Europe continues...

Well hello everyone!

This entry is going to take me a long time to write, because the German keyboards here are really messed up. Imagine that the Z and Y keys are reversed, and you're used to typing properly. I keep putting tons of Zs in my words every time there is a Y and I have to go back and fix it. Also, I have to use Shift and stretch my pinkie to the right two buttons just to make an apostrophe. It's a huge pain, so I hope you all appreciate the effort I'm putting in to make my entry proper and readable for you! And if a few mistakes slip in, just deal with it, OK?

So, I've been very surprised by Europe. I thought that it's this huge deal, such an amazing place and has so many visitors that it would be super easy to burn cd's, or even travel on the trains and everything. Boy was I kidding myself. This is the first time since I've been here that I have the chance to burn cd's. And I think I've been more stressed out here on my travel days than anywhere else. Trying to find the right train platform when everything is in a foreign language, getting on a train where I was told I didn't have to reserve a seat only to find they've all been reserved and I have to go on a wild goosechase to find a free one. Directions to hostels I've booked on the internet turn out to be extremely vague or completely inadequate and I find myself getting lost all the time. All this is compounding to make me SO freaking sick of travelling. I just want to be home, where I can DRIVE somewhere! And read signs in English if I get lost.

So some of you know already, some don't, that I am now really wishing I was home. I mean, I always was missing it, but now I'm so desperately homesick. I'm tired of crowds and having to fight my waz through them. I'm tired of having to share a room with snoring people. I miss cities that don't smell like sewage. I miss ALONE TIME! If I hadn't saved Paris and Ireland to last, I'd be on a plane home two weeks ago. But I'm sticking it out even though I want to be home so badly. Don't get me wrong, I am having fun still and loving seeing all these amazing places... it would just be cool if I could go home at the end of each day... So, just know that I miss all of you incredibly. Yeah, that's mz Europe rant. Sorry about that.

But I know all of you come hear to read about my amazing adventures, so I'll oblige you and fill you in on my last few weeks. After Amsterdam I went to Berlin for 3 days, then Prague for 5, and then Vienna for 2. Now I'm in Munich for 2 days before heading off to Italy. So, I'll go back to my time in Berlin as a start.

On my first day I went on a free walking tour around the city and took in the main sights, and got a big history lesson as well. We started our tour at the Brandenburg gate in Parizerplatz, which if you don't know it by name, it's the big columned thing that is in that famous picture of Hitler driving into Berlin with the big Nazi flags behind him hanging from the gate. I learned lots of history about it but I already forget it! It was so much to take in at once.


Brandenburg Gate

Famous Hitler picture

Next we went to the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe, which is a very interesting memorial. It is a series of 2700 concrete slabs of various heights all lined up like graves over a space of an entire city block. There are many interpretations of what it means, all of them too long for me to try and explain. If you really are interested, ask me when I get home. :P But I thought it was very fitting. The reason they made that memorial instead of offering free transport out to the Saschenhausen concentration camp was because people who wanted to see the concentration camp would go even if they had to pay for a bus. But people who wanted to forget about what happened will now be reminded every day when they pass this memorial right in the middle of the city. It's so we, as humans, always remember the tradgedy we caused to our own people and can make sure it never happens again. Very good idea I thought.


Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe

After a bunch of other stops we got to one of the three remaining sections of the Berlin wall. I was a little underimpressed to tell you the truth! It didn't look like much, but you have to remember that it wasn't necessarily the actual wall that stopped people from crossing, but the huge death strip you dropped down to on the other side, equivalent to the outer wall of a prison... Guards were paid extra money if they shot or killed people trying to get over. The actual wall was only about 11 feet high, and 6 inches thick. Ironically, the wall now needs a fence around it to protect it from people trying to chip off pieces to take home themselves.



We saw a bunch of other places of significance, like the site of the huge Nazi bookburning, and the famous Reichstag Parliament building with more history to it than I could even attempt to tell. The tour was really good, and so I decided to come back the next day and pay for another walking tour all about the Third Reich and Hitler's rise and fall from power. It seemed a fitting thing to do on April 20th! (Hitler's birthday if you didn't know.) If I thought the first tour was a lot of information, it was NOTHING compared to this one! I found it all so interesting though, and kicked myself for not caring about all this stuff in Socials in Grade 11. It was horrible to hear how through a huge serious of small events that the holocaust actually came to be. It may have been prevented if only Hitler had been promoted in the military after being a decorated soldier from WW1, only that never happened because his senior officers thought that he didn't have 'leadership qualities!' Can you believe that? I learned so much on that tour, including that gas chambers were actually developed to kill disabled people before WW2 even started, and were only introduced in concentration camps when it became too emotionally hard on the soldiers that were having to shoot Jews point blank in the back, maybe thousands of times a day. So sad, and it made me ashamed to be human almost.

