UPDATE: I was informed that “kebob” is actually spelled “kebab.” My mistake.

So, I have, without fail, managed to get the time wrong for almost every tour I’ve tried to do.  Haha but that’s not a problem!!  Sometimes I get there early

Yesterday I did another New Europe free walking tour.  I will never cease to be amazed at how great these tours are.  I’ve been recommending them to everyone.  All of my guides have been extremely knowledgeable and nice and just genuinely love the cities they’re working in.

My guide, Michael, was great, and an Irishman!  Although those qualities usually go hand-in-hand.  The tour ended up being almost four hours, but it was so interesting that I didn’t even notice.  I got to see all of the “old” buildings (Munich was heavily bombed during WWII and most of the buildings you see now are concrete reconstructions of what the city looked like before the war) and Michael pointed out a bunch of really interesting memorials that I otherwise wouldn’t have even noticed.  I can’t get over how great the tour was.

I also did New Europe’s Beer Challenge last night!  No, it’s not what you’re thinking.  It was nothing like Beer Fest.  We went around to a bunch of different beer gardens and the beer museum and learned a lot about the history of beer in Munich, and we sampled all of the different kinds of beer brewed in Munich.  Everyone there was just there to have a good time, unlike pubcrawls where most people just want to get sloppy and embarrassingly drunk.  The challenge part of the Beer Challenge was actually to be the most knowledgeable person there.  I didn’t win, obviously, but I met some really great people, including some kilt-wearing Scotsmen and a Gaelic-speaking Irishman from Tipperary.

I’d like to apologize for the lack of photos lately.  The internet here takes freaking forever and a half, but I think I’m going to set aside some time tonight to upload my pictures from Salzburg and what I’ve seen so far in Munich.

Also, I’m thinking about reformatting the layout of my blog.  My posts are getting wayyy too long for the front page.  Expect changes in the near future!

So, about the other things that sucked yesterday:

1)      My Sound of Music tour guide said that the nuns in the abbey sing in the church at half past five every day.  So, I got there at a quarter past the hour and sat there until a quarter to six.  They did not sing.  While I was sitting there, some bike tour stopped by and the guide said the nuns sing at eleven in the morning.  Great.

2)      Then I ran down back into town to listen to the Glockenspiel sing at six.  At about ten past the hour, it still hadn’t made any noise, so I asked some man sitting in a van who spoke very little English why the clock wasn’t going.  Apparently it only chimes from September to like November.  Perfect.

Maybe I’m just getting over the honeymoon phase of this trip, but I think it was just a combination of high expectations, lots of letdowns, and too much time in Salzburg.  You really only need one day, or two days if you do a day-long tour.

If you plan on doing a Sound of Music tour, don’t do what I did.  The bus was hot, I didn’t get to see much, and I felt like a herd of cattle every time we got in and out of the bus.  Try to do something smaller, like a bike tour, if you have the stamina, or a tour with a small van so you can actually get out and see things.

Salzburg has been kind of a bust.

Yesterday, I went on two tours: one to the Bavarian salt mines, and one Sound of Music tour.  At the salt mines, my guide only spoke German, and he kept forgetting to hit the start buttons for the audio tours.

Now, the disappointment surround the Sound of Music tour could have been my fault.  I did prep myself by listening to the soundtrack on repeat for an entire day before I went.  But, I did a bus tour with about seventy other people on a coach bus.  Most of the things we saw were just drive-bys, and they were mostly on the left side of the bus.  I was sitting on the right side.

Today I decided to cancel my last night in Salzburg (tomorrow) and just go to Munich a day early.  There isn’t a whole lot to do here.  I saw everything there is to see in about one afternoon.  And I had time to get a kebob.

My Salzburg map is practically life-size.  It doesn’t take more than fifteen minutes to walk anywhere.  I went to the castle, the abbey, the glockenspiel, and one other place that I can’t think of right now.  Those were mostly busts, too.  I’ll write about that tomorrow, and I’ll post some pictures.  Right now I need to finish packing and go to bed.

Today, I was sitting on the bank of the Salzach River journaling, and I saw an old man whip out his junk and pee into the river.  It’s time to leave Salzburg.

Good night!

On my last day in Prague, I decided to go see the Bone Chapel in Kutna Hora.  Since I really only spent like $10 a day here, including beer, I decided to splurge on a tour of the chapel.  We also got to see St. Barbora’s Cathedral, which was unbelievably beautiful.

