I realize that it’s been over a month since we left Europe
and now it just looks like I’m milking this study abroad business for every
last drop (…this metaphor is getting weird), but you should know that we were
all too heartbroken upon leaving Europe and then caught up in the whirlwind of
understanding everybody and seeing sweatpants out in public that we could not
even touch the blog, let alone write a whole post.
But alas, Mal and I happened to be casually sitting in my
dear, sweet sister’s living room (missing our third amiga all the while, of
course) and holding her teeny tiny new son (hi Carsten!) when she threatened
mentioned that she had some serious cash riding on whether or not we would
write a final blog post about our “epic backpack adventure” (unnecessary quotes
because that’s a phrase I just made up) and because I’m a good sister about
four times a year and know how seriously she takes her ice cream allowance,
here I am.
WHERE TO BEGIN?
The beginning, probably.
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| No idea what we're getting ourselves into here. |
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| Maybe we should just leave our backpacks here? |
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| Sorry about your face there, Laur, but here's a good example of snuggles for warmth. Not sure who that hoodlum in the middle is. |
Munich: After
saying “Au revoir” to Paris (haha, puke cute), we trained away to
Stuttgart (where we would switch to Munchen, which is a funny way to say
Munich) and it was there in Stuttgart that we discovered Germany’s gift to
America: no, not the Price sisters… croissant-wursts. If your life is miserable
and pathetic and you have no idea what a croissant-wurst is (much like us, at
one dark period of our lives), it’s a hot dog wrapped in a warm croissant and
it’s THE bomb.com. Even without ketchup (though I would recommend the ketchup).
Obviously Germany was off to a good start. Once in Munchen, we checked into our
hostel where we would sleep with 36 other strangers in one room (NO idea whose
crazy idea it was to book that…….) and then, typically, went wandering. We
discovered the city center and that German people are like, the nicest (and
everybody speaks English! we were spoiled) and that the Glockenspiel was very,
very monstrous and cool but that it does not do a song and dance every hour on
the hour like some of us may have believed. We also ran into some Canadian guys
who happened to be staying at our hostel (though, strangely enough, not in our
40-person dorm) who lived up to every Canadian stereotype out there (eh?). Also
I saw some Pippi Longstocking graffiti and didn’t stop talking about her until
I landed in Chicago eight days later. We dined at the famous Hofbrauhaus where
we drank beer out of massive mugs (admittedly it was Radler’s, so we actually
drank beer-flavored lemonade out of massive mugs) and split a ginormous pretzel
and Cait ate a pig’s knuckle and we listened to some beer house music. The
whole experience was very German. Also, we met some German guy staying at the hostel who told us what town he was from but we all actually just thought he was spitting
up a hairball. He was super nice, though. That night’s sleep, however, was not
super nice and for some reason we kept getting shushed? I can’t imagine why.
The following morning after a glorious (free!) hostel breakfast, we Eurailed
our way to Dachau concentration camp. No jokes here, for the trip was emotionally
charged and moving; it’s one thing to read about the Holocaust in history books
and it’s quite another to see where it happened. Dachau is actually the first
of all concentration camps built by Hitler and first held political prisoners
(read: opponents of Hitler), but it eventually and unfortunately imprisoned a wide
variety of people. To lighten the mood, though, on the busy bus ride to the
camp, Mal sat with her face in some man’s armpit and swore off doner kebaps for
the rest of her life (which is fortunate, considering they hardly exist in
Troy, Missouri). Back in Munich for a few hours, we walked around the outdoor market looking for another croissant-wurst, took some
more pictures, and soaked in the beauty of the relatively small city. Our
takeaway from Munich was that
you should try the 40-person hostel room at least once but be aware that at 3
AM a girl will decide to shout about
her ab routine and that pretzels don’t taste very good if you dip them in beer
and that German cops are hot.
