“august 12 is a day of celebration, joy, happiness, and re-uniting”

August 12th is the day we arrive back home from Europe. She’s adorable.

Love you Kels.

Once at the castle, we were awed by its beauty. This is the castle that is said to have inspired Cinderella’s castle at Disneyland, and we can see why. Since we didn’t want to wait in line to go inside, we took another 20 minute hike to the Marienbrücke, the bridge over a gorge that overlooks the castle (you can see it in my pictures). Here we got some great pictures of the castle from the rickety bridge. You could bend the wood easily beneath your feet. There was a guy dressed in lederhosen who offered to take pictures of us, and remembering Hollywood Boulevard, we politely declined. Apparently we offended the guy, who said “It’s free” and then stormed off. He did have a tip jar at the end of the bridge, so I felt partially justified. We were able to get someone else to take our picture, no tips necessary.

After the bridge, there were small trails that went up the mountain. It was more crawling than hiking, as we went almost straight up the mountain. It was worth the climb as the view of the castle, lake, and mountains was spectacular.

Here’s a video I took from the summit: (there’s no sound, and the quality is poor but hopefully you can get a sense of the scenery)

After climbing down a wire fence to get back to the path, we headed down into the gorge below the bridge. Instead of taking the path, we climbed down into the river, and jumped from rock to rock all the way down. This was one of my favorite things we did, as you know how much I like doing this when we go camping. This was like Clifty Falls times 10 though. We made our way to the bottom, and then hiked back up to the castle to go back to the town. It made my day that Samer (the guy from Lebanon) said that going down the river was the coolest thing he had ever done. We ate some good food and I bought a sweet glass shaped like a boot. First souvenir I’ve bought yet.

We went back to Munich and spent another night at the Hofbräuhaus. I tried the original and the dark and really enjoyed the dark beer. Caroline had a beer that was mixed with lemonade and was very sweet. The meatballs, we decided, were better than the brats, even Caroline loved them! We then walked back to the hostel, because the metro wasn’t working (I’d rather walk anyway). We stayed in the bar for awhile, and I talked Middle Eastern politics with Samer until 2 in the morning. It was very interesting hearing his point of view and I’m really glad that we met him. I’m so happy for the opportunity to travel because of experiences like this.

We slept and got up early for our train back to Maastricht. Munich was one of our favorite trips. I would recommend it to anyone.

The next morning, we woke up and took the S-Bahn to Dachau, the site of the first Nazi concentration camp for “political prisoners”. It was the second camp to be liberated by American or British forces. Over 200,000 people from 30 countries were imprisoned at Dachau over 12 years, of which 1/3 were Jewish. The camp was originally designed to hold 6,000 people, but by the end of WWII, it held over 32,000 prisoners. The camp was very depressing. There was a museum that seemed to never end, full of grotesque photographs describing life at the camp. One thing we noticed was that the camp was enormous and had lots of trees, yet there were no birds. It’s as if it’s too evil a place for them to live. Although depressing and disturbing, we were glad that we went and experienced it.

After the camp, we headed back to Munich and took a little nap. We then took the metro to the Englischer Garden, a park that’s twice the size of New York’s Central Park with 4 beer gardens. After the garden, we walked through the Marienplatz (main square) to see the Glockenspiel, but there was construction, and we couldn’t get a very good look at it. We then headed to the Hofbräuhaus, one of the most famous beer halls. It’s absolutely enormous and loud. It’s impossible to get a seat, so we had to wander around awhile. The beer only comes in 1 liter mugs (except the Weissbier) and was very good. The brats, meatballs, and sauerkraut were equally as good, and not very expensive either. Our waiter was great, and he let us take the mugs from our table, so we tipped him well on top of the tip that was already included in our bill.

We headed back to Wombat’s and spent the rest of the night in the hostel bar, where we met Samer, a guy from Lebanon (the country) who would accompany us on our trip to Neuschwanstein castle the next day.

People were everywhere! Compared to the Running of the bulls in Pamplona this was a cake walk, much more sophisticated crowd, but they were everywhere. We arrived around noon and we stood for 5 hours with the rest of Paris waiting to celebrate all the men that had just made it through a month of cycling across all of France. I can not begin to imagine how they all felt to have the race finally over with! We grabbed sandwiches while we waited for the cyclists, and played games to keep ourselves busy. It was a very cool experience, since it is a famous event, but personally I don’t think I would attend again. Waiting 5 hours in the same spot to see the group of bikes whiz by for 5 seconds is a long day! But like I said, I am glad to be able to say that I have seen it, and when they went by it was amazing to see how that group of bikes kept their speed while riding so close together, and to think they had been doing that for a month. Wow!

