After watching Germany get eliminated from Euro 2012 by Italy at a friend's place, I spent my night packing for the weekend in Paris. It was by far the best packing I have done so far, my backpack wasn't heavy for once. Sean and I had booked the same flight from Stuttgart so we left Schwenningen around noon. We flew with Air France which was a nice change from the discount airlines. It was only an hour long flight and we had arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport at 5pm. We caught a train into the city and then switched to the Metro (the subway system) and made our way to the hostel, St. Christopher's Inn, which was in the 19th Arrondissement, a bit a of a hike from the center of the city, but as we later found out, getting anywhere in Paris is pretty quick and simple with the Metro. The hostel was a very unique building, as Sean put it, it looked as if it were wrapped in rubber bands. It was built on a canal, and was quite a busy place. Inside it was very clean and resembled a hotel except for the whole strangers in the same room thing, but I was impressed with it. The girls, Laura, Danielle, and Carolann, weren't scheduled to arrive in Paris until after 9pm, so Sean and I got some supper at the hostel bar/restaurant. It was my first encounter with the overpriced food and drink Paris is known for. The food was good, but not worth the price we paid, the beer was especially overpriced. While eating, I got a call from Carolann letting me know that she and Danielle didn't make their connection so they be and hour and a half later than planned. We had been planning to meet them at their arrival station, so we decided to go meet Laura at her's instead.
On the way to find Laura, we stopped at the Bastille where we saw the July Column, a monument to the French Revolution of 1830, and the opera house. We met Laura at Gare du Lyon at 10pm, and caught the Metro to the stop under the Louvre, where I told Carolann we'd meet her and Danielle. We were going to just wait outside the station for them, but once we saw the Louvre and the pyramid, we had to go check it out. We walked around the main courtyard with the pyramids, got lots of pictures, and got thoroughly harassed by the men trying to sell souvenirs. After a few more phone calls (yes, roaming fees suck in Europe too!) we finally saw Danielle and Carolann emerge from the Metro shortly after 11pm. We got a few group shots at the Louvre, and headed to the Eiffel Tower, which appear to be much closer than it actually was. We saw many interesting things along the way, including a group of several hundred roller bladers. We walked and walked some more before finding out that we still had a few kilometers to go. It was well after midnight at this point so we jumped on a bus, which brought us much closer. We were happy to see the lights were still on. We got some pictures and decided to head back to the hostel since is was after 1am at this point. As we were walking away Danielle happened to turn around just after the sparkling light display started so we were able to see that which was very cool and once that ended the lights were off for the night, so we had made it with little time to spare. Had we not got that bus, we would have likely missed it. We caught the Metro back to the hostel, the girls got checked in, and we headed to bed.
We got up around 8:30am, ate breakfast, which thankfully was included in the price of our bed, and joined the group of people from our hostel heading out do to the free walking tour. We had done tours with the same company, Sandeman's New Europe Tours, in both Berlin and Munich and knew we'd enjoy this one as well. Our tour guide was a girl from upstate New York who had been living in Paris for the past two years after completing her masters in law, and this was her last free tour as she is moving back to the states next week. This tour was the longest yet, at 3.5 hours. It was well worth the time though, we covered almost all the major sites in Paris and learned so much about the history. To save time, since I don't have much, I'll include the link to the facebook pictures which everyone should be able to see.
After the tour finished up around 3pm, we bought tickets for a tour of the Montmartre area at 6pm, and for the pubcrawl they put on at 9pm. It was a busy day. We grabbed some baguettes and macaroons for lunch, and headed back to the hostel where we got changed and headed out again for the next tour after doing a bit of souvenir shopping. The tour began just across from the Moulin Rouge in the red light district of Paris (nothing like the one in Amsterdam), and our tour guide was the same one we had earlier that day. It was very interesting to see another area of Paris, and ended up getting amazing view of the city from the highest point at the Sacre Coeur Cathedral. After the tour we got our free glass of wine (it was just a plastic cup) and Laura and Sean headed off to do a boat cruise on the Seine while we did the pub crawl. We ran into the sisters from New Zealand we had met on the first tour of the day who were also doing the pub crawl, and Carolann and I got banana and nutella crepes for supper.
We had a great night out in Paris and met a bunch of people, although I'm starting to think that Australia and New Zealand are planning to take over Europe, there are so many people here from those two countries, all very friendly though. We met a few fellow Canadians, and we made sure to belt out O Canada once it was after midnight since it was Canada Day. I'm pretty sure we sang it twice, once in the club and once on the subway. People probably thought we were crazy. We got back to the hostel around 2:30am, and managed to get a few hours of sleep.
