“I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.” – Mary Anne Radmacher Hershey

I am a blogging machine! Really I just arrived in Dublin and am so exhausted from traveling/lack of sleep to really go anywhere, so a blog it is. This is not about Ireland, that post is yet to come. This is a summation of the lessons learned on my travels. Little bits of wisdom, new opinions and observations I have picked up along the way that I wish to share with you all. So enjoy this latest post: Angela Pralle on...

Traveling in General:

* Not every disaster, like erupting volcanoes, needs to be a disaster. I have a very zen outlook on life now. I have become quite good at making the best of unsavory situations.

* Just because someone is speaking English does not mean you will understand it. Scottish and Irish people are incredibly difficult to understand. ("A tunnel bridge?" "No. O'Connel Bridge." "Oh...yeah that makes more sense.")

* Learn to read a map, and learn quickly.

* While you obviously need to watch out for thieves and such, don't automatically assume the worst in people. You might meet a lovely Irish couple willing to help you find your hostel and carry your 40-pound backpack for you. Granted they might lead you the wrong way, but it's the thought that counts.

* Americans are not as hated as you might think. But say you love President Obama even if you don't. You will save yourself a lot of time and headaches. Try to avoid politics in general though.

* ASK FOR DIRECTIONS. I cannot stress this enough. It is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign that you are freaking LOST. You want to get mugged? Keep walking the wrong way down those dark, sketchy allies. You want to find your nice, safe hostel? Suck up your pride and ask someone who knows where the hell you need to go.

Staying in hostels:

* If you have to leave the hostel by 6 am, please for the love of god pack your bag the night before. Not at 5 am next to some one's head. It's rude. And a good way to get punched in the face.

* People with plastic bags should be shot. Nothing is louder or more obnoxious than a plastic bag. Ziplock bags are fine- grocery sacks are not.

* Remove the word 'privacy' from your vocabulary

* Just say hi. It will lead to a conversation and many friends with many cool people. (i.e. Jayne, Jacki, Kim, Jason, Daniel, Claire, Kate, Sarah, Brian, Grace, Liyana, etc.) You're all traveling so you all have something in common.

* Eventually, no matter how light you pack, you will need to throw something out. I have left a string of my possessions across Europe. Pants, shoes, alarm clocks, sheets...

Transportation:

* Trains are beautiful, wonderful things. Great views, interesting people (like Felicitas- my new 81-year-old German pen pal) and it's so convenient.

*Likewise, metros are also fabulous

* Never, EVER fly RyanAir. It's not as cheap as you think because of the hidden fees and it is so not worth the $20 you save. EasyJet is acceptable.

* Always double check the date when buying a ticket.

Bathrooms:

* Your standards will go down. Trust me.

* You will have to pay to pee.

* Things like lights, water and soap are not a given.

* Also not a given: toilet paper, locks, or toilet seats.

* I am not kidding about the toilet seats. They're 50/50. Half the time it's a full-on hover situation ladies.

* However, I feel that if you are going to charge me $1.50 to pee, you should provide me with a toilet seat. Just sayin'...

Food:

*Just try it- even if it has a weird name. You might find something new you like. Currywurst is really good. Paella. Kebabs (so not what you think they are, but they're delicious.)

* Be prepared to not like everything though.

Things you will just have to get used to:

* The metric system

* Celsius- way complicated, but I'm getting there

* Lack of street signs

* Being out of your comfort zone all the time- feeling completely awkward IS my new comfort zone

*Currency exchange rates. Sweden was by far the worst. Most is relatively close, as in a Euro is like a dollar (worth more yes, but same idea) and like a pound. Alternatively, a dollar is like 8.6 crowns in Sweden. Awkward.

Languages:

* Just make an attempt. People appreciate the effort. You're the foreigner so at least try.

* You will sound like an idiot. Get used to it. ("Aston Quay?" "Um...it's pronounced 'key'..." To which I would like to know: In what language sir? In what language?)

* Haha...good luck with the maps written in different languages. I have no advice for that one.

Okay, that's enough for now. I am starving so I am off in search of new food I haven't tried before (which is not likely to be found in Ireland, but it's always worth a shot). Heed my advice people. Happy travels.

I suck

So I just realized I don't even have pics of Switzerland up yet. I am a failure. I am going to spend the next half hour uploading as many pics as I can for you all. So. Here goes.