I will have to add that we were “Those Americans” at the race! We all bought the bright yellow Tour de France shirts and wore them. We stood out in the crowd and had fun doing so! After the race was over we were nervous and cutting it pretty close to making our train back to Maastricht that evening. We finally made it through the crowds and made it back to the station to grab our bags, and even get some dinner before the train left. On the way home we did the usual recap of the highlights of our trip, and laughed a second time about them.

Side Note: At the end of the trip Josh and i were both talking and agreed that Paris has to extreme sides to it. It is the most beautiful, dirtiest city I have ever seen it. I without a doubt will return to see the rest of the city, but you can get outside of the main city and there are some pretty rough areas. Not all of the subways are kept as clean as I am accustomed to… I was surprised at parts of it… but my breath was taken away at others!

We walked down the tower after numerous pictures and were starving for some food. We quickly went to a nearby bridge where we got a better view of the entire tower and took fun pictures with the group. We grabbed a bite to eat and then we split up once again. Some guys went back to take a quick nap, while the rest of us went to what was supposed to be a popular flea market. I personally have been to much better flea markets, but we didn’t want to leave empty handed so all the girls bought scarves. Scarves here are worn everywhere in a variety of ways, you see women with all different colors and styles of scarves. After the flea market we went home all took quick naps and met up for our second night in Paris.

We wanted to see the Arc again during the day, and ended up being there at the exact time that soldiers were doing some kind of ceremony. We did a wonderful walk down the Champs-Elysees, which had every overpriced store that i could imagine, but it was a fun walk down. While on the street we stopped at a delicious Italian restaurant, reminded me a little of the Olive Garden, but not such a chain restaurant! After dinner we walked to a nearby park that was near the opera house and the Museum and played a quick games of charades while we waited for it to get dark. This was very amusing as we all took turns acting out such things as octopuses, double decker buses, and other members of the group. We were wanting to see the Eiffel Tower lit up at night so once 10 pm came around we began walking over to the tower. Every hour it lights up and sparkles. We found a comfy spot on the grass under the tower and sat for about 2 hours, enjoying each others company and the beautiful sight in front of us! We got our last crepe of the day, sharing again, but just as delicious.

Finally, we wanted to see the Moulin Rouge from the movie. I love the movie and thought it might be something fun to see. If you have ever seen the movie, it makes it look like it is in the city of paris and is a sight to see. Anyways a few hours later we were all very disappointed! To arrive at the building we had to walk through the “seediest” (as Josh would say) area of town i had seen yet. We felt like we were in the red light district of Paris. Not a fun area to be in, especially at the time of night we went! Luckily us girls had strong guys to protect us Anyways, once we arrived at the Moulin Rouge, it was a building with a cheesy looking wind mill on the top. Huge waste of our time! I guess we had to go to see it, and now realize what we weren’t missing out on!

We went home finally that evening and fell fast asleep in anticipation of spending tomorrow at the Tour de France.

After lunch we went to the Sacre Coeur Cathedral, which happened to be around the corner from our hotel. It was beautiful. It sat up on a high hill with a million steps ready for us to climb up. Everywhere we go in Europe there are people trying to sell us something, anything! Anyways, at the church when we walked in there was a group of very persistent men who grabbed as many of us as possible and put bracelets around our wrists and started talking a mile a minute. somehow myself and some others got out of it, but two of the guys finally gave in a gave a few euro to these men. That was the only the beginning of the constant nagging by salesmen in Paris!

We walked back to our hotel, waited a few more minutes and finally they had one room out of three ready for us. We dropped all of our bags in the one room and headed to the Louvre. From 6-9 on fridays the Louvre is free for 18-26 year olds! We were able to see the most amazing pieces of art for free. We spent 3 hours in the museum, seeing the Mona Lisa and the countless Egyptian, Greek and Roman art. After three hours, the museum closed and we had probably been through maybe 1/4 of it. It was the largest museum I had ever seen! This will be put on my list of things to go back and finish the entire museum one day!

