I have now been back in Oxford for two days, and I’m not going to lie, it feels wonderful to be able to stay in one spot for a while. Even though I will have to move apartments this week, I will still be in the same city, and that’s nice. I had an amazing time traveling, but it’s extremely exhausting and expensive, so it’s nice to be back.

March 24^th…Amanda and I caught the bus bright and early on Tuesday morning to get to Luton Airport. Apparently you can’t buy tickets from the bus driver as easily as you can on the buses to Heathrow and Gatwick, so I had a slight heart attack when I thought that we weren’t going to be able to catch the bus. The bus driver was nice enough to let us buy a ticket from him in the end though, so everything worked out. We got to the airport and pretended to sleep for a while until our 06:10 flight to Amsterdam. Once at the airport in Amsterdam, we caught a train to the central train station, which was conveniently only a few blocks away from our hostel. We found it quickly, and it seemed nice enough, but I will never again stay in a room with thirty other people. They just had two large dormitory rooms, and it was cheap, so that was nice, but people tend not to be very conscientious when coming home late after a night out on the town. It was pretty obnoxious. Live and learn.

After not sleeping all night and not having eaten for a long time, the first thing we did after dropping our stuff off at the hostel was go for traditional Dutch pancakes. The waitress recommended apple and bacon, which was delicious:

Amanda got something that probably gave her the six cavities she had when she went to the dentist last week.

Over the next two days, we went to Anne Frank’s House, the Van Gogh Museum, and the Rijksmuseum, which were all really great. The Rijksmuseum was under construction, so we didn’t get to see everything it has, but we still got to see its best paintings, and we jumped on to a tour group to learn all about them. Anne Frank’s House was pretty neat, but I feel like they could do a lot more with it. It was definitely a strange experience being able to walk up to and around the annex where they hid for so long. The Van Gogh museum was by far my favorite. We had perfect timing because we visited when they were displaying Starry Night and other paintings on loan from the MoMA in New York; I was very pleasantly surprised. I really like Van Gogh. After visiting the sophisticated museums that Amsterdam had to offer, we had to go to a Sex Museum and the Hash, Marihuana and Hemp Museum. How could we not? One time is probably enough though. The Sex Museum was frightening and the Hash museum was just kind of boring.

One evening while I was napping and Amanda was reading, she was interrupted by the first of the several new friends we met on our adventures. Kane the Australian. He was a semi-professional surfer who had been on an internship in Japan and was now just running around Europe by himself. He hadn’t met up with anyone yet, so hadn’t talked to anyone, so he chatted Amanda’s ear off for a while. When I woke up, I was happy to hear that we met this kid because we wanted to check out the Red Light District, but we didn’t want to go alone. And Kane wanted to too, but he felt that it was even weirder for a guy to be going alone. So off we went. It was not as crazy as I thought it was going to be, but maybe it was because it was a weeknight? I don’t know. It was what I had heard it was. Bars and prostitutes.

The only thing that really surprised me was one morning, Amanda and I walked to the grocery store to buy some peanut butter and bread (which was the only thing we ate for two days straight) and as we were walking home, we saw several prostitutes sitting in their windows drinking cokes, reading the newspaper, doing whatever. It was hilarious. They weren’t really trying to get anyone’s attention like they do at night, but they were there if someone wanted them. Strange.

We also visited the street where Amanda’s grandfather had once lived. When planning our trip, we thought we’d make it a heritage quest and go to Holland for Amanda and Hungary for me, but then getting to Hungary was too expensive, so we bailed on that idea. In the end, as you will learn, I got a different type of heritage quest in the end. Hooray for the American melting pot.

It was raining or drizzling pretty much the entire time we were in Amsterdam, so that took a little away from it, but it was still a really beautiful city. All the canals have boats and houses on them, and everyone rides bikes. I was amazed at how many bikes there were. It was really great to see. Instead of parking lots for cars, they had lots for bikes. You wouldn’t really need a car in that city though; it’s pretty compact

On to Prague! Kane decided to tag along, so the three of us got on a train at 19:00. I guess I didn’t know how to book a sleeper car on the Dutch website, so Amanda and I didn’t have beds. We had a car to ourselves though, so we were able to lay down on the seats, so it worked out. Sort of. In the morning I woke up to discover that I had been robbed. I was so mad at myself. I don’t know how many times I read that sleeper trains are sketchy and that Czechs in particular are as well. I was just exhausted, and hadn’t thought about it when I went to sleep, but my purse was completely out in the open. We couldn’t lock our car, so if anyone popped their head in, they would have seen my purse right above my head. I had taken out 100 euros because I was running out in Amsterdam and I knew I would need euros in Vienna anyway. So they took 100 euros from me. Awesome. I was seething that morning, but I just had to remind myself that I was lucky that they hadn’t taken my entire wallet, my passport, or my life, so I was fine. I’m still annoyed by the whole ordeal though. Who steal like that? I’d rather they pick my pocket instead of sneaking around when I’m asleep. At least the former would take some sort of skill.

No matter. We arrived in Prague and got kind of lost on our way to the hostel. We eventually found it, and billions of high school kids were arriving at the same time. Some sort of Interact/Rotary trip. This was a really nice hostel. Amanda, Kane, and I had a room to ourselves for the first night, and then the second night two other kids stayed with us, but they didn’t bother us. We first wandered around and up a hill to get a great view of the city. Prague was so beautiful.

Then we checked out the Jewish Quarter, where we went into the oldest extant synagogue in Europe. Pretty neat.

