May 16th

Hi friend,

Today after a super long train ride we ended up in Krakow, Poland at 7am. With minimal sleep... this is exciting! It was so cold, like cardigan, hoodie, and jacket type cold. I was so ill prepared. We boarded another intercity train for Auschwitz, I personally thought it was maybe a 15 minute ride, but it turned into a 2 hour odyssey. Bringing the grand total of travel time to around 12 hours on some sort of train. Now journal, don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining , I'm just explaining that it took a really long time, but what was about to happen next is pretty life-changing. Experiencing Auschwitz is extreme.

We got off the shuttle and walked into the concentration camp, right on the train tracks that delivered all the prisoners. We walked through the barbed wire fencing and passed guard towers that surrounds the entire camp. If that sentence enough didn't give you chills we proceeded to walk around through the living quarters of the prisoners and eventually made our way to the ruins of the crematories.

It's a hard concept to wrap your head around the fact that 1.5 MILLION people lived and died in this specific spot for no reason at all.

There were a lot of memorials with candles surrounding them, in a lot of different languages. While I was walking around I thought about how interesting it would be to interview a survivor and know their story.  Walking around, there was a lot of Polish high school students in group tours not really paying attention fully to what was happening around them. I know growing up for me I was always interested in WWII type things, I hope younger generations still appreciate everything past generations have shown us.

After we finished touring we ate some lunch (I ate a hot dog, and I will have to say Prague and Poland have the best bread ever!) and headed back to the train station. We have an appointment with Munich tomorrow that we can't miss. Our train didn't leave until 9pm and we got back to the station at 5pm, so we sat in the station and played some 10,000 when a little Polish girl named Elena approached us with words and phrases her dad was telling her to say to us.

She would run around in circles and then stop in front of Jeff and say "I'm an alien" and giggle and run off. She didn't know what she was saying because she couldn't speak English, but it was so funny!!

We boarded the train to Munich and met our train car mate named Peter from Argentina, he gave us candy and  a story about his life and his travels and then we all went to sleep. IN OUR FIRST SLEEPER CAR..WITH BEDS!! Peter was awesome, and sleeping while lying down is always a plus...

Until tomorrow,
 -JEN

May 15th

Hey there loser. JK!

Today I woke up in a comfy bed and proceeded to take an equally comfy shower. Only to find out when I got out, we only had 15 minutes before we had to check out. YIKES! Talk about speed packing!! Jeff hadn't even woken up yet, and everyone was going crazy. not really.

We went downstairs to check out and hopped into a Prague Castle tour. Not having read the sign I was ill prepared for this trip (which I thought would be maybe an hour), it turned out to be a few hours of a "slight" hike around the castle. Seeing where the best views of the castle are, in such places as "the meadow" and "the valley" and the tour guide telling us that you can hear the underworld if you put your ear on the fountain. I would definetely say it was the strangest tour I've ever been on. We didn't actually go into the castle, only around.

We stopped at a little shop to get some snacks and Sloan and I grabbed what looked to be a delicious sandwich type thing consisting of a bread roll with a piece of bacon on top with melted cheese on top of that. WOAH! Delicious.


We kept walking and saw a bit of the city surrounding the castle, a statue of some importance, and some musicians. Then we passed these really old cars that were just parked there like it wasn't a big deal! It was!

We took some photos with Prague's city overview as the background and left the tour to continue on to the Old Town. We stopped at the church, oh sorry Journal, I mean "Cathedral" and it was pretty gigantic.

Screams EUROPEAN!

We saw the Atomic Clock that has been running since the 1400's go off. People played trumpets and loads of people were standing around it. The town itself looked like it was a standard European town from a movie, it was insane.

Sloan and Jeff went off to see a famous bridge, and I did some wandering around and found Eric a present. Before I left he said "I want something from Europe that screams EUROPEAN." I think I did that justice. Smuggling it into the States might take some work, but it'll be an adventure. ----->

After we all met back up, we went back to the hostel to grab our bags and  headed off to prepare for a very long train ride  to Krakow.

Talk Soon,


 -JEN

May 14th

Yo!

Woke up in a much better state of mind. Had a fantastic nights rest and a proper BKFST consisting of some sort of cornflakes cereal, goats milk (lol maybe?) a roll with cream cheese  and not an orange! After a shower I felt refreshed for the day.

Jeff was meeting up with his foreign exchange student and taking a walking tour of Berlin, so Sloan and I decided it was time to experience one of the greatest bike tours in the world. Berlin's Fat Bike Tour!!