Laura woke me up to say that she was heading to Versailles since she had a while before her train left. Sean had already gone to the airport as he had an early flight. I didn't want to get up, but I managed to do so around 8:30am. Danielle, Carolann, and I ate breakfast and headed to the Louvre. It had already opened by the time we got there and the line was pretty long since it's free to get in on the first Sunday of every month. Thankfully, our tour guide from the day before told us to use an alternate entrance and we were able to walk right in, avoiding the lines completely. It was awesome. We found our way to the Mona Lisa, took the signature picture, and made our way through a few more exhibits on the way out. We did some souvenir shopping and had an egg McMuffin at McDonalds. The girls had to get their train around 1pm, but I didn't fly out until 7pm, so I parted ways with them and headed to Versailles. It took a little while to get there, and I fell asleep on the train, waking up after we had arrived. It was a short walk to the palace, and there were so many people standing in lines. I waited in one line for way too long, only to find out it was unnecessary unless I wanted to buy a ticket to go in the palace, which I did not have time for, as that would have involved waiting in another line about 10 times as long. I made my way to the gardens, paid the 6.50 euro to get in and spent an hour or so walking around. They were very impressive, although the size of the palace was astonishing, it's no wonder Louis the 16th and Marie Antoinette were beheaded. I made my way back to the train station, got back to Paris around 3pm, managed to spend an hour on the Champs Elysees and saw the Arc de Triomphe us close, something I had wanted to see since doing a project about the street, one of the most famous and expensive in the world, while in high school French class. It was very impressive and packed with people.
I made it to the airport, ate a great meal, and slept for much of the flight to Stuttgart. I had plenty of time to make my train back to Schwenningen, I bought my ticket and caught the local train to the main station in Stuttgart. While on the local train I got a call from Breagh saying that she, Kaylen, Greg, and Joseph were all in Stuttgart to celebrate Canada Day and we going to leave Joseph's early the next morning to get to work. I made the unwise, or patriotic, decision to join them, so we had a good night at an Irish pub, saw the Euro 2012 final, and serenaded the bar with our lovely singing of O Canada. We all crammed into Joseph's very tiny apartment, and slept for a little less than 4 hours. We got up at 4:20am and headed out to get to work. I made it to work at 7:30am, not having any time to stop at my apartment, and had the roughest day at work of my life, but I had a great Canada Day, spread out over two countries. Although nothing beats Canada Day in Canada!
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Friday, June 29, 2012
A Sicilian Adventure
It feels like forever since I've written a blog, and it
feels like this one is going to take me forever to write, but I'll try to get
it done for heading off again in a couple days. Since my last update all of the
UNB students met here in Schwenningen for a meeting at the university and most
people ending up staying the night to party with a couple of my German friends,
I think there were seven of us that crashed in my room, with a few more at Sean
and Marc's place across town. It was a great night, although it led to a rough
morning. The next day a group of six of us headed to Freiburg, after recovering
a wallet that was lost the night before. We wandered the city for a bit and had
some supper, one person headed home that evening, and the rest of us found a
quaint little hotel to stay in. We had an interesting night out in Freiburg,
met an American who led us to a pretty shady bar, before we headed to another
bar that had been recommended to me by some Americans we had met in Stuttgart.
The second place was much better. The next day we decided to stop in Lake
Titisee before heading home, it turned out to be an awesome day at the lake. We
went out on the peddle boat for an hour, had some lunch, and then went swimming
at a club where we had access to a beach and a pool. It turned out to be a
pretty hot day, and there were a few sunburns. The work week went incredibly
slow as we all knew that an unforgettable weekend was coming up.
So I don't have time to add pictures of Sicily at the
moment, but maybe you can see them via this link even if you don't have facebook: Sicily, Italy 2012 Album
After lots of planning and coordination, ten of us headed to
the airport near Baden-Baden after work on Thursday. It was about a 3 hour trip
for me, although seven of us ended up getting on the same train so it was a
good time, and the 3 hours flew by. We arrived at the hotel which was directly
across the road from the airport, a road called Halifax Avenue as the airport
was a former Canadian military base, around 8:30pm and were met by Laura and
the other Scott who had arrived an hour earlier. We had three rooms for the 10
of us so I checked in to the third room, we got some supper, and watched a very
intense thunder and lightning storm. We headed to bed early although we were
much too excited to get to sleep very quickly.
