Berlin, Prague, Budapest

I decided to group these three together because quite honestly it was kind of a continuous 5 day period.

I had to wake up early like 6 or so to make my 6 56 train to Berlin! Okay so I actually was suppose to go to Munich after Amsterdam before going to Prague. And actually, originally originally I was supposed to take an overnight from Amsterdam to Prague and just skip Germany all together until I was going to Stockholm which I had had high hopes of taking an overnight from Berlin. If you have read my past little guys, then you know that reservations are like a figment of the Eurail  company’s imagination-aka not happening. After doing some calculations (hehe, accordinggg to my calculations) that I did while in an eternal taxi ride when we arrived to Paris, like seriously, 10 miles took like 2 hours. Worst traffic I have EVER seen outside of Venezuela. The taxi driver was like yeahhh this is my last day working. After 10 years taxi drivering in Paris I think I am going crazy so I am moving to a small town in the south of France. ANYWAYS ACCORDING TO MY CALCULATIONS it actually was much better timewise as far as the time I am traveling to time I am in the city if I went to Berlin for a stop and then came back through Munich (I’m doing like a loop if you have realized). The train from Amsterdam to Prague was like 10 hours so decided to break it up and stop by Berlin. So only one day is definitely not enough for this city, but it wasn’t one that I really had plans to devote time since I had 3 weeks that were already quite packed with visitations of friends and such. I’m an idiot though and didn’t book a hostal before leaving before Amsterdam, probably because I was busy with mind numbing activities… but anyways finding one was like a 2 hour process. I was not familiar at all with the layout of the city and wasn’t really aware of how large and rather spread out it really is. Regardless though I went to some café with internet and found a hostal on the complete other side the city so by the time I finally got there is was like 15 or so? It had good reviews and was located in a cool area and wasn’t so expensive so no pasa nada.

I have this habit of not knowing at all what I am going to do in a city until I am on the train or bus or flight or whatever means of transportation to said city. So reading my handy dandy lonely planet on Western Europe, I got a pretty good list of the top sees to make the most of my short hours in the city. I felt like a Delta co-op doing a crash visit in a city haha

Reichstag in Platz der Republik

Brandenburg Gate in Pariser Platz- the symbol of Berlin! Really cool plaza.

Holocaust Memorial- it was free and I went in it. It was really depressing like basically just giving you the stats of how many Jews were killed from which countries of Europe during the Nazi regime. My favorite/most impacting room was one that contained personal memoirs and letters and diary entries of victims of the Holocaust. The things the human race is capable of doing is horrific.

East Side Gallery. Really really really cool. I actually liked it a lot more than the Lennon wall because it wasn’t like a clusterfuck of graffiti. Everything kind of had some sort of meaning and a lot were very impressive. I wasn’t sure if to like smile when taking pictures… awkward.

Walked around the museum area. I have kind of gotten to the point where I don’t really want to go into museums anymore. Especially like Natural History ones since I can do that in the United States. I love art museums but that is always close to full day commitment for me.

Ate a currywurst!With the Brandenburg Gate in the background. It was actually my only meal of the day. Oh had a milkshake too. Oops.

Hung out in Alexanderplatz and people watched some.

Berlin is really different. Like super edgy, full of young people with a very edgy style as far as clothes, piercings, tattoos, hairs etc. Then the historic part of it basically revolves around WWII. It’s a very interesting mix and I am sure the new generation is how they are due to the relatively recent events. I’d be interested to read articles on this matter.

After I started to get lonely… haha no but really after being around people almost constantly, it’s weird to have so much time on your own. Especially with a city so different, it would have been cool to have someone with me to like discuss it. Unbeknownst to me, I had an exciting night ahead of me J

Went back to the hostal and started talking to some people. I talked to Nicole about it this: now that it is summer and sooo many more people are doing exactly what I am doing (backpacking) everyone is much more open and friendly and willing to hang out. So with our group from the hostal: Darcy (American), Antoine (French Canadian), Tess (Austrailian), Ana (Slovenia). Ana, from what I understood, has been to Berlin several several times and loves it. So thanks to you, my dear, we had our night J

First we went to buy some GERMAN BEER (yummm) from some convenient store and then Ana began brainstorming on what to do. We first went to this underground (in the empty-warehouse sense of the word) where they were playing live music, everyone was high or on something, there was graffiti all over the walls, and random displays of art. Here’s a vid. I am not really sure how to explain it. Just, very Berlin.

Once we got tired of that, we rode the tram and or metro for about an hour before we figured out where or what to do. Lucky for us they don’t check in Berlin like at all. You’d be pretty unlucky if a worker guy randomly came on your cart and asked you to show your ticket.

