May 19th Venice

This morning we arrived in Venice. Without sleeping on a super creepy train. Lots of trains today, if you didn't already know, Venice is like an island, with lots of water canal streets, so we stayed "off" the island and in some other part of the city so we had to commute to the actual city and back. We weren't able to officially check into our hotel,  so we left our backpacks and then ventured back into the city.

(Sidebar, the lady that owned the hotel we were staying at looked /and reminded me of the lady from Eurotrip during the end credits of the movie, YOWZA!)

Onward. We arrived into the city very VERY early, which was awesome because it was so nice to see when there aren't a lot of people around. Venice is SO confusion to navigate around, its like a maze and you feel like one of those little mice running around trying to find the cheese.

We walked around through tiny streets, past piazzas and over canals and finally came to St. Marco's Square. There we walked up and down by the water and saw lots and lots of gondolas. Jeff went up some tower to get a better view of the city, and Sloan and I fought off all the beggars.

We got pretty lost trying to find some place to eat, and ended up in a bar and ordered a pizza! WHOA! So good!!!!

On our way back to the hotel, we passed all the fancy shops (Burberry, Chanel, Prada, etc.) There were so many, and all in hidden little corners of the city.

We arrived back at the hotel finally got our room and napped out for a few hours, showered and returned to the city for a Gondola ride, more pizza, and our first taste of Italian gelato. Holy Crap! I'm addicted.

The Gondolier man was awesome! He had been gondoliering for 18 years!!! He was so funny and he gave us a student discount, after coaxing Jeff to ride with us "Yeah, come on Jeff!" haha so awesome!

Shortly after our ride was over, we were tuckered out and headed back to watch the Chelsea v Bayern Munich soccer game. Chelsea won, but I don't care that much because I've decided that I support Liverpool. :)

-JEN

PS- Remember the Danny DeVito commericals

May 18th

I'm writing to you from an overnight train to Venice. It's 1:30 in the morning, and I'm pretty sure we are somewhere in Italy, but I can't be certain. I would be sleeping right now, dear journal, but I have a horrid sore throat that has intensified over the past few days, and my ears are popping like crazy.

Everyone else is sleeping, so I decided to take my mind off my ears by writing to you about how the day went. I'm also writing in very poor writing conditions as there is very low light, I don't have my glasses on, and I'm in a moving train car. But anyway...

Today was a fabulous day! We went to Fussen, Germany to see the infamous Disney Castle.   Neuschwanstein Castle, or more commonly known as Cinderella's castle is absolutely magnificent!! Neighbor to that Castle....is another castle: Hohenscwangau. Not as cool, but I only saw it from afar.

We woke up around 8:45am and walked to the train station, dropped off our backpacks and hopped on a 2 hour train to Fuessen, a quaint little town, mostly visited by tourists. Entering Fussen on the train you're able to see Neuschwanstein Castle that basically sits atop a mountain, I bet your thinking how we got up there journal. Well, the only Disney fairy tale way how, a horse-drawn carriage of course!!

Neuschwanstein Castle

Tickets to tour the actual inside of the Castle was already sold out for the day, but touring the outside of it was way beyond amazing!! It was so gigantic, I don't know how anyone could ever live there.

We continued on to cross a sick bridge with a waterfall that wasn't far away from the castle, it had the most righteous views, and after that we hiked down the mountain. Such an spectacular afternoon.

Jeff went to see the Hohenscwangau Castle, while Sloan and I went through town and ate some lunch. We all ended up at a gift shop, where I bought my dad a PUZZLE POSTCARD!!!! OMG THE GREATEST INVENTION EVER!!!

Hohenscwangau Castle

We hopped on a train back to Munich, and once we got there went on a scavenger hunt for some Bayern Munich attire....but all the shops were closed. Unlucky. Then boarded a train to Venice.

Thank god, this is the last overnight train!! There is a man that just walked into our train car, after there was a argument outside, he sat down next to me, took his shoes off, and propped his feet between Sloan and Jeff. Also, his friend is sitting outside our car on suitcases. Creepy!!!

St. Marco's Square

UPDATE: The man and the guy sitting outside our door got up and left the train, and police opened our compartment looking for them. Holy terrifying!!!

We finally made it Venice, and can't check into our hotel room, so I write my goodbyes while sitting on the steps of St. Marco's Square.....so tired

-JEN

May 17th

If you thought the Poland train ride was long, oh baby! The train to Munich was way longer. We had a sleeper car for most of the journey, and I slept pretty well. It was super hot in the car and I woke up sweating but on the up side I did get to use my sick Sleeping Mask for the first time, and that in itself it exciting!!

We had a few hours layover in Vienna, and then another train. Good golly, those Austrians love to talk at high volumes in confined spaces. I blocked most of it out with the Jack Johnson discography. Hours later, we arrived in Munich and walked to our hotel.

Finally journal, A SHOWER!! After 3 days of traveling and night trains, it felt majestic to finally be clean. After that, I took a short nap and went off the find a place to do some laundry. Whilst doing laundry Jeff walked over to a pizza place and ordered a pepperoni pizza. Since obviously they spoke German, they had no idea what pepperoni meant. So about 30 min later Jeff comes back with a pizza that's half cheese, half every different pepper and meat the place had to offer. LOL! It was pretty good, esp. since we hadn't eaten in a while.


Oh man it was so good to be clean and have clean clothes!!! We got back to the hotel and rested up for tomorrow by watching a Johnny Depp marathon in German.

Shabbot Shalom,

-JEN

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