We walked from our hostel over to the meeting place in front of the TV tower. On the way we stopped to purchase some water. Unfortunately, my mind wasn't in Europe and I didn't even check to see if it was fizzy. I'm sorry Europe, but why is everything fizzy??? So here I go and take a sip of this fizzy water, and in my mind it played out like a scene from a movie, where I spray it out of my mouth in disgust. But in real life, I drank it and cringed and shook my head in horror, the proceeded to throw it in the trash. Europe-1 Jen -0.

Finally we arrived at the bike place, and after embarrassing myself in front of NOT our tour group, we met up with Kieran, an Irish gentleman that was absolutely hilarious. He introduced the tour with some witty banter and he divided the group up. We decided to go with American Alex. He was so precious!!! We totally made the right choice, Alex was from California and had this stutter that would only present itself when he was talking about something he was extremely excited about, or when he was really nevous.

It was such an awesome tour we got to see all these historical places, and learn about all there histories, it was so fun. Plus, I was wearing sunglasses so if I didn't want to pay attention I just stared at people.

Sloan volunteered as the designated "Butt Babe" and had to make sure the group stayed together. For her efforts she was awarded a piece of the Berlin wall, and a free gigantic beer.  #WIN

We ate lunch with the group at this beer garden and got colored flavored beer. Mine was green and tasted like sour apple, and not at all like beer. I forget what it was called but it had the name Berliner in it. For food I ate a german sausage with sweet mustard..SO GOOD!!!!

The tour was suppose to end at 330-4, which would give us only 20 minutes to go back to the hostel, grab our backpacks, and get to the train station. 

Frantic about getting to the train on time, we hired a pedi-cab...hahahahahaha!!!Terrifying, and hilarious. We got to the train station on time, met up with Jeff, and went to the platform only to find out the train actually left 20 minutes later...and was a half hour late!

Man who navigated the pedicab

Finally the train arrived and off to Prague we went. We got one of those sick Harry Potter type of train compartments all to ourselves until a few hours later a man came in and smelled like salami, it was gross.

Arrived in Prague at night and the city looked pretty sketchy! Found our hostel (Sir Toby's) and retired for the day. The hostel was even better then the last one, we shared a room with 5 Irish/Canadian people who were absolutely entertaining and on there way to Budapest.



-JEN

Sweat, Roses, & Tears

May 13th

J!

I don't really like Amsterdam. I guess maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance but what I saw, wasn't that impressive. I guess I was only there for 1 day so I can't say much about it.

Let's move on...

Got up this morning and made the mistake of taking a shower..WHOA! not in that hostel, EVER. AGAIN! So gross, Thank god we're only staying one night, pretty sure I caught a disease.

Let's discuss Carlos, our roommate, he's from Spain, didn't speak any English, so only Jeff was able to talk to him. Carlos was creepy, and always creepily smiled at us, he also had a tramp stamp tattoo, something I never needed to know.

Thankfully, after my disgusting shower we packed up and shuffled off to Berlin. If you couldn't tell by now, I'm not in the most pleasant of moods so a 5 hour train ride and a 25 minute backpack walk (remember when I told you Liverpool wasn't the longest walk. LOL either is this)  is not my idea of a great time. I attempted to stay optimistic, and finally Jeff found us a hostel called Helter Skelter.

In comparison to last nights hostel, that didn't even have a name, this was considered heavenly. Once settled in we realized we were staving and headed out for some food. Hostel Tom told us we can find some currywurst at the closer train station. We never actually found it, but we did get some sandwiches. Now I can't tell you what it was called, but I can tell you it involved chicken, cream cheese, eggs, and cucumbers. Needlesstosay, it was weird, but I ate it.

BERLIN HAS DUNKIN DOUNTS, and it was freezing. No one told me that I would need winter wear when I was backpacking in May, so everything I had on was light layers and still not enough, so hot chocolate from Dunkin Donuts hit the spot.

We went back to the hostel to figure out our next move for the morning, and showered in acceptable showers

May 12th

Hi,

Why Sloan and I thought it would be a great idea not to go to sleep last night is beyond me. I am definitely feeling the stupidity of it now. We left the apt @ 5AM to catch a 7AM train from King's Cross to Amsterdam by way of Brussels.

Naturally at King's Cross we stopped and took a photo by Platform 9 3/4, because we're that awesome!!

We had a connecting train in Brussels with an hour layover, so we got some food and waited. We boarded the train with our EuroRail passes and right before we left the conductor come by to check and said we had to get them verified before we could leave the station. So we had to get off that train and get verified and wait for the next train. Which wasn't bad because it was only another hour wait, but running on ZERO sleep was zero fun!

