The next morning we went to a cathedral close by, because we had read somewhere that they had dancing there on sundays at noon. We headed there, and instead found a small christmas market in the square, so unfortunately there was no dancing that day.

However, while we were walking through the market, we noticed that many of the booths were selling these strange logs with faces painted on them. They also had legs made from sticks and had pipes in their mouths. We thought this was pretty strange, but didn’t really think anything of it until we stopped to look around for the dancing, and instead saw a giant one of these logs. In front of this giant log with a face, was a line of about 35 children and their parents. Next to the log, there was a long, skinny log suspended in the air. The children would come stand in front of this skinnier log, about 8 at a time, and were given small sticks. Then, in rhythm, they would all hit the log with their sticks, all while singing a song. Nobody thought this was strange, except for us, which we thought was very strange as well. We were extremely confused. When we got back to the apartment later that day, i researched and found out that this log is called the “Caga Tío”. There is tons of great information about it, which can be found here. I recommend reading the whole article, because it’s extremely strange and hilarious.

After purchasing my own small version of the Caga Tío, my sister and I met some of my friends from Germany, who were also staying in Barcelona for a little while. We had lunch on the water, and spent the afternoon walking to the end of the boardwalk while watching the sunset, which was the first of many beautiful sunsets that we would see on the trip.

On Monday, we headed out to Montjuïc, which is a small mountain that overlooks the city. We took the Funicular up, because we didn’t want to walk, and had a great view of the city. At the top of the mountain there is a castle, which seemed more like a fort to all of us. Either way, it was pretty cool and we had a great view of the whole town. We had lunch up there, then walked down the hill a bit, to the Olympic Stadium from the 1992 Olympics. We then walked over to the art museum that is on the hill. It is situated quite regally, and looks really cool from the bottom of the hill. We didn’t go inside, because it was a holiday and closed, but we stuck around long enough to have a cappuccino.

After that, we headed to La Boqueria, which is this really cool market right on Las Ramblas, the main streets in the city. They have lots of meat and fish for sale, as well as some really delicious looking candies. After buying a lot of candy, we headed back to the apartment. That night, my sister and I went to a couple of bars with my friends from Germany, and I unfortunately had to say goodbye to them. I was pretty sad, but hopefully I’ll get to see them again at some point.

Tuesday was museum day, so first we went to the Picasso museum. I really enjoyed it. There was a strange exhibit showing Picasso’s affinity for Japanese erotic art. It showed Picasso’s personal collection, while also showing the influence that it had in his work. It was interesting, but at the same time strange. Our plan was to go to the Museum of Catalan history, but it was closing early because it was still a holiday, so instead we hung out for the rest of the day.

The next day was our designated Gaudí Day 2009. We headed to all of the major things that he designed in Barcelona, starting with Parc Güell. The park was very nice, and had all kinds of interesting things inside it. Everything was covered in mosaics or something else cool. The next stop for Gaudí day was La Pedrera, which was an apartment building that he designed. The tour allowed us to go out on the roof of the building, which was really cool. Our last stop was perhaps Gaudí’s most famous work, The Sagrada Familia. In case you’ve never heard of it, La Sagrada Familia is a humongous and beautiful church designed by Gaudí. Construction was started in the 1800′s and is still going on today. Apparently it’s going to be done in 2030, but they have a ton of work left to do, so I don’t know if they’ll make that deadline. Either way, it’s a really awesome church. We got there right before they closed the elevator to the top of one of the towers, so thankfully we got to see the great view of the city that it offers.

On Thursday, we went to Camp Nou, the soccer stadium of FC Barcelona. It’s the biggest stadium in Europe. We took a tour and walked through the tunnel, press room, press box, and anywhere else you could imagine. Unfortunately, the locker rooms were closed, but it was still really cool, even though I had been there before. We also checked out the museum of the clubs history that is right next to the stadium. I also bought a jersey at the humongous store that they have there.

In the afternoon we went back to the Museum of Catalan history and visited, because it was open later that day. At times it was pretty boring, but other times it was pretty cool. It’s a “hands-on” museum, so theres little buttons to press everywhere and fake horses that you can get on. However, the highlight for me was the cut of armor that I got to put on. It was pretty inflexible but still awesome. After the museum, we had dinner by the water and saw a really beautiful sunset. It was a nice ending to our wonderful week.

