Vienna

Vienna was the last stop on our November trip around the European Continent. It was a sad time for the both of us as our awesome trip was coming to an end, but it turns out that Vienna is a nice romantic city we could relax in. We toured the city by ourselves, first walking to the museum districts and then we ended up finding the Austrian Parliament building, gowned with beautiful architecture. We also found ourselves in a traditional Austrian Christmas Market in Rathaus-platz, sipping on some spiced hot wine in a cool Vienna mug. This Christmas Market is based on Austrian beers, wines, chocolates, and traditional crafts and baking; quite enough to get you satisfied, and we would highly recommend traveling in November or December just to visit these Markets that are found all over Europe around Christmas time. It was also here that Colleen discovered that "wieners" are from Wien (Vienna) after seeing a really large sign advertising the Wieners. After going easy on the chocolates, we decided to walk across the beautiful blue Danube (it's green over there), and we found ourselves at the base of a giant ferris wheel, which carries small rooms that can fit around 10 people instead of 2-seater chairs. It's found in a park called Prater, which also has a small carnival with rides and food vendors. It was a bit late in the season when we were there and so we were the only ones walking down the foggy boulevard. We went on the Go-Karts a total of 3 times, and Colleen beat Jesse every time. The rest of our trip was spent looking at old palaces, touring palace grounds, visiting different markets and visiting Vienna's Museum of Ethnology, where we saw the famous Montezuma's feather headdress. The city was wonderful, and we would definitely like to have had more time to visit the famous Opera and the different museums around this city that is full of so much history. But alas, we had to move on, and in order to catch our flight from Linz, a smaller Austrian town two hours northwest of Vienna, we had to leave Vienna at 05:44, which means we had to get to bed early the night before. We're writing this now that in London, after safely arriving and making it back to our hostel this morning. Thank you for all your well wishes and for reading. This post marks the end of our November adventure, but be warned, there will be more adventures to come...

Pudabest

After a long day on the train, we finally arrived in Budapest, Hungary, and right away, we went to the largest of the famous thermal baths that Budapest boasts of: Szechenyi Baths. It was glorious and warm and totally relaxing. The next morning, we went on an awesome free walking tour that took us around the city, including along the river and up a big hill to the castle district. Budapest is divided into two parts divided by the Danube (or Duna) River; the Buda side and the Pest side (pronounced Pesht). The Buda side is more hilly, is a more posh area, includes the castles district and has a beautiful, white Matthias Church at the top of the hill overlooking the river. While the Pest side is flatter and has streets organized in the same way as Paris. The castle district on the Buda side is also home to the Royal Palace, which hasn't been in use since the Hapsburgs, as well as the president's office, the old Ministry of Defence (once a four-story building, but after a bomb attack during WWII, it has been reduced to two), as well as other old buildings from different points in Budapest's history. After the tour, Jesse and I went to find lunch at a Christmas Market near our hostel. Jesse and I shared a traditional Hungarian sausage, a bowl of goulash, a bowl of Rooster Testicle Stew (interesting, I know!) and a cup of the most delicious hot wine that we had ever tasted. Later that night, Jesse and I went to the Budapest Hooters branch strictly for beer and wings. The wings came with ranch. Ranch! In Budapest! Anyways, the next day was our third and last day in Budapest and so we decided to go to the baths again to relax and warm up. That night we decided to check out one of the cities famous Ruin Bars. These are buildings that were once abandoned and dilapidated, but some artists came along, fixed them up, gave each room a different theme and then turned it all into a bar. They are actually really cool. I'm not too sure what the theme of the room was that we were sitting in, but it was pretty cool and had light fixtures made out of old welding helmets. In other rooms, there were bathtubs cut in half and turned into seats, an old car turned into a booth and various other ingenious designs around the bar. At this bar, they were selling carrots as a traditional Hungarian thing, hence the carrot pictures. The next morning, we took the train to Wien (Vienna), the last stop on our adventure.