Switzerland:

Ah, one of Asian-friendly Switzerland's zen gardens

Best view ever

Germany:

Cool church thing

On the top of the Bundestag

That really famous arch I can't remember the name of...

Sweden:

I don't know what this is. I just thought it was pretty.

Hehe! His hat is pointy!

Illegally taken photo because apparently the design is copyrighted. Please don't turn me in.

Amsterdam:

EPIC

Nice window. You know, for the classy hookers...

The Land of Harry Potter

Alright kids. Edinburgh.

AMAZING

Yeah that pretty much sums it up. Edinburgh, with one city left, is my favorite place so far. It was absolutely amazing. Now, usually there's nothing but rain in Scotland, and it had rained every day of my trip- until I got to Scotland. I hit the holy grail of weather there. The unicorn of weather, if you will. It was sunny and beautiful every day. I got sun burnt. I loved every second of my time there.

The flight there was smooth. In the airport I ran into a girl from the States, Claire, who turned out to be staying in the same hostel as me. So right away a new friend. It was an omen. The first night I ended up going out with 2 other girls at my hostel. We went to a ceilidh (pronounced kaylee). It's a traditional Scottish dance party. It was so much fun. They play folk music and teach you all these dances. It was great.

The next day I took a free walking tour of the city which was also very cool. Not to mention informative. Edinburgh is such a beautiful city. The castle and this one school were the inspiration for J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter. She even wrote the books there. Or at least the first couple anyway. I got to see the cafe where she wrote them and everything. I even (and this will only be cool for true Harry Potter nerds like myself) got to see Tom Riddle's grave. Yeah. I know you're jealous.

I took a ghost tour thing one night because Edinburgh (and Scotland in general) has a very dark history. We're talking witch hunts and body snatchers and lots of hangings. We went through cemeteries and up Calton hill where there's a bunch of monuments and stuff. It wasn't super spooky, but was still really cool. It was fun to listen to all the old legends and stories while standing in a mausoleum. And I got some great night shots of the city.

I did, of course, climb Arthur's Seat. The view from the top was incredible and it was the perfect day for climbing. I went with Claire and her friend Kate. Then we went to the Scottish Whiskey Experience. I got to try 12-year-old, single-malt scotch. I officially do not like whiskey. I tried, I really did. It's just gross.

I met tons of people, had some great food, got to do tons of fun things- including my first ever pub crawl. Highly recommended. I sang karaoke in a Scottish bar. It was super fun. My hostel was cool, but took the whole 'theme' thing a little too far in my opinion. Each dorm had a theme, which is fine. Mine was 'Addictions'. But then each bed had a name (instead of the usual number) to correspond with the dorm's theme. My bed was Sex. Yes. I slept under a wooden plaque that said SEX in big green letters. Other addictions included coffee, drugs, chocolate and shopping (now THAT one would have been appropriate for me).

Edinburgh was a huge win. Huge. I can't believe it almost didn't make it on my list of places to go. As lame as this sounds, a little piece of my heart is still there.

I will be home in less than a week now. If you don't count today (which I don't because it's almost midnight already) I will be home in 5 days. That is insane to me. I miss you all so much, but this trip has been so life-changing for me. There will be at least one more post full of pictures for Amsterdam, Sweden and Germany, as well as one to sum up Ireland. I will see you all very soon. Love you!

Beer, hookers and Ann Frank

This is probably going to be a short post because I wasn't in Amsterdam for very long. Scotland's will be a little longer, but probably won't be for a couple days. I'll try to get it up as fast as I can though (that's what she said) because I'll be home in less than 2 weeks (crazy!) so I want to keep everything as up to date as possible.

Okay, so Amsterdam is a beautiful city. I don't know what I expected really, lots of potheads and hookers I guess, but I did not really expect it to be such a gorgeous city. The architecture is amazing. I didn't see a single bad neighborhood and I went all over the city. I mean, even the Red Light District wasn't as skeezy as I expected it to be.

At the train station I met an awesome girl named Kim from California/Colorado (she works in Colorado) and she decided to come to my hostel with me to see if there was room. There was and we were in the same dorm and got to explore the city together. My hostel was outside the city a little ways, and it was on a lake. It was more like a campground than a hostel. It was pretty nice, and the best part was that ducks kept wandering through! Little baby ones, too! They were so cute!!!