After the tour, a group of us decided to go out to this beer garden (Letenské sady) overlooking the entire city.  It was so beautiful.  We sat down with two other backpackers and ended up spending the rest of the night with them.  It was awesome!  We talked about absolutely everything:  our travels, our lives, our bread…  It was perfect hahaha

I loved Prague.  Please enjoy my pictures:

On Monday, I rolled into Prague around 1:30pm my time.  I hadn’t anticipated having extra time to do stuff, so I sat around my hostel pretty disappointed that not a lot of people seemed to speak English.  So, I pulled out my little netbook and dinked around because there is no Wifi here.  A really nice guy from California, who DID speak English, asked me about my netbook and we started talking.  I ended up hanging out with him and his friend all day running around kind of the armpit of Prague, but that wasn’t a big deal because they were really interesting.

My friend Stuart whom I met in Berlin was also in Prague on Monday, so after I left my two new friends, I waited around in Old Town Square for Stuart.  While I was waiting for him, I chatted it up with some really funny guys from Mexico and pretended not to understand Spanish so I could eavesdrop when they thought I couldn’t understand them haha.

When Stuart finally showed up, my Mexican friends left me and Stuart and I grabbed some beers and sat down in the middle of Old Town Square to watch the Spain football match.  I love how much Europeans are into football.  Football seems to form really strong community ties within every country other than the United States.

Yesterday I missed the free morning New Europe tour, so I met up with Stuart again and we walked around the Jewish Quarter.  We found a shop that sold authentic handmade Slavic tchotchke (which reminded me a lot of my Grandma’s house), so I went in and bought a hand-carved hair clip and a hand-carved palm mirror.  Then we went on a different tour with Tip Trips up to the Prague Castle.  The tour was all right, but I like the New Europe ones better and plan on going on it today.

Prague is so beautiful.  I love how old everything is.  In old cities, everything has a story.  On the side of the river with Old Town Square, everything seems to be more pragmatic and practical whereas the side with the castle has a history of mysticism and wonderment.  It’s wonderful.

Well, that’s all I have time to write before my tour leaves.  Enjoy 70+ pictures!  (I’ll put captions on them today or tomorrow so you know what you’re looking at)

Today I was on my own for the first time in a long time.  Stuart went to Dresden for the day, but hopefully he and I will meet back up in Prague.  I sat myself down in the hostel’s kitchen for some breakfast and blogging this morning and ended up meeting these really cool guys from Sweden.

Thomas and Mack are travelling the world filming a documentary about street performers and what it’s like being a street performer in different countries.  There’s a good chance they’ll be in St. Paul this Fall, so hopefully I’ll get to see them again.

After breakfast I made my way back to Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis and went inside.  Lame.  The inside isn’t that great, and I kind of felt like it was a waste of time.  The outside is way more impressive.

Then I walked over to the War Memorial.  Why is everything under construction when I want to go see it?!?!  The memorial was boarded up because they’re doing construction on it, so instead of seeing the memorial itself, I got to see a very nice, giant wooden box with a painting of the memorial on the outside.  BUST!

Reichstag was next on my list, so I decided to wander through Tiergarten.  I got a little lost, but that was fine.  The Tiergarten was once a hunting ground, then it was bombed, and then it was heavily deforested during the hard times Germany had following the Second World War.  It has since been reforested and is now as beautiful as ever.  I highly recommend strolling through here if you have the time.

I underestimated how far Reichstag was from the War Memorial, so I ended up walking for a good… hour… but that’s fine.  When I finally made it to Reichstag, I only had to wait in line for forty-five minutes.  That might sound like forever, but it’s a relatively short wait for this particular place, and it’s TOTALLY worth it.

When you get to the dome, you have a bird’s eye view of all of Berlin.  You also get a free audio tour that explains everything you’re looking at as you walk up the dome.  I took a bunch of pictures from//of the dome and the observation deck.

I figured the Holocaust Memorial exhibit would be closed, and I’ve been pretty emotionally drained from all the other Holocaust exhibits I’ve seen, so I decided to save that for another day.  I also meant to go to a concentration camp, but I couldn’t find the time.  I’ll probably go to the one near Munich when I get there.

Falafel for dinner, blogging at the hostel, probably going to grab a beer and pack and go to bed.

Prague tomorrow!!!

I slept in a little bit yesterday which was absolutely woooonderful, and a little difficult since the sun comes up at like 5am here.  I walked around with my friend Stuart from New Zealand all day again, which was nice because he actually knows where he’s going.

We went to quite a few places.  We started back at the Topography of Terror so we could finish looking around and reading everything.  I highly recommend that exhibit to anyone visiting Berlin (and it’s FREE).  Then we made our way over to the Jewish Museum.