Krakow and Auschwitz

From Berlin, Jesse and I took a 9 hour train to Krakow, Poland, where we stayed for the night. Our hostel really sucked so we tried to spend as little time there as possible, which wasn't too hard as we were only there for a night and out all the next day to Auschwitz, which was only a 2-hour train away from Krakow. Auschwitz was emotionally draining for us; so many horrors went on in this place during the war, horrors that previously, nobody thought was humanly possible. We ended up only visiting the first camp of the four in the area-- we didn't visit the gas chambers in Auschwitz II -- as we were completely drained after only a few hours in the memorial. The bunkhouses where the Jews and other POW's were kept are preserved, and the interiors are filled with small exhibitions featuring different aspects of the life (and death) of the prisoners. One building had entire rooms filled with the suitcases and shoes of the victims of Auschwitz, and in another room, there was a separate room completely filled with hair that was cut from the heads of all the Jewish men and women and children before and after they were sent to the gas chambers. The hair was meant for factories as raw materials for making blankets and textiles for the Third Reich. They can prove that they were murdered because the hair fibres tested positive for the Zyklon-B poison that the Nazis used to gas them in the chambers. As I said, it's really harrowing stuff. Each bunkhouse has more and more evidence and stories that chill you to the bone, and every bunkhouse has photos of prisoners lining all of the halls that you have to walk down. The effect given is like a haunted house, where you think that because of so much death and murder, there must be ghosts watching you. Pretty Spooky. We returned on the same train back to Krakow, trying to forget our woes, but ended up just getting depressed. The city of Krakow was able to cheer us a bit as it is really a beautiful city and the main square in Old Town has some cool clock towers and a nice market during the day. During the night even, they have some of the coolest bars and clubs with very cheap drinks. They use their own currency, with one Euro equaling about 4.1 Zloty, but the cheap food and drink bring the price to about par for richer countries using the euro. The city is also just small enough to be able to traverse it by walking, but you can still rely on the buses and trams that run around Old Town. From Krakow we took a night train that lasted about 10 hours to Budapest and to new adventures.

Ich bin ein Berliner

We reached Berlin by train and found our hostel using Berlin's ultra-fast S-bahn Berlin train. Out hostel had a pool, so Jesse and I relaxed and went for a nice swim before having an early night to catch up on sleep. The next day, we went to the East-Side Gallery, which is the largest surviving section of the Berlin Wall. It spans more than a kilometre, but we walked the entire thing because each part of the wall was painted by artists from around the world in the 90's. It is now covered in graffiti, but it still looks amazing. From there, we took the S-bahn to the Victory Arch (which for some reason had people underneath dressed in costumes you could take a picture with), from there we walked to the Reichstag and then on to a Soviet war memorial that had real tanks on display. It was super cold, so we headed back and went for another swim.

Münster

Jesse and I took an early train out of Amsterdam and headed to Münster to visit with my friend, Jakob, for a day. Jakob toured us all around Munster, taking us to the castle -- now the university -- which was completely leveled by a bomb during the war and rebuilt brick by brick by the students that attended it. Behind the university, there are botanical gardens and large greenhouses that contains tropical trees and bushes. Inside the greenhouses, we found projectors playing cartoon economics lessons, which we found to be completely wack, but later it was revealed to us that it was part of an art display. Jakob then brought us to his flat to watch a Germany vs Netherlands fütbol match with a bunch of Jakob's friends all squished into his tiny flat's kitchen. Unfortunately, the score at the end was 0-0, but ah well. Afterwards, we got all dressed up and went out to Night of the Profs; a night on which a few professors from the university act as DJs at 5 clubs and everybody buys tickets and gets to dance and have a good time. So we danced until 5 am and then headed back to Jakob's flat in the frosty air. After a few hours of sleep, Jesse and I packed up our bag and caught our train to Berlin. [Unfortunately, we forgot our camera when we went out around Munster and to Night of the Profs, and so we only have a few pictures from Night of the Profs courtesy of Jakob and his friend.]

Amsterdam is Glamsterdam

We arrived in Amsterdam in the evening after the sun had already set. However, the darkness of the night did no deter us, as we checked into our super cool hostel, and then hit the town. The city had set up most of it's Christmas lights already and so everything was beautifully lit and bright. And although we were there only for the night and the early morning, it didn't deter us from seeing and experiencing all we could of this beautiful canal city.

Juno Beach

Rather than spend another day in smelly Paris, Jesse and I took a train to Normandy to visit Juno Beach. At Juno Beach, just outside of the village of Courseulles-sur-Mer, we visited the Canadian Juno Beach Centre which memorializes the beach taken by Canadian forces during the D-Day invasion. The Centre is only manned by Canadians, so we met some nice employees from Montreal who we hung out with while waiting for the introductory film to start. After seeing everything that this Centre had to offer, we headed out to the beach to play in the sand as the tide was coming in. We found some sea-shells and sat in the grass for a while before treating ourselves to a few pastries and then we headed back to the train station to continue our journey to Amsterdam.