We set our alarms for shortly before 5am and got ready
before walking over to the airport at 5:30am. We checked in and to my surprise
had no problems at all. We grabbed something to eat and started boarding at
6:55am. We departed around 7:30am, and with no assigned seating on RyanAir
flights, most of us were able to sit together.
We landed at the Trapani airport around 9:30am and were hit by the heat
wave a few moments later, it was great! Much to my delight, our drive to the
villa was just coming into the airport as we walked into the arrivals area.
Having been responsible for the booking of the villa, there was always the thought
of what if nobody shows up and we got scammed. Part of my skepticism was due to
a lack of independent reviews of the place we were staying, Villa Anna
(www.get2sicily.com) so maybe this blog will show up in the future when other
people are researching it. We all introduced ourselves to Mario, the father of
the guys I had arranged everything with over the internet. Five of us and Mario
piled into his car and began the drive to the villa, it was a short distance
away but took about 20 minutes as the roads are not at all conducive to fast
driving. We talked with Mario along the way, he was very friendly and willing
to help with whatever we needed. We checked out the villa while the other 5
were picked up at the airport, and Joseph went to find his friend Mitch who had
been staying at a hostel nearby. Everyone seemed impressed with the villa,
there were plenty of places to sleep, 3 bathrooms, a full kitchen, and a
kitchenette upstairs with a well needed extra mini fridge.
Once everyone arrived, Danielle and I went into the town of
Marausa with Mario to buy some groceries. It was a bit of a challenge, most
people didn't speak a word of English but thankfully Mario was a great
translator having worked at a university in England for 50 years he could speak
English pretty well. We got a bunch of food at the supermarket, if you can call
it that, it was pretty tiny, and we also stopped at the butcher and the bakery.
We took everything back to the villa and Joseph and I went with Mario to get a
pair of bicycles from his house just down the road so we'd have a quicker way
to get back into town to buy more drinks later as we didn't have space to buy
much on our first trip. We had a bite to eat for lunch and loaded up on
sunscreen before spending an awesome afternoon in the Mediterranean. The water
was a great temperature and once the rare fog cleared it was a beautiful day. I
headed back to the villa with Marc, Joseph, and Mitch while the others stayed
at the beach. Joe and Mitch took the bikes to go buy some beer and wine, and I
ended up falling asleep on the roof in the midday sun. I woke up a while later
with a burnt back despite sleeping facing the sun. Everyone coming back from
the beach also came back with a sunburn.
We started preparing supper, I ended up in charge of the BBQing, which
was quite the challenge with damp charcoal and limited matches. It took a while
but we had an awesome dinner of sausages and hamburgers with potatoes, onion,
and peppers on the side. After cleaning up supper we headed to the 'Beach Bar
& Restaurant' at the end of the street to watch the Germany vs. Greece
football match. We were all cheering for Germany, although I think the locals
may have been hoping for Greece. Germany won it 4-2 so we were happy. I should
mention that in the town we were staying we were pretty much the only tourists
for the whole weekend, it was a great change from being just another tourist
like most weekends. We watched the game inside the restaurant and headed across
the street to the outdoor section over the water where the bar/disco was to
have a few drinks. Turns out most of it was reserved for an 18 year-olds birthday
party so we ending up crashing it. We took to the dance floor and made it a
party. They ended up giving us free food and beer, and eventually joined in
with the singing and dancing, it was a pretty awesome night, getting to know
the locals is one of the best parts of travelling.
The next morning we woke up, grabbed a bite to eat and
headed to Trapani for the day. We had thought about taking the boat to the
islands off the coast, but Mario said that it wasn't worth it at this point in
the day, we should have gotten up at 6 or 7am and headed over, so he said he'd
look into to and maybe try the next day. We walked around the city for a bit,
had some lunch, Mitch had an interesting octopus sandwich, and we had some more
gelato. We then headed for the beach, we had to pay to get on the beach, and we
got umbrellas and a few of us got beds. The beach itself was nice, but the
swimming was not so great, too many rocks and seaweed, but most of us were
avoiding the direct sunlight at this point anyways as it was extremely hot out,
around 35°C.
After we had enough of the beach we headed back to the city center, got some
more gelato on the way, and figured out a bus we could take back to Marausa.