We left the museum super hungry and found a kebab place nearby. Disclaimer: Kabob’s are EVERYWHERE in Europe, they are the fast food of this continent. After dinner we ordered our first crepe of the trip, Josh and I shared it… it was delicious!!! We split up after dessert and half of us went on the ferris wheel in the city and got to see the city all lit up, beautiful sights. I discovered that my camera doesn’t take pictures well at night, but i had to work with what I had. After the ferris whell, we took the metro to the Arc de Triomphe to see it at night, lit up. It was massive!!

Finally the night was complete, we had finished our first day in Paris and I had already fallen in love with it. We checked into our final 2 rooms, and fell asleep with plans to wake up early for the Eiffel tower.

That evening we returned to our favorite steak place because after seeing Josh’s steak everyone wanted one of their own! We ate some dinner at the place around the corner and then decided to spend the evening down towards the river at the Charles Bridge in a big time Club next door to the one we were at the night before.

Again we arrived at the club early and luckily there was no lines or super crowds. We walked in and the first floor was extremely hot already, so we decided to explore a little the 5 remaining floors up. All 8 of us stuck together the entire night.. I am sure we stuck out as the 8 Americans in the bar! At the very top floor we found an almost relaxing room full of bright red couches. This is where we decided to spend the next 4+ hours at, and we quite enjoyed ourselves. It wasnt overly crowded.. and our little corner we chose was comfortable to hang out in!

The night grew late once again, time seems to fly when you are having fun as the saying goes. We walked a quick 10 min walk home and all crashed. None of us looked forward to the early 7 AM wake up call in order to catch our train home.

I’m not going to lie, the train ride home was not as pleasant as others, we were all super tired, but we are only in Prague together once and we all had the most fun possible! It seems to be a theme going on during our weekends, enjoy everything now.. and sleep later!

It is amazing that I am actually looking forward to get back to IU.. to GET SLEEP

The girls all woke up earlier than the boys, we had to wait for two other people from the group that were meeting us in Prague after their final. They had taken the overnight train and arrived in Prague around 9:00 AM. Once they got settled and everyone had showered we started walking towards the Prague Castle and Charles Bridge that were on our list of must sees while in Prague. Along with the heat everyone was tired, so we were dragging a little bit in our walking speed. Prague was 10x more beautiful in the sun! Every building, famous or not, looked detailed, old, and marvelous!

We grabbed some food along the way, and finally made our way to the Charles Bridge. The view from there was wonderful! you could see down the river and across to the castle. We stopped to take a few pictures and then continued on our walk. It was touristy in the area that we were at, but it wasn’t as bad as I had expected. All along the streets and across the bridge there was a large amount of artists selling their artwork. It was fun to look at the variety of items for sale.

Once over in the castle, we walked up what felt like a million stairs.. it kept going up. But once at the top it was worth it. We had a perfect view of the entire city of Prague!! The sun was still beating down so we didn’t stay long in any one spot that was in direct sunlight and we frequently stopped for a rest. We walked around inside the walls of the castle, finally finding a map and trying to direct ourselves around to know a little bit more about what we were looking at. We were all hot and with traveling in such a big group, everyone isn’t going to always want to do the same things… so we saw a few more sights and then stopped by supposedly “the oldest pub in Prague” (1475), grabbed a quick drink and then continued the long walk home.

That night we cleaned up , ready to go out and went on a boat cruise. It was a pretty humorous situation to me… Don’t get me wrong we had a delicious buffet meal, probably one of the best meals we have had since we have been in Europe! The scenery was beautiful, but I am pretty sure our group of 9-21 year olds.. brought the average age of the boat down by a good 30 years. We enjoyed ourselves but periodically on the trip we would see several boats going by with techno music, and everyone dancing! Although we wished we were on those at times, I doubt they had as good of a meal as we did!

After the boat trip, the bus took us downtown to where the club was located that we wanted to go to that evening. We piled off of the bus and walked into the club. The cover was 100 Czech! Which sounds like a lot but is really 5 dollars which is normal. The exchange rate was about 20 Czech to 1 US dollar. We showed up early to the club and were basically the only ones there. The music was fun, we made our own dance party for the time being! As the night went on, we danced some more… sat outside enjoying the views and again laughed so hard my abs were hurting by the end of the night! After an incredibly late night we all went back to the room and got some sleep, vowing that no one would set an alarm and we would sleep in.