This trip was a lot more relaxed than my others, which was really nice. We had a lot of time, so we didn’t have to rush around to different places all at once. We got to see a ton of great things and I think everyone really enjoyed it. Perhaps most of all, everyone loved the weather. It was beautiful and sunny everyday, with hardly any clouds. It was hard to leave, knowing that we had to come home to freezing conditions at home.

My millions of pictures can all be found here and here.

Our train from Frankfurt took about 3 hours, so we got to Bamberg at about 8 at night. We had to take a bus for what seemed like an hour into the middle of the forest to find our hostel. After setting our things down, we headed out to have some dinner. Unfortunately, our hostel was in the middle of nowhere essentially, and we decided to try to walk into town, which was quite far away. We began walking in almost pitch black, and got lost a few different times. After asking for directions, we finally made it to the middle of the city, about an hour and a half later. A lot of people were pretty angry at this mass disorganization. We ended up in town at about 11, which was after many places stopped serving food for the night. A few of us went to eat some pizza which was pretty tasty, and then sat around for a bit, until the group headed back at about 1:15. Five of us didn’t want to walk all the way back and risk getting lost, so we took a taxi. It was infinitely better than walking.

The next morning we headed out early to go tour a brewery. We got to go through all the different rooms of the brewery, which was pretty small, and even have a small taste test of two of the different beers that they brew there. It was a small place, so we were done pretty quickly.

After we had finished, we had a guided city tour, and walked around to the various sights in the town. That lasted about 2 hours. It started raining and getting cold, so most people were happy when that was over. After that, we headed out to Bamberg’s Christmas market. Every town in Germany has a Christmas market, where they sell lots of food and little christmassy things. One of the main attractions of the markets are the glühwein, which is hot wine. There are many different kinds, but all taste pretty delicious. It also comes in little mugs that you can keep. Everyone had some wine and lots of foods, including bratwurst, which was my favorite.

A few of us then went to a cafe while we waited for it to be dinner time. For dinner we actually went back to the brewery, where they also have a restaurant. Our waiter was really rude to everyone, but other than that it was really good. We tried all the different beers that they have, all of which were delicious.

The next morning it was time for us to head home already, only having one real day in the city. We went into the city in the morning and hung out at the Christmas market while we waited for our train to leave. Overall, I think everyone liked the city, but was frustrated at the lack of organization, especially from the first night. Personally, I would have rather gone to a bigger city where there was more to see, but I ended up really liking Bamberg and enjoyed the tour of the brewery. The rest of the pictures can be seen here.

Upon getting to Rome we headed to Vatican City, because it was closed the next day. We went through the museum and saw all kind of cool things. We also went to the Sistine Chapel, which was amazing. Sadly they don’t allow pictures, so you’ll just have to go see it yourself.

That night we walked around a bit and had dinner at a nice restaurant. We also went to Trevi Fountain and threw our coins in, stating that we would return to Rome someday. The next morning we headed out early to see the Colosseum. This and the adjacent Palatine Hill were probably my favorite parts of the city.

We walked throughout the Colosseum for a while, then headed over to the hill. Palatine Hill is where all the emperors of the Roman Empire lived and had their mansions. The whole hill was made into one gigantic palace, which is now destroyed. Many of the old buildings around Rome were taken apart for materials for St. Peters Basilica. The palace is gone, but you can still walk around the hill and have a good view of the city. Surrounding the hill is a big area full of really old ruins. My pictures don’t do the site any justice whatsoever. It was really incredible to walk among all the ruins and think of all the history that took place there so long ago. We even saw where Julius Caesar was killed.

At night we walked around to many of the other famous things in Rome. Churches and fountains were everywhere. We concluded the night at the Spanish Steps.

The next morning it was unfortunately time to leave Rome after only two days. I wish we had more time there, but instead I will just have to go back at some point. Two of the eight of us went to Venice, one stayed in Rome, and the remaining five, including me, took an early train to Florence. Our original plan was to head straight from Florence to Greve, our next destination, but the museums that we wanted to visit were closed the day we would be in Florence again, so we had some quick lunch and headed to see some museums. Most notable was Michelangelo’s David, which was really incredible.