While waiting for the bus a few of us walked through the old city and found a souvenir
shop. Then we were joined by a old Italian man at the bus stop who had just one
tooth and made lots of strange noises. We caught the bus and eventually made it
back to Marausa. Some of us got a drive back to the villa with Mario from
there, while the others walked. We figured out the plan for the next day with
Mario and the owner of the Beach Bar and Restaurant. We ended up eating an
excellent 3 course seafood and pasta dinner that included squid, octopus, and
swordfish among other things, at the restaurant while watching an awesome
sunset. We then walked along the beach forever and went for a swim in the dark,
it was a great night.
The next morning we woke up and had scrambled eggs for
breakfast and headed to marina a short walk away where we were to meet the boat
we chartered for the day. Our driver (captain?) was a 22 year-old guy from
Trapani who didn't speak a word of English. We managed to fit 12 people on the
boat, and before departing, one of the guys working at the marina told Mitch that
we were not to say anything if stopped by the police, great way to start the
boat cruise haha! We sped across the sea to the island of Favignana, where the
waters were amazing blue and turquoise, I had never seen water like it before
in my life. We circled the entire island, swimming from the boat at one point,
although the water was much cooler, it was quite refreshing. We docked the boat
and went into the town on the island. Bartolo, the captain, walked us through
the town, we ate our lunch which was included in the chartering of the boat,
and spent a while on the beach, there were groups of tourists on this island,
although most of them had arrived on the large ferries and hydrofoils. I was
really glad we ended up doing it with a private boat, it felt like a much more
authentic experience. We left Favignana and headed to the island nearby. We saw
an impressive cave up on the side of the island, and went into a cove where
there were probably over 100 boats, many of them tied together to in groups of
4 or 5. It was all the locals who just party on the water for the day. Bartolo
found some of his friends so we tied up with them and they gave us chips, wine
and beer, it was awesome. We swam from the boat, saw some fish, and had a great
time. The friends invited us to their house for a BBQ later that night, so we
said we'd go. We headed back to Lido di Marausa around 3pm and probably had
some more gelato. We ordered pizza because we all wanted to try some Sicilian pizza,
and we also cooked the pasta we had bought. Some people went for another swim,
and I took a bicycle out and saw the beach on a Sunday, it was absolutely
packed. The pizza arrived around 6pm, we ate and tried to finish some of the
wine we still had left. We went back to the bar for a few more drinks and to
watch part of the game as we were meeting our new friends there at 9 to head to
their place for a BBQ.
We were waiting outside the bar and there were lots of
people around and cars driving and a Mercedes SUV pulled up and I said to
Breagh it would be funny if they picked us up in that. Turns out it was one of
the vehicles to get us, the other was a new BMW sports car. We only drove for
about 500m, we easily could have walked it, but it was interesting. There were
7 of us who went to their house, it was a pretty awesome night, we saw Italy
beat England, had some great barbecued food, had way, way too much wine, and
bonded with more locals. There was some debate as to whether they could have
been mafia or not, the expensive cars and guns were the indicators (somebody
only saw them putting their guns away into another room, nothing serious), but
regardless, they were extremely friendly, and it was an evening none of us will
soon forget. Some people went for a late night dip and then we headed to bed.
We woke up early and headed to the airport where we caught our flight back to
Germany and then the trains back to our home towns. It was a pretty amazing
weekend, hard to be repeated!
Heading off to Paris in 15 minutes! Have a great Canada Day
weekend for all you Canadians!
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Budapest, Hungary!
Wednesday evening after work was spent planning a few future
weekend trips in July, and preparing for the weekend in Budapest. I found a
drive to Stuttgart on the local carpooling site on Facebook so I didn't have to
take a train, although it didn't really save me much money after chipping in
for gas and then taking the train to the city center, but it is always nicer to
travel with other people than sit on the train in silence. So I woke up
Thursday morning and took my time getting ready and was able to make a decent
breakfast for once. I met my drive just down the street from where I'm living
and we headed to Stuttgart. It was a couple that are going to school here in
Schwenningen that gave me the drive, one studying international business
management and the other accounting. They were both very friendly and the drive
went by very quickly. They were headed to a place in another state about 5
hours away, so they dropped me off on the outskirts of Stuttgart at the Porsche
museum around noon. Since I was there and I knew I didn't have to head to the
airport until 5pm, I decided to check out the museum. It was only 4€
for a student and included an audio tour. I took way to many pictures of all
the nice cars, and learned a fair bit about the history of Porsche. It was a
great way to kill a couple hours. Below are just a few of the cars and the
museum.
