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!
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