Anyway, to get away from the sad stuff, after a hell of a day trying to get to my hostel in Prague (meaning all of the above travel stresses were present) I had an amazing five days there. The train ride itself was gorgeous, following a river most of the way with houses terraced onto the riverbank and castles on the hill like you'd think belonged in a fairy tale. I took in a classical music concert inside a church, went up to Prague castle and explored up there, and went out with a huge group from my hostel to experience beer where it originated. And get this, the first two nights in my room in that hostel, I was the only person in there! That was definitely a huge blessing and helped refresh my tired travelling soul. It was also nice to be able to settle in somewhere for 6 nights and feel like I had a little bit of a home base. The free internet was nice too! I met three girls from the US that are studying in Rome and will hopefully meet up with them again when I get there, and also two more girls from the US that are studying in Paris and will also gladly show me around when I get there too. They might even come to Euro Disney with me, which will be way better than going alone!

I feel like I should write more about Prague since I stayed there for so long, but it's really hard to convey the beauty of the place. It almost feels like walking down the old street in Disneyland only way cheaper. It's crowded and touristy like most other places, but it still has a charm to it that can make up for that. I don't know how to say how much I loved it. So I'll just make up for it with lots of picures. Deal?


Train on the way to Prague

Some famous building I forget the name of because I don't have my journal with me

A statue on Charles bridge with Prague Castle in the background

Isn't it just as fairy tale as Disneyland??

Stairs to the castle


The outside, then inside of St. Vitus's Cathedral, inside the castle itself

View from the top of one of the towers in the cathedral. City of Prague

Some of the AMAZING flowerbeds in the gardens of the castle


Wenceslas Square and statue

Ok, onto Vienna! I hit a big lazy spell in Vienna and didn't see much in my two days there, but I did see some cool stuff. I went to St. Peter's cathedral but, story of my trip, the top was covered in scaffolding so it didn't make great pictures. I loved the abundance of horse drawn carriages though, even if they were way too expensive for me to take a ride in one. I went to a big art gallery there where they had a big exhibit with lots of famous paintings, including Paul Signac, Monet and Van Gogh. So I really enojoyed that.



This picture is just for you Ryan. Wouldn't you be the coolest kid in Taiwan if you had THAT scooter?? Haha.

I went out to the summer residence of someone... (again, no journal sorry!) which is a huge mansion thingy with MASSIVE gardens out the back. So big it includes a zoo and hedge maze, and that doesn't even fill the grounds one tenth. There was a huge Neptune fountain, old greek ruins, lots of other fountains, and amazing tree lined paths. I wanted to go into the zoo because they had Giant Pandas in there, but they only called youths under 18, and I couldn't afford the adult entry price. :( So no pandas for me...


Some random church by my hostel

Photos from the gardens of that mansion




Neptune fountain front

And view through it from the back.

After another insanely stressful travel day, I got into Munich, passing by Salzburg while on the train. (That's where they filmed Sound of Music, and I can see why!) So, I'm here in Munich now and today I did another free walking tour (gotta love those on a traveller's budget!) and tomorrow I'm going to go out to the Dachau concentration camp. We'll see how that goes, but I'm looking forward to it as an educational experience. Especially after going to Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam, which really got to me.

So, that's about all I have to say. I'm excited about going to Italy though. I'm NOT looking forward to the massive crowds I'll likely encounter everywhere, and the abundance of pickpockets, but I can't wait to see the sights. After 4 days there I go to Naples for Pizza and Pompeii, and then up to Florence for leaning towers and naked David's. Sounds fun huh? Haha. I had to switch around the order after that though because of hostel availability. I now go to the south of France first, and THEN to Switzerland before Paris. Whatever works I guess.

Miss you all! How about everyone give me some news from home? I would really love to hear what you're all up to.

Until next time!
Julie