Super modern museum
I caught the local train to the main station and went to the
free observation deck where I got a great view of Stuttgart. I grabbed a bite
to eat and wandered around for a bit and got a few pictures of the historical
buildings.
The opera house
The New Palace and fountains
The hauptbahnhof, aka main train station
I then went to meet Breagh at the train station as her train
was arriving at 3pm. We walked around the main shopping/pedestrian area for a
while, searching for a bank that we could not find, and ended up running into
Greg in the middle of the busiest area of the city, we were pretty surprised as
we had no idea when he was arriving and thought we might just meet him at the
airport. We went back to the train station and I showed them the observation
deck, from which we spotted the bank we were trying to find. We headed to the
bank, it appeared to be the headquarters, only to find that they don't have any
atm's at their headquarters. Seemed pretty strange to us. We returned to the
train station and caught a train to the airport. We checked in and got three
seats all together. We were a bit early so we just sat around the airport for a
bit and went down to our gate shortly before the boarding time of 7:10pm. The
flight was a bit turbulent but it was a very short flight at only an hour and
twenty minutes.
It got nicer the second time to the top
Upon arriving at the airport in Budapest we converted some
of our money to Hungarian Forints, and caught a taxi to the Retox Party Hostel
for around 6000HUF, which was about 21€. In Hungarian, an s is pronounced as
sh, so the name of the place is actually pronounced Budapesht, and is made of up
two cities Buda and Pest, we were learning things very quickly. We arrived at
the hostel around 9:45pm, and checked in and got our beds. The hostel gave us a
great first impression, everyone was so laid back, friendly, and all about
having a good time. The workers at the hostel had some very unique names
including Boss, Titties, and Flash. We were planning to have a quiet night, but
upon arriving, everyone was asking if we were going out. We decided to go out
for a bit and there was a guy from California, Derek, looking to catch up with
the group that had gone out earlier, so Titties called us a cab and we headed
off to the bar which was in the courtyard of a former school. It was very
unique and we had an awesome time. We met people from many different countries
and tried some Hungarian beer and liquor. We headed back to the hostel around
2am, grabbed Gyros to eat as we hadn't eaten supper that evening, and headed to
bed.
Pumped to be in Budapest!
Outdoor bar
This girl thought we were the same person
I somehow managed to wake up around 7:30am, and I proceeded
to wake up Breagh and Greg. We planned to accomplish a fair amount in our only
full day in Budapest, so we had to get off to an early start. We grabbed
showers, got directions on where to go to exchange some more money, and where
to meet for a free walking tour of the city. There was a girl travelling by
herself from Australia, Bree, who also wanted to do the walking tour, so we
planned to meet her at the starting location. We exchanged some money and
walked a bit before we found the square where the tour started from. We still
had 45 minutes to spare so we sat down at an outdoor cafe and had breakfast. It
took forever to get the bill, like in Germany, so we made it to the tour with
just minutes to spare. The tour guide was very enthusiastic and we learned a
lot about Budapest. Below are some of the pictures from the walk tour.
How do you double the value of a Trabant? Fill it with gasoline.
After the walking tour, which ended at 1pm, we headed to the
Great Market for lunch. It took nearly an hour to get to the market, and it was
apparently 30 degrees with a humidex of 38, so it was a hot one! It was worth
it though, the market was huge and a great place to buy some souvenirs. I had
some goulash soup for lunch, a traditional Hungarian meal, and sampled some of
the food the others bought. It was all pretty great. After getting some souvenirs
we headed back to the hostel, taking a few breaks along the way. Greg and I got
some ice cream and were thoroughly disappointed with what we ended up with, but
it still tasted pretty good and gave everyone a good laugh.
Back at the hostel we grabbed a beer and then Breagh, Greg,
and I headed back to the Buda side of the river to explore the labyrinth
beneath the city. After 6pm they shut off the lighting and you get to navigate
it with an oil lamp, it was pretty awesome, and as you can tell by the slightly
blurry picture without the flash it was pretty dark. We spent about an hour in
there and entered back into the hot temperatures to wander around a bit more
and take a few more pictures.
This place was flying a Canadian flag!
We walked back to the hostel and had supper there with Bree.