That afternoon we took a bus to Greve, which is in the countryside amongst about a million wineries. We were pretty tired, so we went to bed after browsing a little market they had in a square outside our hotel. The next morning we rented bikes and began to bike through the wineries. It was really like something you would see on a travel show. All the sights were incredible.

After biking for a little while and taking about a million pictures, we found the winery we were looking for. We had planned on doing a wine tasting there, but unfortunately it was closed. No worries though, because there were still some people there who were very nice and let us buy some wine and hang out and walk through the winery. As we were drinking, one woman kept bringing us bread and cheese and dessert wine. It was really nice. This was characteristic of pretty much all Italian people we met though, all were extremely nice and accommodating.

After biking back into town (a very small one at that), we went to a real wine tasting in a wine cellar that had something like 150 wines to taste.

We then took a bus back to Florence and went to bed early, because we had a very long day. The next morning we headed to see the Santa Maria del Fiore, which is a really cool looking church in the middle of the city. It looks incredible from the outside, but everyone was pretty unimpressed by the inside. We also climbed the tower and got a great view of the whole city. After that we walked around a bit and saw the Ponte Vecchio among other things.

We then took a train to Pisa, because everyone wanted to see the leaning tower. We got there and rushed to the tower because we wanted to see it before the sunset. We got there a little before 5, and everyone got ice cream. We then wanted to climb up it, but it had just closed. No one was that upset that we couldn’t go up because it costs 15 euro to go inside.

The next morning we again had to make the long journey back to Marburg. We had to take a shuttle to the airport at 5 AM, wait for our flight to leave at 8:35, then took the bus into Frankfurt at 10:15, then the train back to Marburg at 12:23. We got back a little after one. We were all extremely tired from all the walking and traveling, but everyone had a really tremendous time. Our time in Greve was really incredible. Rome pictures can be seen here and here. Florence, Greve, and Pisa pictures are here.

We got to Dublin fairly late on friday night, so we couldn’t really do much sightseeing that day. Early on saturday we took a train to Killarney, which is in County Kerry. We found our guesthouse that we were staying in, then set off and walked around a bit. We walked to Ross Castle, which is on the edge of Killarney National Park. It was great weather the whole time we were in Ireland, which is very lucky because many of the locals said that they hadn’t seen the sun in months. Speaking of the locals, the whole time we were there, the three of us all thought that everyone we met was very nice and helpful. That was certainly part of the reason we all had a great time.

That night we went out to a pub, and listened to music and drank Guinness all night. The next morning we set out on a bus tour of The Ring of Kerry, which is supposed to be very beautiful (if there isn’t too much fog). We actually didn’t want to do this tour because we had heard that if there’s fog the trip is a waste of time, but this was the only tour that was offered that day. As it ended up, there was hardly any fog at all. Our driver said that it was one of the best weather days in a long time.

The tour took us around the coastline and also through Killarney National Park at the end. We stopped many times for pictures and in small villages for bathroom breaks and lunch. We wanted to go see the famous waterfall that is inside the park a bit (it’s a huge park), but the bus didn’t have lights on it, so when it got dark the tour had to end. Also worthy of mention was the massive number of sheep in the countryside. I also saw a rainbow, but no leprechaun.

The next morning we headed back to Dublin. We walked around and saw a couple of the famous churches that they have there, but didn’t go in because they were too expensive. We also went shopping a bunch. I really enjoyed walking around the city. The next morning we walked around a big park, and then it was time to leave.

I had a great time in Dublin and Killarney. All the sights, especially the national park were very beautiful, like something you would see on TV. The rest of the pictures can be seen here. I still wish that we could have seen the waterfalls inside the park. I also wish that we had time to tour the Guinness factory. It was a really great trip, and all three of us who went on it felt that it was our favorite trip. (So far…)

On saturday we got up and went straight to l’Arc de Triomphe. It’s this huge arch in the middle of a giant intersection, which is pretty cool. It was definitely one of my favorite things to see. We saw the arc, and then went down the Champs Elysées, which is one of the main shopping streets in the city. It has any store that you can think of, and also has a good view of the arc from the street.