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| Never leave me, croissant-wurst. |
Prague: I
couldn’t begin to talk about Prahahaha (what the locals call Prague… and by
locals I mean four noob backpackers) unless I mentioned the most memorable
train ride there. After getting ourselves some croissant-wursts to go, we
fought our way onto the train and into a private Harry Potter compartment,
surrounded on either side by some ROWDY boys. We were amused from afar as we
watched the boys play soccer in the narrow hallway from the safety of our
compartment and run around like children (no judgment, though). Inevitably, the boys let themselves into our little room,
though I attribute this less to our winning good looks and pleasant scent (wearing the same pair of socks three days in a row in absolutely acceptable on
world tours) and more to the fact that we were blasting “She Looks So Perfect”
by 5 Seconds of Summer on repeat. It turns out that our rowdy friends were an
Irish soccer team (Irish soccer is a sport, but they were also literally from
Ireland) from Munich, traveling to Prahaha for a tournament. During the rest of
the ride, various players were popping in and out and it was all fun and games
until their Irish pub songs turned into one dude singing “Wagon Wheel” BY
HIMSELF which was charming for the first 20 seconds and then painfully awkward
for the last five minutes of the song. Also, there was a really old guy named
Pete who was labeled the team’s resident pervert. (Their words, not mine.) It
was quite the welcome to Prague, except that they happened to be staying at the
same hostel as we were and honestly the fab four was a little wary of being
bombarded with another solo. After helping the guys find the hostel in the rain,
we retired to our private (!!!) room and threw our stinky backpacks all over
the room, simply because we could. Also, at midnight that night Mal turned 20
and it was absolutely earth-shattering and monumental. (Her words, not mine.) Then
we went to bed because defending American culture to Irish guys is exhausting.
After another amazing free breakfast (yogurt! cheese! coffee!), I used my brand
new map (like, a real paper one… those still exist) to navigate us throughout
the city. Because maps are hard, I led us on the very, very long way to the
city center and for a while we were just walking down some deserted (but charming!)
streets while all secretly worrying that literally nobody lived in Prague and
maybe not even the Czech Republic. But, I rationalized to myself, who were
those Irish guys gonna play soccer against? Plus we found the market and all
was well. The rest of the day, we managed the rain (even if it sucked and poor
Mal’s Toms were absolutely soaked which wasn’t very fair considering it was her
birthday and all) and saw the Charles Bridge, the Old City, the Powder Bridge,
and some gorgeous old opera house. My knowledge of the significance of all
these neat architectural things is limited, considering I was merely using the
beloved map and doing my best to eavesdrop on as many tour guides as I could,
but no matter. We also saw the Lennon Wall and even signed
our names, lest anyone forget that at one time we were brave enough to ride in
dirty trains around Europe. After devouring a delicious birthday lunch, we
toured the castle (mostly because it was raining but also because it was cool
and historical) and I dropped my camera down some concrete steps and a woman told Laura I was lucky. As if she didn't know! Later on, once we had
blow-dried everyone’s shoes for an hour or seven, we laud Mal some more
at an authentic local pub, in which some patrons literally congratulated us on
eating there. Thanks, guys. Dinner was phenomenal,
even though a stray dog was like running around at one point and the waiter’s
English wasn’t the greatest and so he was for some reason not pleased that it
was Mal’s birthday? Who knows. We were
excited, so that night we celebrated in style (literally… just wait) at the
most famous nightclub in Prague, which had five floors AND an ice bar that for
some reason people (read: we) pay extra money to be really, really cold in for
fifteen minutes. (Plus Cait lost her complimentary gloves on the three-step
walk to the door, so she was extra cold.) Once our frostbite was sufficiently
contracted, and because no world tour is complete without dancing, we showed
those Czech-ians how fashionable Americans are and tied our scarves and heavy
coats to our day purses and quite literally danced the night away on the Oldies
floor, where they played strictly American classics. Seriously, the Oldies
floor was awesome and you probably had to be there to understand how it was the
cultural highlight of the tour. On our last day in Prague, we visited the
astronomical clock, which took us an embarrassingly long amount of time to
find considering it's literally in the middle of the city center. We were somehow led to believe that the clock puts on some crazy kind of
show every hour on the hour (and you’d think we would have learned our lesson
at the Glock), so we actually ran to the clock to make it on time, coats flapping, umbrellas
threatening to take flight, only to discover that the show is a little skeleton
guy waving his arm up and down for an entire minute. Blown. Away. So that thing
sucked. I also led us on a tour of the Jewish Quarter via my special map and
it probably would have been awesome had I known what I was talking about, other
than saying, “So… this is a synagogue.” Our takeaway from Prahaha was that the
Oldies floor is hands down the place to be and that Prague is beautiful even in
the rain and that Mal is no longer a teenager. (Sucker.)
