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.