After having some lunch, we headed up to Monmartre, which is where our hotel was, but is also where the Sacré Coeur and the Moulin Rouge are. We went inside the church and took some pictures of Paris, because the Sacré Coeur is up on a huge hill that overlooks a lot of the city.

That night we headed down to the Eiffel Tower to get a look at it all lit up. It is certainly fun to look at. The tower is right next to the river, so then we went on a one hour boat tour down the Seine which showed a lot of the famous sights in the city. It was pretty cold and windy, but it was nice to be on the river and see all the different places that we had to go over the next couple of days.

Sunday was spent in Versailles, which is a huge palace built by King Louis XIV about 45 minutes outside of the city. You can tour the palace and the humongous gardens that surround it. The palace is definitely the most lavish thing I have ever seen. The pictures don’t really do it justice, because it is ridiculous how much money it must have cost. But I guess when you’re the king of France back in the day you can do whatever you want pretty much.

Later that day we headed over to Notre Dame, which was very cool to see. It is famous for its huge stained glass windows, which were incredible. The top of the church also gives a great view of the city.

That night we didn’t really know what to do with ourselves, so we headed over to the Arc again to see it all lit up. There were lights on the trees lining the Champs Elysées, but for some reason they weren’t lit up.

On Monday we went to the Louvre. It is absolutely huge. There is way too much to see in a day. We did our best to see the highlights while still having time to see other things in the city later that day. They first thing we did was head to the Mona Lisa before it was too crowded. It was cool to see, but overall underwhelming. Next we saw a little bit of sculpture (which was my favorite), including the Venus de Milo. After that we saw some Asian and Egyptian stuff, then more sculptures!

The rest of the day was spent walking around the city, then going to the Eiffel Tower at night to go up to the top. Unfortunately for us, that night the very top of the tower was closed, but we still went to the second level. It was a Monday night, so there was no line at all to get to the elevator. We were still disappointed, but it was really cool to see the city at night. There was a soccer field right next to the tower that I will surely play on one day. After we got back to the bottom, there was a crazy light show on the tower. It was cued to music and the tower was changing all sorts of colors. It was pretty awesome.

It was a jam packed weekend. I feel like I never sat down except when on the Metro, going from place to place. I had a great time and definitely want to go back someday to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and see some of the other museums in the city. It was definitely one of my favorite trips so far.

Total, I took 663 pictures over the 3 days, but only 392 of which were decent. They can all be seen here and here.

The bus company that runs throughout Europe is called Eurolines, and is pretty sketchy. More on this later. The ride itself wasn’t too bad because it was a night bus and thankfully I was able to get a little sleep which made time go by faster. at about 2 AM we crossed the border into Poland and customs officials came onto the bus to check passports, then it was back to sleep. Eurolines doesn’t say when youll have to make a transfer to get to your final destination, so it was a little tough being half asleep and trying to figure out if the bus you’re on will take you to where you want to go. Luckily, someone who spoke English helped us out and told us where we had to go, or who knows where I would be right now. After making the transfer at about 7 AM, we got into Krakow at about 11 AM and went to find our hostel.

The hostel we stayed in was very nice, and very cheap, as are most things in Poland. They don’t use the Euro there, so we had to change our money into Zlottys. The hostel was 50 Zlotty per person per night, which equates to about 12.50 Euro or $18 American, one of the cheapest hostels I’ve stayed in anywhere. After finding our hostel, we figured out our plan for the weekend, and went out on the town for the rest of the day. First, we went to a really nice restaurant with live piano and great food, which was also very cheap of course. Everyone got soup in a bowl of bread and delicious perogies. After that we walked around the city and shopped a bit and wished that it wasn’t so cold and windy.

At night we visited the castle in the city and walked around the Jewish quarter a little.

The next morning we had to wake up at 6 AM because we had to see Auschwitz and Birkenau before we had to catch our bus back to Frankfurt at 3:45 (or so we thought). We got up bright and early and had to take the bus one hour to Auschwitz. Unfortunately I felt that our time in Auschwitz was a little rushed because we still had to go to Birkenau and catch the bus, so we missed a few things in the museum, but we still got to spend a couple hours there and see a lot of the camp. Sunday was a holiday where people go to honor relatives who have died, and leave candles or flowers at their graves. People also left many things at the camps, which was interesting to see.