We got on the next train with no problem and off we were to Amsterdam. By the time we got there I was exhausted and we still had a whole city to see. Our original plan was to get back on the train a few hours later ad head to Berlin, but the next train wasn't until 8AM the next morning, so we had to find a place to stay. But lets not get ahead of ourselves. We dropped our bags in a locker at the train station and set out to see Anne Frank's house. 

We walked around the city a bit and heard this commotion and followed it to  a football rally. There were a few guys standing on a second story balcony shouting through megaphones and a crowd of people watching them and chanting after them. The crowd was holding up signs like FUTBOL TERRORIST! which kind of freaked me out, I thought a riot was going to start, but it didn't and we continued to Anne's house.  We walked over some canals and though tiny streets and passed LOTS of bikes and even a place called Jennifer!

Anne's house was amazing to see. The stairs are so narrow and steep and the bookcase is still there that hid the doorway to the upstairs. It was so intense to see especially when we got into Anne's room because some pictures that she hung up where still up on her wall.

After we went to eat at some strange bar and had burgers, that did NOT taste like burgers and check into a sketchy hostel in the red light district. haha.

We went to get our backpacks and walked over to the library so Jeff and Sloan could use the internet. I was so tired I fell asleep by the computers and a librarian came over to me and started yelling at me in Dutch for sleeping, so I woke up and listened to music. Shortly after we left and went back to the hostel and finally just passed out!!

 
-JEN

May 11th

Bueno!

We decided to get up early (Erin, Brittany, Sloan, Jeff, and I) and do touristy things, and I am so glad we did. We started off walking from our apt. to Abbey Road Studios, and of course we walked across the street like the Beatles did on the album cover. YES! Check! There was this lady there that kept crossing the street and everytime she got back to the side she started on, she changed shoes and walked back across. I don't know why.

There was no traffic signal or stop sign at this "intersection" so drivers got angry a lot of the time. haha OH WELL!

We kept walking and ran into our first phone booth!!! YESSSS!!!! the English version of Bill & Ted can begin!.

We kept walking (which is a LOT of walking) and got tired at Kensington Garden. (Fun fact, Queen Victoria lived in the Palace there before Buckingham Palace was built, then moved). We ate Pret a Manger in the park and decided it was a great idea (obviously) to rent bikes and cycle around the park. We got to see the whole park in like half the time. Bikes are sooo awesome.





We got to see the Peter Pan statue, Princess Diana Memorial, Kensington Palace (?) Castle(?) I don't remember what it was called, and then finally got off the bikes and went to see Buckingham Palace. This is when we met up with George and Dean, the locals who didn't want to go sightseeing, lol! So us Americans navigated our way around London up until now.

After many a pictures were taken we hit up Westminster Abbey, Parliament, and Big Ben. Where in the mist of walking from one to another George, and Dean both got held up by a silver statue. They were not to impressed. haha




So here we are standing on some bridge (which later in the journey, you will realize how randomly often we meet people on bridges, lol) and one REBECCA WARNER PERRY pops up behind us!! Ahhh, reunited and it feeels soo good!!! We walked and talked our way down the river and got so caught up in everything that Sloan, Becky and I lost everyone else. We decided to hit Starbucks, and then the infamous Nando's!


 

We walked around town some more and went to Covent Garden, this outdoor type of shopping centre and returned to the apt absolutely tuckered out from all the walking. It wasn't until later that everyone else returned and I threw out the dice and taught Erin and Sloan how to play 10,000. Awesome day!


THE END!

- JEN

to remember:

"Why are there helmets so big?" -Me
"Because they're...full of secrets!" Sloan

May 10th

YOLO!

Today we slept in, and woke up around noon, got ready and left Basingstoke around 3pm. What was suppose to be an 1 1/2 drive turned into 3 hours....yikes! We made it though, journal, we survived . Once in London we got into our "flat" / sick apt and Sloan and I just napped out all afternoon (jet lag caught up with us....whhhhat?) The boys went to park the car and pick up Erin and Brittany.

4 hours later and after I woke up and watched The Great Debaters, the boys returned and Sloan woke up and we all went to get some food, and drinks. By that time, nearly everywhere was closed so we came back and played some glorious Ring of Fire. I know what your thinking journal, you guys really sleep and play Ring of Fire a lot...well SHUT UP!

I passed out half way through the game, cuz...drinking is soooooo boring!



Although, we we're slightly productive and did some laundry...


G Nite!

-JEN

Remember how we didn't drink Magner's.LOLZ