We went to a small pub for lunch. I had goulash, and it was extremely delicious. I would go back to Prague just for that. That night, Amanda and I went to see Black Light Theater. It was probably the goofiest thing I’ve seen in a while. The performers weren’t the best acrobats, but some of the acts were creative, so it was cool. I enjoyed it.

The hostel gave us free breakfast (just cereal, but they also provided coffee or tea, which I hadn’t had in days, so that was wonderful), and the first morning there we met Jeff and Dan. Jeff and Dan are in the US Army. Jeff is a captain, and a medic. He is planning on going to PA school soon. Dan recently graduated from West Point, and is a lieutenant. They are stationed in Grafenwoehr, Germany, and were in Prague with their friends Mike (also a West Point grad) and Sarah (I have no idea about her, really). Sarah was running the Prague marathon that day, so they had all driven down for it. Amanda and I were at breakfast, and so I guess it was only natural for Dan and Jeff to strike up a conversation. We told them that we were planning on going to see the castle that day, and they decided to come along. Sarah and Mike had booked a hotel room, so we met up with them later in the day. The five of us went to the castle (Kane is still with us at this point). We got there in time to see the major changing of the guard deal at noon, which was pretty neat to see. We wandered around some more and went into the cathedral, which was really beautiful. That evening, Amanda and I went to see Salvador Dali and Alfonse Mucha exhibits before going to see a concert in one of the churches in the old square. I have decided that Mucha is one of my favorite artists. They had set up a little festival in the square, I’m assuming in preparation for Easter, so Amanda and I got this random pastry called a Trdelnik (good thing you made me write that down, Amanda) and watched some goofy singing and dancing routines.

The next morning, Amanda and I made the most spontaneous, ridiculous, and probably stupid decision we have ever or may ever make. In the end, it turned out fabulously, but I probably won’t do anything like it ever again. I actually probably won’t have the chance to, so it doesn’t even matter. Jeff and Dan invited us to go to their base with them. So we did. Kane opted out, which made sense, seeing as how it is in the middle of nowhere, and it wouldn’t be that cool for him to see a US base anyway. He headed off to the airport to go somewhere (Paris, we would later learn), and we drove to Germany with four strangers. Mike has a big house that we all crashed at, and he has unlimited minutes to the US on his landline, so if anything had gone wrong, the trip would have been worth it to be able to call my parents and Griffin. And I got to go to Germany, which is even more relevant than Hungary actually, so I had my heritage quest as well I guess.

We went to the base with them, which is where Hitler used to watch his troops train and whatnot, so it was pretty neat actually. And Bavarian architecture is awesome. All the houses look like giant gingerbread houses. I loved them. We went grocery shopping at this mall that is basically mini America right inside Germany. I got some taco bell. I have not seen taco bell anywhere else in Europe. It was nice to have a taste of home after being away for three months. And it was nice to get out of a city. Amanda and I are both countryish girls, so even though Grafenwoehr doesn’t really have anything to offer, we were thrilled to go there and see some fields. We were very excited on the drive down to see all the small villages scattered about.

That's the Welcome to Germany sign...

We made some pasta that night and watched It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I really felt like I was back in the States. It was weird. The next day, we were supposed to go get lunch with Jeff and Dan on their break and then head to Nuremberg, but they had to get back to work sooner than they had expected, so they quickly drove us to the train station to see us off. This is the only part that was a real problem, but again, it turned out okay. I don’t know how we were so lucky, but we were definitely well looked after. The guys had to hurry off to work, so they dropped us off at the train station which is a little shack in the middle of nowhere with a dilapidated building across the tracks. It was very sketchy. They left as soon as the train was pulling in. And then these German men who were farther down the tracks started screaming at us and waving to us. We had no idea what was going on. We got on the train, but only one other woman was on it, and so we asked her if it was going to Nuremberg. She didn’t really speak English, but she said no about Nuremberg. So we hopped off the train, and luckily, the guys had come back because they had not felt right about leaving us there all alone, not knowing a bit of German. They figured out for us that the tracks are down farther on, so a bus was taking people from the station to another station. That’s what the German’s had been yelling to us about. We thought we had been in trouble. Whoops. So they drove us to the next station, where we thought we’d be able to catch the train. They left us at that one, which was okay because it was more legitimate than the other one. But the tracks were still down at the second one. There was at least a sign that said so in English, though. So we knew that we had to get on a bus. We had to wait for it for a while, but it came eventually, and we caught our train and arrived in Nuremberg in one piece.

I absolutely loved Nuremberg! It’s such an old city, and you can tell that it was surrounded by a moat; it’s awesome.

We were able to walk around the city and see all the significant churches and the old castle in a couple of hours. They had a little market square that we wandered around, and we made friends with this vendor who sold a tea cup to me. He was really goofy, and he brought us to this random ring that, when touched, apparently gives you good luck.

The army boys had told us that we had to try a Hefeweizen, so we went to a pub to try one out. Amazing. It tasted like bananas. We had to walk through Nuremberg’s Red Light District to get to a pub the guys had recommended. It was no big deal really. Just a bunch of half naked girls tapping at windows. A few of them tapped at us. I had no idea that it was legal anywhere else other than the Netherlands. But I just Wikapediaed it, and there is actually regulated prostitution in several countries and in parts of Nevada and Rhode Island. What? You learn something new every day. Back to our hostel, which was another pretty nice one, even though a kid stole my bed after I had made it so I had to make another one… Overall, it was nice though.