We finally decided on going to this area really close to the East Side Gallery. I finally got my dinner, around midnight: a pretzel J We actually all got some noms. Kebaps, come to the United States now please.

The place we ended up going to was EXACTLY what I had hoped we would do. This underground (common theme?) rave in an empty warehouse fullll of super European young people with all kinds of hairs and colors and tank tops and jean shorts and converse. I was beside myself. I was very sober though, but with the techno/eurotrance music, drunk by contact for sure.

The tram didn’t run again until 4am meaning we had to stay at least until 4. Oh wait, my train for Prague left at 645. We left the club or whatever you want to call it judging by the video, after 430. There was a 24hr grocery store right in front of the tram, so I bought my breakfast J Got back to the hostal after 5 and made the executive decision to not blueball myself by taking a half an hour nap… packed my bag which was hardly unpacked, undid my bed that was tryinggg so hard to seduce me-it looked sooo comfortable- and back to the train station!

Needless to say I slept the entire time I was on the train to Prague. I was at first taking with this German girl that was seated in front of me for a bit but she didn’t speak so well English and was kind of getting frustrated with me and I was too tired to make any serious attempts at communications. Everytime I woke up there were different people sitting around me.

One of the times I woke up, we had stopped and it said Praha! I was like shit shit shit, grabbed my stuff and jumped off the train. It was only after I had gotten off the train that I realized I wasn’t yet at the central station. And they don’t use the Euro in the Czech Republic. Eventually, after a little more public transportation that I should of needed, made it to the Mosaic House and met up with Nicole! That was part of the reason that I was like racing across western Europe because Nicole and I had made plans several weeks before for Prague and Budapest and she had a flight so not quite as flexible as my Eurorail pass.

I loved loved LOVED Prague. I don’t know what it was about it but seriously everything was so beautiful: the architecture, the river surrounding it, the palace—even with the iffy weather. I’m in love with that city. And it is relatively cheap (for now) so Nicole and I got to eat out!

And so proud of Nicole: she finished her first full beer! Pilsner J

I had really ambitious hopes of going out that night in Prague. I had been told by a few people that the pub crawl was really fun and there was also this insane 5 story club. Unfortunately after walking all afternoon I sat in bed and knew I was done. Nicole basically had to pry me out of bed in order to go buy dinner at like 10 (we are still on Spain eating schedule): kebap! South Park for a bit and I was passed out.

Next morning, we made the decision to do the walking tour. I am normally not into the whole organized touring thing because I feel like I can get enough out of the city by reading signs and my travel book. Also, previous to this the countries that I had been to I was a little more familiar with their history. Not really the case for Prague. We got to know what the pretty things we were looking at were. Stupid weather though: it rained on and off like all day. It was cold rain too…worst.

Another full meal and then we decided to go to Lennon wall and then walk up to the mini Eiffel tower thing to get a lookout of the city. This little tower thing was built on top of a hill so it actually is the same height as the Eiffel Tower but with a little booster seat from nature. You had to pay like 5 euros to get up there, aka no. But we found another freeee lookout which was actually much nicer and there were like 2 other people.

We both agreed it was going to be really hard to leave this city. It’s really enchanting, I don’t know.

OH we went to the ice bar! It would have been a lot more fun if a) we were drunk or b) we were with a large group of people. Regardless, it was an experience. Cold as shit, really strong drink, but it felt like you were in a refrigerator freezer. Then we basically just chilled at the hostal while the people in our hostal got drunk. Neither of us was feeling too social… traveling, especially at our intensity, is exhausting.

 Overnight trains are always an experience. I had actually forgotten, but I took an overnight train one time when I was in Russia with my rather when we were going… somewhere I think the Siberia region of the country? Or actually I think it was when we were going from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

I didn’t remember it being so uncomfortable. First of all, you are in a closet, more or less, with five other people. You have about half a meter of space between your bed and the bunk above you. The beds themselves are actually wooden boards with some fabric over them- I think it’s to prevent splinters. I could only sleep on my back because if I tried to sleep on my sides, my hip bone would start digging into the board/bed. Then, if I tried to sleep on my stomach, my boobs were uncomfortably squished and again, hip bones digging.

Whatevs, I was pretty tired so I slept more or less the entire time-minus some Holocaust dreams which were more or less terrifying... Woke up, and BUDAPEST! We arrived an hour later than we were supposed to. I vaguely remember waking up once and was almost certain that we weren’t moving.

