options: invent blisterless clogs, stomp grapes, get lost, split your lederhosen, mistakenly use a bidet, drink glowing green liquid, listen to strange music, pretend to understand a language, look up someone's kilt by mistake. i wonder which of these will be fulfilled while on my journey...

batten down the hatches

history was made today. calvin college cancelled classes for the first time since 1978, so the story goes. it was a time of rejoicing in the land of reformers. the reason for this jubilation is the blizzard many are fondly naming "snowpocalypse." i have never witnessed such an insane amount of snowfall! people were stocking up on the necessities in preparation for said snowpocalypse. i heard meijer was chaos. everything became real to me when i got into my 4-wheel drive blazer this morning and easily cut through the snow that threatened to block me in. a few brave souls had paved the way through the deep snow on our street before my blazer and i could have the pleasure of conquering the road on our own. however, i was still quite giddy whenever i got into my car today and went off-roading (which, in this context, means any of the secondary/neighborhood streets). today was the best day of my car's life. unfortunately it was not all just fun and games; there was some work involved with the blizzard if you can believe it... today i spent a decent amount of time snow blowing, shoveling, and rescuing cars that had foolishly driven into snow that was beyond their capabilities. this may sound crazy but i didnt despise doing all of that. i think that what made it ok was the fact that the sun was shining, a rare occurance in the west michigan area. sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy (john denver knows what he's talking about) but the opposite is also true. darkness is not the condition in which i prefer to snow blow. that being said, you can imagine my dismay when i pulled up to my house and realized, with one horrified look at the end of my driveway, that the snow plow had visited. midnight - hard snow, three feet high. such is the life of a michigan resident.

modeling the height of the snow at 2am... it snowed for another 7+ hours

shrine time

remember the late-nineties show "hey arnold!" and how helga had a shrine dedicated to arnold? she even had a decorated football to symbolize her beloved arnold. i am the modern day helga and travel is my arnold. i have successfully created a shrine to my cherished verb: traveling. i revamped one of the walls in my bedroom from this:

to this (this gives a better idea of the size of my memorial):

the framed pictures are of random old people i sneaked up on and photographed in greece two years ago. that sounds creepier than it really was (i hope). they had such character! i really couldnt resist. the maps are of germany, spain, the uk, and the world and then my awesome dad got me some antique maps on canvas. they are very cool. i think that the shrine will continue to grow in the next 44 days whenever i become inspired to sketch something or see an interesting picture. and then, when i come home from my european adventure, the shine wall will no doubt explode with thousands of my artfully taken photos.

surfing international couches

although one might think that sitting on a couch for most of the day is uneventful, unfulfilling, or even (dare i say it) unproductive, i experienced productivity and fulfillment today as i predictably sat on my usual love seat. i began building rapport with several hostels that my fellow travelers and i would like to stay at. it is so exciting to send and receive emails with people who live in the very locations that i will soon be visiting! even more exciting is the experience i had with couchsurfing.org today. i sent my first "couch request" to a lady in barcelona. couch surfing is when you find someone who lives in the city that you intend to visit and then send that person a couch request in order to ask if you can sleep in their spare bedroom or couch. its a legitimate website and my parents approve just in case anyone was nervous about this concept. so the person that i hope to stay with while in barcelona sounds really fun. she teaches people how to salsa dance so shes totally up my alley. now i just have to wait to see if she accepts my request i guess. wish me luck (or suerte)!

prep part 2

the first part of preparing for my upcoming adventure (in 50 days) was getting into the habit of wearing my 30lb backpack. im still working on getting into that habit. now for part two: not drying my hair after showering. for the ladies out there who dont have perfectly straight hair, you know how difficult a task this can be. it takes self-control. 

recently, ive been employing my imagination. when im out and about, i visualize that i am actually experiencing all of these things while in a foreign country. when i was downtown, i was anticipating finding a fun bar with live music in belgium. when i was attacking a delicious scramble at real food cafe with lisa and molly today, i thought about brunching in paris with anna at a little cafe off the beaten trail. last sunday before the service, a lady sat down next to me and we started chatting. this led me to envision myself sitting on a train, talking to a fellow traveler with a unique and interesting story about their own journey in life. i think its good to have a fertile imagination. if anything, it keeps you easily entertained.

princesses

today i went to the princess diana exhibit at the GRAM. it was pretty awesome. we saw some tiaras and clothes from diana's closet. here are some interesting facts about princess di that you may not know:

• prince charles dated diana's older sister, sarah, first (awkward?)
• charles was 32 when he proposed to 19 year old diana
• diana's wedding dress only cost $1,900! thats way under the budget of some of the brides on the show "say yes to the dress"
• diana's train was 25 ft long and broke the record for longest train in royal history. i cant help but wonder if the queen thought diana was a bit audacious or not
• diana was only 36 when she died. that is so much younger than i thought! 

going to the exhibit and seeing all this royal stuff got me really excited for my trip! one of my traveling comrades is actually going to be in london during the upcoming royal wedding. i believe it will be utter chaos in the city on that day. i wish her luck. 

a globe we found in a little antique shop on the corner of wealthy and lake

i chauffeured my own personal princess around today, princess chelsea. one would think that princesses would learn a little more responsibility but this princess was quite careless and decided to run her car battery dry. and then, for good measure, lock her keys in aforementioned dead car. what an adventure today was! i can only hope to have this much excitement when i travel western europe.

look it up.

i enlisted the help of my vocabulary-rich father in order to create the title of my blog. he loves being creative with words and then telling me to look up the meaning of the mysterious word when i inadvertently indicate that i dont know what hes talking about. its infuriating. i should probably invest in one of those daily word calendars so i can keep up with him or, Lord-willing, so that i can someday stump him with an obscure word of my own! 

i am a first time blogger but i feel that since im going off to europe in exactly 55 days, it would be prudent to start a blog so that i can keep the folks in the states happy (or jealous) with a steady stream of european events when the time comes. im starting a few days early so that i can get into the habit and also because i have nothing else to do at the moment. 

well actually, now that i think of it, it would be a good idea for me to go out and "train." ive decided that i will train for europe in the form of traipsing around the neighborhood with a big, old travel backpack stuffed with about 30lbs of textbooks... i knew those would come in handy someday. i have gone out 4ish times so far and i listen to soundtracks on my ipod. these soundtracks include: moulin rogue (taken place in paris which is one of my destinations), the sound of music (taken place in salzburg which is another destination), and the phantom of the opera (taken place in the paris opera house). listening to theses songs and picturing the images that come to mind make me overwhelmingly excited for my travels! which helps to ease any apprehension i may have about wandering around residential areas, lugging a huge backpack, knowing that people in their homes are probably wondering about my mental state.