Last day in Vienna

We are getting ready to go hiking. We are headed to the train station to grab the metro, once off we have to catch a bus and then we will be at the spot! We will probably be back later on tonight. I will try to take a few pictures on my phone to post on here.

It's supposed to be 90+ degrees and we are hiking 7 miles so wish us luck. We have apples, granola bars, and plenty of water!

I love Wien already

Hallo aus Wien!

We got to Vienna this afternoon and so far everyone has been so friendly! It's been an awesome day so far. We made it to the hostel which is really close to the train station, the receptionist was awesome and told us all about what to do while we are here. There is a free pop festival going on for the next few days, it's a short train or a 30 minute walk away. We plan to go to that at some point tomorrow.

We got groceries down the street because we finally have a hostel kitchen to cook in! Score. When we were making dinner we met some girls from Quebec who we might try to head to the festival with. There are a ton of things to do nearby, we will have to pick and choose what to do. We hope to make it to a national park that is relatively close by to do some swimming and hiking.

This is my favorite hostel we have stayed in so far. As soon as we checked in we got welcomed by a free glass of beer and lots of smiles. Tonight we explored around our part of town and will venture out tomorrow.

I finally found a post office so I can get a few our from here!

Our new room

On the train

Vienna bound

Waiting in the train station, going to Austria in an hour. Scored a hostel there for 18 euro a night. Looking forward to doing some heavy hiking. I hope everyone is well at home.

Auf Wiedersehen!

photos

Marianplatz in München

Grocery shopping on a budget

From the pubcrawl in Amsterdam

Lunch on the canal with Shelby and Greg

Windmills in Holland. This ones for sad and haywire

Last day in Deutschland

The last 24 hours has been pretty eventful. Shelby and I weren't able to get money out of the ATM and most food places at the station would only take cash. I scrounged all change I had in my purse and returned a bottle at the front desk (one plastic water bottle has a ,50€ deposit). I was able to buy a beer and a burger for a total of 3,40€ and had ,16€ to spare. Success.

Today we went on a four hour walking tour of the city. We got to speak English all day which is always exciting. The tour took us to a lot of historical spots. We got to learn a bit about Hitler, and learned more about King Ludwig and King Ludwig II. We learned that when King Ludwig got married he had a big celebration with lots of food, beer, and music. The people had such a good time that they had another celebration the year to follow, and every year to follow since.... Oktoberfest!

Now we are back from our tour and pretty exhausted. Tonight we have to pack and get ready for our trip to Austria tomorrow.

Sightseeing

...Tuesday evening...

I have been writing word documents and posting them later when I have WiFi so there will be a few entries at a time.

Today We took a guided tour of the castle on the island of Herrenchimsee. It was built in the later part of the 19th century at the expense of King Ludwig II. Almost everything in it was an exact copy of Versailles. The king only lived for 14 days in the mansion he constructed, and all of the rooms were built only for his use. We even learned that Ludwig had a lift that was operated by his servants. From the king's personal dining room, the table could be lowered down to the lower level where the servants would load the table and hand crank it back up to the king when he didn't feel like seeing people.

He seems to have been a very private, mysterious man. He admitted to the public that he didn't want people to know much about him, and to this day no one is sure how the king and his doctor died at 40.

Other than the castle we walked around and took pictures in the garden. We took the ferry home and ended up getting on the wrong one and got stuck on the ferry for two hours when it was only supposed to be a 20 minute ride. But we eventually got back, Gina drove us to the station and we took the metro home.

It was fun talking to Gina about Germany, we got to learn a lot from her. The coolest was learning about their highway. The autobahn doesn't really have speed limits but there are certain places where a speed sign flashes. She said the speed signs that arch above the highway have cameras that measure the density of traffic. When the traffic is dense the speed signs will flash say 120 so that people slow down and don't create traffic jams further ahead. This seems to be a pretty advanced country, almost all appliances have built in energy saving technology. Even the escalators have a sensor so that they do not run and waste energy when people are not using them.

Once we got back we were desperately searching for WiFi because we hadn't been in touch with anyone all day. Finally I found a pay phone and was able to make two calls.

Tonight Shelby and I sat out on the balcony of our hostel and had our first German beer and listened to some country music to have a moment like home for a second. Monday we plan to hit up Starbucks for a long breakfast and WiFi session to get in touch with people and do some planning.

...Monday afternoon...

We got some planning done today and booked a hostel in Vienna. Thankfully we found one that seems sage and will only cost us 20€ a night. This afternoon we planned to go on a three hour walking tour of the city but we read the sign wrong and showed up at the wrong time, so we will plan to do that tomorrow.

I have been able to send a few post cards but it has been hard bto find post offices and stamps are expensive. So if you don't get one from me, Im sorry.

I can only post pictures from my phone which isn't working with the wifi lately. Will post some later.

Catching up

Since I have last blogged we have gone on a pub crawl in Amsterdam, taken three trains to get to Munich, and spent the day out of town with a contact Shelby's dad had here.

The pub crawl in Amsterdam was absolutely insane. The tour takes you to five different bars and one club. In each bar you are given a token for a free drink, and four bottles of pucker need to be finished by the group before the group moves on. While waiting outside we met two guys, one who was raised in Chicago but now lives in Germany, Victor, they two seemed very nice so we stuck with them for a bit so we weren't all by ourselves.

We only made it to four of the pubs--we thought we should quit while we were ahead and still safe to make it back to the hostel. We met quite a few people that we got to talk with fora good bit of time. We met two very sweet girls from London who we hung out with for a while. They were just in Amsterdam for the weekend to spend a few days relaxing and going out.

So, we survived the bar crawl and got a free t-shirt! Success.

The next morning we had to wake up early to check out of the hostel. We had a leisurely breakfast at a restaurant on the canal and made our way to Amsterdam Centraal train station. There were no direct trains left to Munich so we had to take three. The two were about an hour and the next was somewhere around five hours. We finally made it to our hostel around 9:30pm.

When we arrived we learned that we had gotten a room upgrade. We had signed up for a 12 bed shared room, but they had a cancellation and upgraded us to a private twin. It's a bit of a bummer that we don't have roommates to chat with, because in Amsterdam we met some really awesome people, but on the other hand it's nice to have some privacy.

Last night at the hostel when we were in the lobby, Gina--a woman Shelby's dad knows--came looking for us. Se invited us to a major music festival but it would go on into the wee hours of the morning and we really wanted to get some sleep. After declining the festival invitation she invited us to go visit a famous castle on an island outside of Munich with her daughter and her boyfriend, and two other couples who are staying with them from the states.

We took the tram this morning to a location near Gina's house where we got picked up by Anya and her boyfriend. They drove us to Gina's and we had breakfast there before taking off. Since it was far out of the city, we had to take the Autobahn to get there. We clocked in at 190km/hr which felt pretty crazy, but when all the other cars are going just as fast it wasn't hard to adjust to.

After the trip in the car we had to take a ferry to the island where the castle is. From where we were you could see the mountains of Austria. They were absolutely breathtaking.

We took a guided tour of the castle with the group which I will write about tomorrow because I only have a few minutes of wifi left.

Write again soon if possible

PS
Sorry mom and dad for all the scary details of bar crawls and the autobahn. But I assure you we look 
out for each other