The Jewish Museum combines architecture and clever displays to force you to engage yourself.  It’s actually really interesting.  The way the main part of the museum is set up, when you walk in you become very disorientated because the hallways are set up in a zigzag formation and the floors are all slanted.  It’s very symbolic of the Jewish mindset at the beginning of the Second World War.  The displays are all inside the walls, and you have to almost press your face against the glass to be able to see them and read the captions, further engaging you.  Down one of the zigzags, you can enter the “Holocaust Tower.”  You have to open a large, thick metal door, and when it slams behind you, you find yourself along in a triangular, very tall, cement-walled room.  It’s very very dark with only a dim light from outside.  You can faintly hear the goings-on outside, but in the end you know you’re all alone.  It’s bone-chilling.  There’s also the Exile Garden.  Here, you have to walk on hazardous, uneven cobblestone through giant, slanted cement structures topped with willow trees.  It’s beautiful and significant.

After the main part of the museum, there’s a large exhibit on Judaism, which was interesting, but after the emotionally-draining first part of the museum, my attention span was at an all-time-low and I whizzed through the 150+ displays.

The next stop was the East Side Gallery.  Here, artists took over the last remaining strip of the Berlin Wall and reclaimed the space by painting beautiful murals signifying joy, remembrance, confusion, and the willingness to rebuild.  I think it’s amazing that most of the paintings have remained unmarred for so long.  My favorite portion had a caption which read, “Many small people who in many small places do many small things that can alter the face of the world.”  I included a LOT of pictures of the gallery so you can get an idea of what it looks like.

We ran over to Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis, but it was closed.  I think I’m going to try to stop by again today.

The line for the Reichstag was absurdly long, so we skipped that and made our way back to the hostel to find everyone else.  On our way past the Brandenburg Gate, we got stuck in the party end of the giant Gay Pride Parade that had taken place earlier in the day.  It was so fun!  Lots of people were dressed up and dancing and just having a really great time.  Once we got through, we took the U-Bahn back to the hostel, met up with the rest of our group, and walked over to the nearby industrial beer garden.

The beer garden is actually in an old bombed-out train depot in the middle of nowhere near our hostel.  They turned one of the old bomb shelters into a giant rock climbing wall and most of the rest of the area was just full of chairs and tables and big screens playing the World Cup games.

Another great end to another great day :]

Oh, Berlin.

So, yesterday, it took me about ten hours to get here.  When I finally did arrive, I decided to go out for a beer before bed, but, about a third into my liter, I realized I hadn’t eaten all day and nearly fell asleep in my glass at the bar.  Bad decision.  I was a little concerned about the rest of my stay in Berlin.

Luckily!  This morning I talked to a guy from New Zealand who was staying in my hostel room. Coincidentally he was planning on going to the same tour as I was, so I paired up with him all day.  We did the free tour again for a bit, and then met up with his friend from Melbourne to go watch the Germany World Cup game from the top balcony in a packed theatre.  It would have been better had Germany won, but it was still really fun.  We wound up walking through a park and grabbing a beer at a beer garden there before leaving his friend to go to Checkpoint Charlie and Topography of Terror.  The Topography of Terror was one of the most unsettling and life-altering exhibits I’ve ever been to.  It goes through a detailed history of how the Nazis started and progressed and the terror they brought upon unsuspecting Europe.  I highly recommend that exhibit to anyone in the Berlin area.

After the exhibits, he and I took the train back to our hostel because on Friday nights, the U Inn Berlin hostel has a night where you can come and learn to make authentic German food, AND you can eat of for FREE.  Yes!!!  Our chef decided to be a little more international today and make shepherd’s pie instead, but it was great.  Fun fact for everyone who’s been following my blog:  I, by chance, found out he had use some pineapple juice in the meat, so I ended up just eating the mashed potato top with cooked tomatoes and some strange German sauce.

At the dinner, I met a few kids from Georgia and Australia, and we, along with my new friend from New Zealand, bought a few beers and played hackeysack in a park late into the night, retreating to the hostel to check email, add each other on facebook, and watch some strange German television show about hot girls playing pranks on unsuspecting men.  And that is where I will leave you.  Have a wonderful rest of your night :]

Where to begin…

I’ve been living with my good friend Anna in Leiden, Holland for the last three days, and it has been wonderful.  On Monday, Anna and our friend Morgan collected me from Schiphol and brought me back to Anna’s where she made Dutch pancakes for us.  Dutch pancakes are kind of like crepes but a little thicker, and instead of being filled with fruit, you cook them with gouda or bacon or raisins.  Mmmmmmmmmm…

On Monday night, the three of us hung out in Leiden, caught up on each other’s lives, and talked about the Netherlands.

