Well, the adventure continued at full speed after we left Vienna! We spent the New Year at the Rathausplatz in the middle of the city, celebrating and dancing with tons of people under the background of a beautiful building. There was a live blues concert and fireworks. This is the way to welcome in the New Year for sure! We even danced the traditional waltz at midnight. After the year changed over, we headed down to the subway to find a train that would lead us to food. We ended up getting noodles and pizza and then just wandering around amidst the thousands of partyers. I can say that I will honestly not have another New Year's Eve like this one, and it was so fantastic! We crashed in the office after getting home from our evening out and we spend the next day recovering and saying goodbye to all of the friends we had seen over our time in Vienna. Our train was leaving around midnight, so we spent the day packing, cleaning the office and doing our final adventures in Vienna.
Then we were on the night train and off to Munich! Night trains are an adventure, that's for sure! It is exactly like you would imagine in Harry Potter or something. A cabin with 6 seats and not a ton of room to relax. Our train to Munich we got lucky though, it only ended up being Erik, myself and this other girl for most of the journey. We got a little bit of sleep and tried to pass the hours as best we could. We ran into a little bit of trouble though as we approached Germany. Our train started it's journey in Hungary and crossed into Austria with no problem. When we got to Germany though, the insurance or something didn't work out and we couldn't go any futrher. Lame. Not what you want to hear at 4 in the morning when you are tired and stuck on a train. So we had to wait almost 2 hours for them to sort something out. We ended up switching to a way less comfortable train and continuing our way to Munich in that. But we finally made it and ditched our luggage at the hostel as soon as we possibly could. Then we bought a ticket and hopped a train to see some castles in the mountains!
We hiked up a snow covered mountain and saw the castle which was the inspiration for the Disney Castle. So beautiful! It was a cold and miserable walk up the mountain, but it was worth it to see the breath-taking mountains and castles. Then we took the horse drawn carriage down the icy path and did some souvenir shopping before catching our train back to the hostel. We were so tired by this point that it was all we could do to enjoy our free drink at the hostel bar and head back to our room to pass out. I think we literally went to bed at 8:00. We are so old! ha ha. The next morning though, we felt so much better when we woke up, if it was rather suddenly. Out of anyone we could have been staying with in our hostel, we got the world's six loudest Asians on the face of the planet. Wow, they can make soooo much noise when they are getting ready! But it's alright, we were well rested, and just hid out in our beds until they left, and then we had the place to ourselves to get ready for our adventures.
So we packed up our luggage and made plans for our second day in Munich. We tried to go to Dachau first, but then found out that everything was closed that day, so we decided to head to Olympic Stadium instead. So cool to walk around the snowy grounds and see where the Olympics were held! After that, we shopped around for a little bit before spending our lunch time in the Hofbrauhaus. Such good German beer! We had a super funny waiter, and had a really good few hours drinking beer and just relaxing a bit. We explored the city a bit more for the rest of the afternoon, and eventually made our way to our train. Another night train would take us from Munich to Berlin. This one was there on time, and it had actually had technical problems, meaning that we got a more comfortable car to sleep in than we had actually paid for. Thank you technical problems. We were so tired at this point though, that we would have slept anywhere. Our cabin mate this time was a Polish boy who talked a lot. Wow. So we just slept and then he couldn't talk to us. ha ha.
We only had a day in Berlin, so we ditched our luggage in lockers and set out to explore the city. My days of German Cultural History were definitely coming back to me as we followed the path of the wall, and saw the historic places associated with that time in German history. Such cool stuff to see! At one point, we were standing near Checkpoint Charlie, reading on the history of the wall, and we saw some American students getting a tour. We asked one of the girls where she was from and she said America. She went to Luther College! What a small world. We got to talking and found out that they were on J term in Germany, and that she actually worked last summer with one of the second semester Wales students! So crazy!
After seeing the wall, we had a picnic lunch in a park outside a huge cathedral in the snow. Such a good and cheap way to enjoy the city! We did so much more walking and exploring after lunch and when we finally got tired and cold, we ended up in a coffee shop at the internet cafe. We were trying to think of what we could do until our next train took off, and we decided to see a movie. So we found a theatre, and saw Little Fockers. The movie itself was not the funniest thing I have ever seen, but I enjoyed seeing how the Germans reacted to the humor. They were the best part! After the movie, we headed back to the main train station to wait for our train.
Now we have not had the best luck with trains up to this point, and our luck would not change in Berlin. Our train first said it was delayed by 45 minutes, which sucked, but we could get over it. We sat in the ticket office on the floor, trying to keep warm and watch all our luggage. I fell asleep for a bit and then we headed back to the platform to see how our train was doing. Delayed even more, 60 minutes. So we headed back down so we didn't have to stand in the cold for that long. We got to experience a crazy drunken guy yelling at the door in German and kicking things, which was interesting to say the least. He was our entertainment for a bit before we headed to the platform once again. We ended up standing there for ages... but finally over and hour and something late, our train showed up. Our compartment this time was full. All six seats were taken, so it was not very relaxing at all. As we made stops through the night though, we slowly lost our cabin mates, until it was just Erik and I. Then we were able to pass out until Amsterdam.
We woke up to the beautiful Dutch contryside as we wound our way towards Amsterdam. So we got ready and we were definitely glad to be off the train and in Amsterdam! We took the tram without buying tickets, and just hopped off at a stop near our hostel. I was so nervous at this point, but that was the sleep deprivation talking. We were able to check right into our hostel, and it was awesome to know we had a home for a few nights! We had a good time exploring Amsterdam and seeing everything it has to offer. Definitely a different culture here, but I'm loving it! We are going to see the Red Light District tonight, and Anne Frank's house tomorrow; other than that, we are just enjoying our few days here and relaxing a lot. We fly out of Amsterdam and into Liverpool on Saturday morning, and then we will catch the train from Liverpool up to Bangor.
I'm excited to sleep in my own bed again, and to not have to live out of a suitcase, but this has been such a fantastic adventure! I got to see so many cool things, and I'm glad Erik and I could have this European adventure together!
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