Budapest is very different than Prague. We had just been in this small centric town were everything was so pretty and now Budapest was more city like so I think we were both a little disappointed. Granted our first day was a bit interesting since we were told to take the tram and then walk to the palace area which was in the Buda portion of the city. We had a walking tour we wanted to attend at 14 of the Pest side so perfect use of our morning. We got off the tram. And walked. And walked. The map of the city streets literally looks like spaghetti and most of the street names weren’t even on the map we had. Everytime we asked someone how to get to the palace (which you would think would be a well-known landmark), they would always tell us to go back to the tram station we had gotten off at and take a bus. So we gave up after like two hours of aimlessly wandering the jankety streets of Buda… Oh but it was still a memorable morning stroll. We were walking behind this very large large largeee woman, and I am not trying to be rude or anything  but this woman probably weighed more than 500 pounds. All of a sudden, she starts to wobble and shaking and falls over and starts convulsing and turning purple. Nicole and I were like, shit this woman is having a strong or something. So here we are, two tourists trying to wave down a car to call a police because we don’t have phones nor do we know what number to call, oh and we don’t speak Hungarian and not many people in this area spoke English. These two guys stop and call the ambulance while the other holds down her tongue cuz now this woman is having a full on seizure. Nicole and I are trying to see if we spot a police or ambulance, but we see few and those that we do see don’t seem to see or care about our frantic waving. Eventually, maybe after 20 minutes or so, an ambulance finallyyy comes. Slow response time… she was recovering by the time they got there but I was a little worried she was going to like, die. We kind of retired from that scene once the ambulance came. Good deed of the day?

Our tourguide for the Pest area was a really spunky 40 something year Hungarian old women that was born in the US [her parents moved during the whole communism era]. We saw pretty things in Budapest! And learned a lot about the history of the Czech Republic. They were basically a toy passed around from the Hapsburgs, to the Nazis, and finally the Soviets. Poor little guys had lost several of their attempts to freedom along with huge portions of their country. It is really interesting though that the tour was so focused on the recent ish history. When I was in France, the history was all about the royalty and stuff that had happened from like the middle ages to the 1800s. In the Czech Republic, it was much more about communism. It was really cool to hear first accounts, but also a little worrying since a lot of the things that happened during the soviet period is almost a mirror reflection of what is happening in Venezuela now… Pray for the best :/

We went to a nifty little cafeteria type restaurant for some Hungarian lunch/dinner before heading back. We were both soooo tired… Okay this time I REALLY REALLY wanted to go out. I had heard amazinggg things about the adventures of Nate and Neal in Budapest. Nicole was not budging… and after a walk around, I realized that I was really tired too… but also it’s not necessarily funnn to go like party by yourself. I mean, meeting people is really fun but I was kind of too tired to make a real effort to befriend people, those at our hostal were all really chill, and the hostal I wanted to go out at was not so close. Took the high road and decided to take it easy as well. Afterall, I was headed to Vienna the next day to meet up with Thomas and Stefan and then Croatia to meet up with Neva after that…. The party will find me no need to go searching in a city I don’t know.

Next day we did the tour of the Buda side. I am so mad. I have no idea how Nicole and I could NOT find the damn palace area. All we had to do was cross a bridge and it was RIGHT in front of you! Why the eff did our hostal lady tell us to take the tram.

It. Was. Beautiful.

Both of us were like walking zombies though so after exploring the palace area quite thoroughly, we went back to the centre for lunch. Went to a DELICIOUS hummus bar that we had walked past the day before and sat there for like 3 hours. It was really nice to just chill and talk and relax. The weather was finallyyy nice! A lot of the things we talked about, if not all, were about going home. At that point, she only had 9 days left to back in the states, and I had 16. So crazy after being in Europe for SO long it’s such a small amount of times. We were talking about what we were looking forward to the most…. Food. Haha chik fil a, dunkin donuts, Mexican food, Panera, ahhh I am getting hungry just thinking about it. And also, just being able to not do anything and not feel guilty about it. Like when you are sitting at a hostal resting, you feel guilty because you are only in the city for like 2 or 3 days max. Hmmmmmm

Anyways, Nicole! It’s been sooooo wonderful being able to travel with someone that knows me more than just a few months through a different continent. You are one of the few people that knows what its like to actually liveee in Spain and I plan on having plenty of reminiscing outings when we are stateside to help cope with our reverse culture shock. It’s so funny because each time we said goodbye it was like, okay see you in Barcelona or Prague or whatever. Now, see you in ATLANTA! 6 cities, 3 countries. It’s been real J Love you