I went to the Ann Frank house. It was very cool and so...well, depressing is the only word that really comes to mind. It would be so awful to be cooped up in a little tiny apartment for years just to be found out and sent to a concentration camp. I've never even read The Diary of Ann Frank (I will now though). I heard the story and knew about her, I mean, everyone knows about her. But to actually stand where she stood and see the covered up windows...it was incredibly powerful. I guess there aren't really any words to explain. Like the bullet holes in the Reichstag, it was just such a slap in the face to realizing that all the things we hear about wars aren't just stories. I know that I'm blessed for being so far away from any war zone ever, but I feel almost a little like I've been living in a fake world. I feel guilty that I don't think about the war in Iraq more, and that the hell some people go through every day doesn't even crosses my mind most days...

And because all of that is horribly depressing Kim and I decided we needed some cheering up. So we went to the Heineken Experience. It. Was. EPIC. Seriously, it was one of the coolest places I've been. Who knew beer could be so delicious and so fascinating? I am totally going to go to the Budlight plant thing in St. Louis sometime. I think it's Budlight anyway...and I think it's in St. Louis...okay so maybe I should figure that out.

The Red Light District was as expected. The whole area smelled like pot, there were sex shops every 10 feet and lots of hookers in windows. So yeah. It was honestly a little underwhelming, but I didn't go there very late at night. I heard the area gets kind of sketchy (for obvious reasons) late at night so Kim and I went early evening-ish.

Basically Amsterdam was a lot of fun and I made a new friend and had a good time. Yay for Heineken beer, hookers and Ann Frank. That sounds awful...

Back to the homeland

I am going to be lazy and combine Germany and Sweden into one post. I'm falling a bit behind, I know. My internet in Amsterdam and now in Scotland is a bit dodgey (yes, I am turning Scottish) so it's been hard to post regularly and keep up. That and, you know, I've been traveling around Europe and that's taken up quite a bit of my time. Anyway.

Germany:

Amazing. Wonderful country. I met up with my good friend Christin Mechler who I haven't seen for 2 years and is studying in Dresden. We spent many a night chatting and catching up. I got to go to some of her classes which were in French and German. I didn't understand the German one, but I did understand a little of the French thanks to my Spanish. You might be wondering how that's possible. Also, how is it possible that I can understand Italian and Portuguese? Basically it's because Spanish and Portuguese are the bastard love children of French and Italian. So there you go. Four languages with one stone. But I digress.

I saw a lot of Berlin and met some of Christin's friends who are amazing people. I'm glad they're my friends now too. Berlin was so much fun. Christin works at the Bundestag and I got to meet her boss, whose name I cannot spell or even pronounce so yeah..., but he is all super important. And she got to give me my own little private tour of the Reichstag.

The Reichstag is very cool. There's all kinds of history (as you can imagine because it's Germany) that comes with the building. You can still see bullet holes in the walls from World War II and they kept Russian graffiti on some of the walls from when the Russians overtook it. It's so weird because, for me, WWII has always seemed so long ago. It's weird to see grafiti and bullet holes and go oh hey, that wasn't all that long ago. I met this 81-year-old woman on the train to Germany. Her name is Felicitas (and we're totally pen pals now and train BFFs) and she was telling me all kinds of stories about what things were like before the war and after. It was amazing.

So. Germany = big win. Also, I spent way too much money, which will become a kind of theme for my posts from the next several places I went.

Sweden:

Also a big win. Stockholm is easily one of my favorite cities in the world. It's beautiful. I had the best time wandering around the city and seeing all the different old buildings. Sweden has a very distinct style that's different from anywhere else I've been in Europe.

Fun story. So I took a night train from Berlin to Lund, Sweden and then needed to catch a train from Lund to Stockholm. I asked the lady when the next one was for my Eurail pass and she said the next free one was in 10 minutes. Perfect! So she told me the platform. Which turned out to be wrong. So I missed my train. Then I asked the lady when the next free one was and she said it wasnt' for 8 hours. EFFFFF!!!! So I asked how much it was to pay for a seat reservation. Now, Swedes have a weird accent when they speak English that's a little hard to understand. So I thought she told me 65 pounds, thinking she converted it to pounds for me because she assumed I was English (because many people have dispite my rather obvious American accent). So I said, in politer words, hell no. Because 65 pounds is like $100. I decided to wait the 8 hours. Anyway, to make a long story shorter I found out later that a seat reservation is 65 CROWNS. Not pounds, and which makes much more sense seeing as Sweden uses crowns. For those of you not up on your exchange rates, 65 crowns is about $8. Yeah. I sat in a train station in Sweden for EIGHT hours (beause it was pouring rain outside) rather than pay $8 to get to Stockholm at a decent hour. Go me. But I did brave the rain long enough to go get a drink from the coffee shop across the street where I had probably the best chai tea latte in my life. So not a complete loss.