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| Forgot our spray paint, had to sign the wall with a Sharpie. |
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| Normal club attire. |
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| Better believe those ponchos didn't leave our body, rain or shine. (Mostly shine.) |
Amsterdam: Alas,
the last leg of the world tour. The ride to Amsterdam (our last Eurail ride!
sob) was probably pretty eventful but I can’t honestly remember, except that an
old man walked in on me in the train bathroom and I apologized to him. I
definitely remember our adorable hostel which looked like an Anthropologie but
also inexplicably had a teepee in the middle of the common area and our room’s
windows were literally right next a canal. So Amsterdam-y! Our first and last
full day in the city, we rose early to go to the Anne Frank House, which is
truly one of the most well-done museums I’ve ever gone to. Anne, quite frankly,
was a badass chick and I could quote something cliché about how she gives a
face to the millions of Jews murdered during World War II except that it’s
totally true. Plus, you think the Secret Annex was small but then you see it
and you can’t believe two families lived there, in silence and in the dark, for
two years. All of that learning and reflecting naturally made us hungry (also
the fact that we skipped breakfast) so we took a Rick Steves
suggestion (thanks, bro) and had massive, famous pancakes at Sara’s Pancake House. Mine had peanut butter on them and that’s probably all I need to say about
them for you to understand. With full bellies, we decided we were ready to
brave the Red Light District. I won’t go into any description, but it’s worth
seeing just once if you happen to be stopping by Amsterdam within the next few
days or something. Anyway, the city of Amsterdam is incredible. I believe it’s
called the “Venice of the North”, though I have no idea if that’s true or if
that’s just what some Spanish guy told me once. Plus all those little houses?
Adorable. I’m pretty sure we could have just wandered and wandered all day,
which we more or less did and only partly because we were a little lost (no
thanks to yet another real map). Naturally the frolicsome four stopped at the I
Amsterdam sign where we sat for like two hours because we love to make fun of
fellow tourists and because a Mexican family was monopolizing the entire sign
and it was too intimidating to try to take our own cutesy pictures there. Which
letter should you pose with? Should you try to mimic the letter with your body?
Should you try to spell something? So daunting. As if that people-watching
weren’t enough, we were fortunate enough to witness a middle school dance at a
bar that night. At least that’s what I think it was... lots of bopping, lots of
ill-fitting dresses, and I think one girl had braces. On our last day in
Amsterdam (meaning the last day of our epic backpacking adventure) we did some
canal wandering and ate at one of those frozen yogurt places where you get to
put on your own toppings and I’m not lying, I think I spent 13 euros. Worth it.
Our takeaway from Amsterdam was that when Rick Steves recommends a pancake
restaurant you need to go and oh my gosh, those canals.
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| ....show-offs. |
The End: A huge
takeaway from the whole trip is that trains are the way to go because from
Amsterdam we flew into Sevilla, where we loitered for a few hours until our 12
AM bus back home to Madrid, on which some guy smelled like he had bathed in our
backpacks and the bus driver insisted on playing dance tunez for the entire six
hours. From Madrid we flew into Philadelphia where Laura and I said goodbye to
the Price sisters and then tried to fly into Chicago except literally nothing
on the plane was working or something and I cried a lot and then we got into
Chicago but couldn’t get off the plane and I had a flight to Minneapolis to
catch at 11:30 PM and my body was so confused and also I was crying a lot. Did
I mention I cried? Anyway, not the point. The point is that despite the too-heavy
backpacks, the weariness of train rides (which were actually so fun), the tying
of our coats to our purses in a night club, the walking in unsuitable walking
shoes, the rain, and the sleeping in rooms with strangers who snore, I think (I
hope) I speak for all of us when I say that our mini tour of Europe was
undeniably the best experience of our little lives. I could write a twelve page
essay on each of the places we visited and on the food we ate and on the people
we met and on the lame jokes I told, but no one wants to read that (and if
you’ve made it this far, hey thanks!) and also then I would start missing it
all again too much. Thanks are owed, of course, to helpful train conductors,
hostel workers, waiters, fellow tourists and all those people who took pity on
four American girls who looked like a disaster waiting to happen. Of course,
thanks are owed to maps. Those things are the greatest. And thanks to the three
best travel companions (and friends!) I could literally ever ask for, for
putting up with my need for an itinerary, my uncanny ability to get lost, my
crabbiness when hungry, the smell of my sweaty running clothes in that tiny
backpack… you get the idea. Even though seeing so many different cultures in such a short amount of time was absolutely incredible (to say the very
least), it’s quite possible that the best part was just hanging out with these
goons. Or the Oldie’s Floor.
Because I’m an English major I can take the liberty of
quoting Ernest Hemingway here, I’ll tell you he once said, “Never travel with
anyone you do not love,” and I wish I could say I took his advice.
Jokes, jokes, jokes. I love the (un)forgettable four like,
too much. (And I miss you guys too!) Let’s do this again next year?