I think us Canadians were missing the seafood as we all had fish and chips. It
was pretty good, but it doesn't compare with what we can get in the Maritimes.
We watched part of the first game of the Euro Cup (which I joined a pool at
work for despite knowing nothing about it) and got ready for the evening. We
had signed up earlier for the party boat that the hostel organizes in conjunction
with three other hostels. We left the hostel, along with a parade of probably well
over 100 other people, as two of the other hostels came to ours before heading
out. We paraded our way to the river about 20 minutes away where we boarded the
boat for an hour and a half party cruise on the Danube. Our ticket included a
bottle of champagne so we all had something to drink as soon as we boarded. With
200 people on board, and most of them with bottles of champagne, corks were
flying all over the place. Breagh got hit in the head with someone else's cork,
and then proceeded to open mine, not knowing that the reason for the misfiring
of the corks was because the bottles had enough pressure in them to pop as soon
as you started to unwind the metal cage. This resulted in me getting hit in the
face with my own hard plastic cork, just millimeters from my right eye. I was
incredibly lucky as there was a lot of force behind the cork and I don't think
my eye would have taken it so well. I wasn't until the next day that I realize
how bad it could have been, but we all had an awesome time on the boat and saw
Budapest all lit up at night. It is quite difficult to take night shots without
a flash from a moving boat, so I wasn't able to get the best shots, although I
got a few good ones of the partying on the boat. We met a lot of people on the
boat, including a group of three from Toronto, and even a guy studying in
Halifax.
After the disembarking from the boat, we then boarded
another ship, this one a stationary one that has been converted into a bar. It
was voted on Lonely Planet's website as the best bar in the world. We had a
great time and heard some really interesting music. From there, we, Greg,
Breagh, Bree, and I took a taxi back to the Pest side, although we didn't even
realize the part boat has docked on the opposite side of the river, and went to
a club called Aquarius, an underground club in the middle of a park after
grabbing some food at one of the few places still open in this part of town. It
was pretty cool, although not super busy, but it was great because they weren't
playing the typical American music, but more Hungarian and Russian sounding
stuff. There was some pretty awesome dancing taking place, and I've never seen
so many people doing the running man at the same time, and they all did it
well. We left there around 4am and ended up going to another club near the
hostel that is open 24 hours. Greg and I did a shot of Palinko, the Hungarian
alcohol that can be up to 70% alcohol, it was pretty rough. We partied there for
a while, before heading back to the hostel to check out around 5:30-6 o'clock. We
had earlier decided that we were going to stay up all night and make the most
of the little time we had in Budpest. The city is known as the city of baths so
we walked for what felt like an eternity to a public thermal bath that had
about 15 different pools. I'll try to find a picture online of the one we went
to an include it below as I didn't have my camera. It was pretty amazing and we
tried most of the pools, some as cold as 15°C, others nearly 40°C,
some of them had a very high sulfur content which is supposed to be medicating,
but I found it just smelly. Bree had come with us to the baths too, and all
four of us ended up falling asleep in the pools, with our heads out the water
of course. It was extremely relaxing, I would have stayed all day if I could.
If you're ever in a city with these thermal baths I highly recommend going,
although some are gender separate, aka nude baths, but some, like the one we
went to, require bathing suits and are mixed gender. We spend two or three
hours in the pools and ended up pretty shrivelled up. We grabbed showers and then
we said goodbye to Bree and headed to the airport. Our flight left at 12:45pm,
and we were back in Stuttgart at 2:00pm. We all slept for nearly all of the
flight.
We checked in at the Interhostel in Stuttgart and slept for
a few hours before grabbing something for supper and I got a Deutschland
t-shirt to wear to the Euro Cup football match that would be on later. We went
back to the hostel, got changed and had a beer before heading to the Irish pub
not far from the hostel. We had a good time watching the game, and we were
surrounded by English speaking people, it was a strange occurrence. Germany
managed to pull off a 1-0 win which resulted in the cars horns beeping for hours
into the night. We were all dead tired so we went back to the hostel and were
all asleep by 11:30pm, the earliest I've been to bed since I arrived in Germany
I think. But considering we were awake for 40 hours with only 3-4 hours of
broken up sleep, it was definitely warranted. We got up at 9:30am and headed
for the train station where we had coffee and breakfast before catching our
trains home.
Looking tired
View from the hostel, the sound of the bells at 7am was not as nice
It was a weekend to be remembered, one of the craziest and
most fun of my life. Can't wait for the next one!
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