So yes. Germany and Sweden were both big wins. And I promise, promise, promise that pictures are coming, but my internet is absolutely awful so uploading photos is not really an option. I'm hoping when I get to Galway it'll be decent and I can catch you up on Amsterdam and Edinburgh (which is my favorite place so far- it's the birthplace of Harry Potter, I mean, how could it not be my favorite?). So don't get mad at me yet! It's not my fault!

Love you guys!

The hills are alive with the sound of music!

(Wrong country I know, but I saw the Eidelweiss hotel and was singing songs from that move my whole time in Switzerland.)

I know, it's been a long time since my last post. I am a disgrace to the blogosphere. I've been busy what with the whole jumping from country to country thing. Anyway.

Switzerland was amazing. It was so beautiful. One the way there I totally met a creeper on the plane. There was one of those awkward eye contact things where you make eye contact by complete accident so you do one of those polite little smiles and then look away. Apparently a polite smile to this guy meant come hither or something. He held up the whole line boarding the plane to have a conversation with me. When I pointed that out he moved to the back only to come forward and ask me if I wanted to move to the back of the plane with him. Ew. I told him I was with my parents- a delightful french couple sitting next to me who didn't know a word of English. Thank god the woman had blonde hair.

My hostel in Switzerland was pretty awesome. The staff was super helpful and helped me plan my days there. I met a lot of cool people. On my third day there I met three girls studying in Ireland who I'm going to meet up with when I'm in Dublin. There was also a guy named Spencer staying at my hostel from Canada. We had movie nights like every night.

It was rainy every day, but it was still a lot of fun. I hiked mountains, like Harder Kulm (and was ridiculously sore the next day) and visited a bunch of little villages. I went to Gimmelwald which was RSR (Rick Steve's Recommended). It was really pretty and I got to take cable cars all over the mountains. It was beautiful. Interlaken was most definitely a win.

I'm going to go figure out dinner, but Germany will follow shortly. Maybe even tonight yet. Love you guys!

P.S. Pics will come later.

"There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.” – Jawaharial Nehru

So I am chilling out in my hotel room before my big adventure begins tomorrow. I know all of you are curious about my plans, so I am posting an itinerary. This way you know where I'm at and where I'm going. And I really hope no crazy stalkers are going to read this and follow me around Europe because I don't know anyone with a special set of skills to come save me. I mean, how sucky would it be to get kidnapped over here? For all of you who are taking part in Angela's Backpacking Adventure drinking game you would all have to do like a keg. But I digress. I'll risk it. Here are my travel plans:

May 1- Leave Madrid and fly to Switzerland

May 1- 4- Interlaken, Switzerland

May 5-10- Dresden and Berlin, Germany (I'll be staying with my friend Christin)

May 11- This is a travel day

May 12-14- Malmo and Stockholm, Sweden

May 15- This is also a travel day (Sweden is a little out of the way)

May 16-17- Amsterdam, Netherlands

May 18-20- Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland

May 21-30- Galway, Cliffs of Moher, Aran Islands and Dublin, Ireland

May 31- Fly from Dublin to Madrid and stay in a hotel for the night

June 1- Fly back to the States

So there you are! If I want to change my plans and stay longer in one place I can, but I'm going to try and stick pretty close to this. I fly to Switzerland, from Amsterdam to Scotland, and from Scotland to Ireland because the UK doesn't accept the Eurail Pass. Otherwise all other travel will be by train.

I am incredibly excited. I managed to fit everything I want/need into my backpack so that was a major win. I want to say my posts will be more frequent as I'm sure I will have plenty to tell you all, but I have no idea what to expect from this trip. This is way out of my comfort zone. I have no idea how busy I'll be or what the internet situation is in my hostels. All of them say free internet, but that doesn't necessarily mean wifi. I might have to use the hostel's computers and those, I have learned, come in varying degrees of...let's say technological advancement. (That's much nicer than suckitude.)

And with that I am off to bed. I'm still battling a sore throat, but I'm hoping some fresh Alpine air will do the trick :) Wish me luck!

xoxo