Auschwitz had a lot of museum parts to it where there were artifacts and pictures of what happened there, so it was very interesting to learn about what happened, although it was very strange to think that all of that happened right where I was. One of the creepiest parts of Auschwitz for me was the basement of the “Prison Block” where they kept and tortured inmates and performed experiments. It was also the first place that the Cyclon B poison gas was used. Everything in the basement was preserved to be exactly how it was during the war.

Birkenau is only 3 kilometers down the road, because Auschwitz was not big enough for the Nazis, and it is absolutely humongous. I’m not sure how well my pictures show it, but it really is gigantic. I believe its 425 acres. Auschwitz is extremely small in comparison. Birkenau is mostly destroyed due to the Nazis trying to conceal what was going on there, but there are also many things still intact there. There are many barracks that are open and that you can go into, however creepy they may be.

We spent an hour and a half there due to time restrictions, and it was not enough to walk around the whole thing because it was so huge. Birkenau was more of what I expected when going to see a concentration camp, while Auschwitz seemed more like a museum. Both places were very interesting, but in different ways.

Our bus left Krakow at 1:10, while our bus home left at 3:45. We thought we had plenty of time. Unfortunately, we didn’t know that the same bus that took one hour to get to Auschwitz actually makes about 15 stops on the way back, causing it to take two hours on the way back. We made it back to Krakow at about 3:00, so we had to quickly run back to our hostel (10-15 minutes away), grab our stuff, run back to the bus station, and somewhere along the way get something to eat because everyone was hungry. We end up getting to the bus station at 3:40. We look around and see no bus. However, we do see two other people looking around for a bus that seems to not be there. We asked the information desk, but they knew nothing about any buses. Silly us! Why would we think that the people at the information desk of the bus station would know about our bus?

We waited around while talking to other people at the station, and eventually we find out that there was a bus in the same spot that ours was supposed to be, but it left about 5 minutes before we got there. We were all very angry at this point. We went and searched for place to complain and get our money back or rebook our ticket, but everything was closed because it was Sunday as well as a holiday in Poland. So, we went back to the hostel and stayed another night.

On Monday we shopped a little more and walked around some. We also had another very nice meal for not very much money. At noon we had planned to meet with the two other people who missed the bus at the local bus ticket office. We go in and say what happened, and the man behind the desk talks with Eurolines, and says that they have to figure it out on their end and that they will call back in a half hour. While we were waiting for that half hour, the people that we were meeting there came in and said that they called the main Eurolines office, who talked to the driver of the bus, who admitted that he left early, and rebooked their ticket for that day, free of charge. Unfortunately, the man behind the desk said that he could not do anything as he could only talk to the Poland sect of Eurolines, and this had to do with the German part. He told us to talk to the people in Frankfurt. As for booking another bus, the Eurolines bus later that day was full, so we had to buy a new ticket for 203 Zlotty (50 Euro) from another company. Wonderful.

One of the people I was with had planned to stay the extra day, and caught his bus no problem on Monday at 3:45 PM. We were all very jealous.

Our bus was scheduled to leave at 6:00 PM on Monday night, and we made sure to get to the bus station nice and early. We waited and waited and were more and more concerned that we were doomed never to take a bus back to Frankfurt and that we were stuck in Krakow, but finally at about 7:00 the bus came. The bus was packed, because we bought the last 5 seats on the bus. Everyone was happy that we were finally on our way back. Everything was OK until about 11 PM, when the bus made a scheduled stop in Wroclaw, Poland. The bus seemed to be alright, but the driver didn’t think so, so he shut it off and decided to do some maintenance on it. Two long hours later, we finally get on the road again. We talked to some people who spoke German and Polish and figured out that we didn’t have to make any transfers to get to Frankfurt. At some point in the night we crossed the border, but I was sleeping so all I remember was waking up, handing a scary German man my passport, him giving it back to me, and then me going back to sleep. We finally made it into Frankfurt at about 11:30 AM.

After making it to Frankfurt, we went over to the Eurolines office to complain and get our money back. We explained our situation to some guy who was not very nice and who I’m sure took pleasure in telling us that he could do nothing and we had to mail in our tickets and a letter explaining what happened to try to get our money back. At this news everyone was pretty angry, especially because the man was pretty rude about the whole thing. At this point, everyone wanted to just go home, so we got on a train and went back to Marburg. Total transit time from Krakow train station to Marburg train station: 19 hours. I recommend flying or taking the train for anyone going from Marburg to Krakow in the future.