Part of the reason I’m taking this trip is to decide where I want to study abroad in Fall 2011.  Sure, I could go online and research these places, but it’s not the same.  I want to explore them and find the place where I feel I fit the best, the one that feels most like home.  I never realized what a small world I lived in up until three weeks ago.

On Tuesday I went off on my own and explored Amsterdam.  There’s a free tour put on by New Europe, so, because I have no money, I did that to get myself better acquainted with the city.  It was actually really fun because the tour guides are all really energetic and sarcastic and point out both the historical, the significant, and the more “entertaining” places to go.  They speed through most things, which is okay because you get to see a lot and you can pick out the places you want to go back to.

I actually walked right through the Red Light District without even realizing it.  It’s not that interesting.

Then yesterday, Anna took me to Den Haag, where Parliament and a lots of other neat buildings are.  We strolled around and she showed me a bunch of interesting things i.e. the sand sculpture contest that happens every year.  Usually the sculptures are recreations of famous paintings.  The most amazing thing I saw there was the Mesdag Panorama.  It’s this painting that is 120 meters around, and to see it you have to walk up these stairs into a gazebo.  Being in the gazebo makes you feel like you’re actually on the beach looking out at this scene, and what’s really cool is that the painting is exactly what Den Haag would have looked like had you been standing in that exact spot in the 1800’s.  Well worth the trip.

A couple cool things I learned about The Netherlands:

-Most churches aren’t used for religious reasons anymore.  The one by my friend’s house is used for college exams.

-They still have a royal family

-QUEEN’S DAY

-Most people speak enough English to help you if you’re lost

-Putting your hands under the table during dinner is REALLY rude

-I love red cabbage

-Parliament is not located in the capital

-There are more bikes than people

-Hardly any Dutch people actually use marijuana.  Most sales in Amsterdam are to tourists.

-A lot of Dutch people dislike Amsterdam because they think it’s crowded and embarrassing

-People from Holland are all extremely nice, except the ones on bikes.  They will hit you.

-The Dutch are very literal.  The New Church is the new church, The Royal Palace is the royal palace, and The National Monument is the national monument

This summer will change my life forever.

Today marks the last day I will spend in Northern Ireland, and this part of my journey is already fueling my growth and self-discovery, while introducing me to people and a place that will stay with me forever.

Northern Ireland is such an interesting little place. I spent my time working with and talking to people who are passionate about the Irish language, everyone from preschool teachers to politicians to radio DJs. What’s most interesting about these people and all residents in Northern Ireland is that everyone has a story, a very unique experience within this history in the making, and everyone is willing to share it. Northern Irelanders are so proud of their little piece of the world, and that’s heartwarming to see. They can tell you the whole history and significance of every village and church and field. I couldn’t even name all of the US presidents.

The nine wonderful people I lived with here have also changed me for the better (queue Wicked soundtrack). To be real with you for a second, I am a very shy, self-conscious person. I’ve been in college for two years and I still haven’t seemed to find a place where I fit, where I feel welcome. Within the first hour of being detained with these strangers, I felt more at home than ever. I stopped worry about how I looked and how people would react to things I did and said. This led to some pretty hilarious moments ie: somersaulting into the street because I was laughing so hard, knocking stuff off a ceiling at a bar because I was too busy dancing to care, gerbiling an entire flute band, keeping Tide-To-Go in business, and awkwardly swimming around in the ocean with my hands up because it was so cold, hoping that kicking and floating would get me from one place to another. Oh, and I kicked Honore in the face.

If any of you are reading this, thank you for helping me be myself.

The experiences I’ve had here have also changed me forever. I can’t believe that in two short weeks I met with Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness, got my face painted like Mimi from the Drew Carey Show, and jumped off cliffs into the ocean. There’s been so much more, but I’m having trouble describing it all in words.

If I didn’t have to go to school, I would stay here forever.

I feel it’s appropriate that I’m ending this trip where it started – not in the detainment section at customs, but sitting in Oakley Fayr sipping on a cup of tea.

As this chapter of my life closes, I can feel the next one beginning to write itself. Two predictions for the rest of this adventure:

- My life will never be the same
- Everyone in Europe will know who I am before I leave

I found a bunch of songs that include the name Annie. Enjoy!