All in all it was quite an emotional weekend. From the sadness at the concentration camps, to the anger at Eurolines, to the happiness at cheap, delicious food. Seeing the concentration camps was incredible and something I’m surely never to forget.

Here are the rest of the pictures from Krakow, Auschwitz , and Birkenau.

We walked down to the water and then took an hour long boat tour from there. The boat went along the city and went through a lot of the shipping yard. Hamburg is in northern Germany, so it was a lot colder and much much windier than everyone was used to back in Marburg.

After the boat tour, we walked to the Reeperbahn, which was quite the experience. If you don’t know what the Reeperbahn is, just read this quote from Wikipedia: “The Reeperbahn is a street in Hamburg’s St. Pauli district, one of the two centres of Hamburg’s nightlife and also the city’s red-light district. In German it is also called die sündige Meile (the sinful mile).” There’s also a street where guys under the age of 18 and women are not allowed, if that tells you anything.

Next, we went through this very nice park in the Northwest part of the city. I’m not sure what it’s called, but it was very nice.

On sunday morning, a bunch of people got up at 5 AM and went to see the famous Hamburg fish market, but I was not one of them. from what I heard it was pretty cool, but nothing incredible, just a farmer’s market basically. With that news I was glad I choose to sleep a little longer than to brave the cold and wind to go see some people throwing fish around. We didn’t have a whole lot of time during the day on Sunday, but in the morning we had breakfast in a café and walked around a bit more to see things without having to fight the fog.

The city was pretty nice, but I think overall people much preferred other places that we have been. For more pictures you can click here and here.

This past weekend I was in Kraków, Poland, so hopefully I will be able to catch up with writing my blog entries while somehow writing my 15 page paper and traveling to Paris this weekend!

For more pictures go here.

This weekend I’m off to Hamburg. In November I have flights booked to Italy and Dublin and am in the process of booking others!

Three transfers and 6 hours later, we had made it to Munich. The fair grounds are about a 20 minute walk from the train station. We didn’t really know which way to go, so we just followed the crowds of people walking in the same direction. When we got there, it seemed just like a big fair or carnival. There were lots of rides and little booths selling things.

After wandering around for a little while, we decided to go into the Löwenbräu tent. Luckily, we found a table pretty easily and sat down. We were very lucky to have found a table so fast, as everywhere is pretty packed. We didn’t have any reservation either. Everyone sat and had some beer and talked to all the people around us. There were people from all over the world everywhere we went. Everyone was standing on the tables and singing and being crazy in general.

The table that we were sitting at was reserved at 4, so we had to leave a little before then. The next tent we went into was the Hofbräuhaus tent.

This was also a lot of fun. Each tent had a live band in the center playing music, as everyone at the tables sang along. In this tent, we couldn’t find a table big enough for everyone, so we stood around and had some beer. After being in there for a while, we left and got some food. I got a half meter bratwurst that was delicious.

It was starting to get dark, so we needed to find where we would stay till Oktoberfest closed. A few of our friends went the weekend before and they said that the Hippodrom tent was a lot of fun, so we tried to get in there. It was full and they weren’t letting people in without reservations, so instead we managed to get a table at the Hippodrom Biergarten right outside the tent. Again we were pretty lucky to get a table for that many people, especially without a reservation.

We sat there and talked to lots of different people until about 11 PM, when everything starts to close. We wandered around a little, and started to make our way back to the train station. The original plan was to go find a bar or something to hang out at, but everyone was very tired. Instead, we went to the Burger King inside the train station, then went to sleep in the hallway.

This seemed to be a popular plan. The problem was that our train back didn’t leave until 5:30 AM, because that was the only one where we could get a reservation for as many people as we had. So, we napped for about 3 hours in the train station as we waited for our train to come. The ride home was about 5 hours with just one transfer.

Overall, it was a great trip. I had a lot of fun and I know that everyone else did too. Another group of 12 people went the next day and they said the same thing. I certainly want to go back another year if I can.