We have to leave for the airport at 4am tomorrow for a very long day of traveling (we’re due into Grand Rapids at 7pm) so I’m going to make this short, but thank you for reading! We have had a wonderful trip but it will be nice to be home. Hopefully we will have many more adventures to report in the years to come!

XOXO,

Alli and Michael

We also got to walk around the apartment Einstein lived in during the early 1900′s when he was first developing his theory of relativity, it was pretty awesome. While there we learned some interesting stuff about his life. He had an illegitimate child with his first wife before they were married and no one knows where the baby ended up, the suspicion is that it was put up for adoption in Hungary. After that he had two boys with his first wife, then divorced her to marry his cousin whom he had an affair with. Also, he didn’t actually win the Nobel prize for his theory of relativity, it was for another discovery he made during the same time.

After the Einstein house we saw some more old buildings and a few fountains (were getting a bit tired of all the typical sight seeing if you can’t tell), then climbed a church tower for some good views of Bern.

One of the last stops on our afternoon tour of Bern was something the city is famous for, bears. Stephen Colbert would be a terrified man indeed if he ever came here. The city is actually named after bears and there are flags with the bear crest all over town. Since the middle of the 1800′s there have been brown bears that lived in the town bear pit:

It’s quite empty, as you can see, because last year after a lot of pressure from animal rights activists they moved the bears to a brand new bear park right next to the river where they now have two cubs, a male and a female bear.

We walked down to the river afterwards, which is apparently very clean and people routinely swim downstream in it. Right now it’s moving pretty fast though so I wouldn’t want to take a dip.

Our last stop for the day was the Federal Building, where the Swiss Parliament does business. Right next to it was the national Swiss bank, where all the criminals keep their money, pretty fitting.

The next day, Wednesday, we caught an early train to Interlaken for our afternoon of canyoning. On the way we saw some beautiful countryside with a lot of lakes.

We had time to explore the city first though, unfortunately there isn’t much to it except for a lot of watch and knife stores. Right about now I’d like to show you all the pictures of us rappelling down cliffs and jumping off waterfalls but when we bought them they came on a CD and my netbook doesn’t have an optical drive. I promise I’ll upload them as soon as I can, probably back in America.

We were exhausted after our adventure so we headed back to Bern and hung out in the hostel for the rest of the night. Today we actually went back to Interlaken, but only briefly as it’s the spot where the trains that head into the mountains leave from. From Interlaken (567 m) we had to take three separate trains all the way to the “Top of Europe”, Jungfraujoch (3454 m).
The ride up had amazing views of the valley and the mountains.

The last train was mostly inside the mountain in a tunnel built about 100 years ago. The place is pretty breathtaking:

Unfortunately we didn’t see any of that because there was probably 20 feet of visibility at the top; it was also pretty windy and cold. Nevertheless we ventured outside just to say we’ve been there.

We also checked out the “ice palace” inside the man made cave at the top.

Another thing at the summit was the sphinx observation deck which required another elevator to get to (It’s the dome at the top of the picture above). Here they do a ton of research in many different fields. Surprisingly when we went outside here it was not windy at all and actually pretty warm.

We opted out of walking along a path on the ridge to an area with sled dogs and a zip line due to the awful conditions, not to mention Alli didn’t exactly have the best footwear for it.

On the way back down from the summit the train rides felt a lot longer than on the way up, and 3.5 hours later we were back in Bern. We just finished a fancy dinner at an actual Mexican restaurant, something we’ve both missed dearly, and used up most of our Swiss Francs. Tomorrow we have an extremely long travel day, 14 hours and 4 trains, to get to Barcelona where we hope the weather is hot and sunny. Not sure about the internet situation at the place we are staying so this may be the last post until we come home. Thanks for reading!

Update: We survived! We bought photo CDs of our trip, but unfortunately we can’t post them because there is no CD drive in Mike’s computer. We had a blast though!

It was pretty wild since a lot of people were at the beer gardens to watch the world cup, but we had a ton of fun eating bavaian food such as weiner schnitzel and pretzels and drinking local beer from Munich. Munich has six breweries within the city limits and I think we managed to drink beer from four of them throughout the weekend. We also learned a local drinking song and how to properly cheers in German.One bad thing for lightweights like me is that Munich beer is stronger than the beer we typically see in America (5% to 9% alcohol here) and some of the beer gardens only sell it in one size, one liter!

So we had a slow start to Saturday morning We did a walking tour of Munich, where we saw the main square, Marienplatz:

…the old town hall, the new town hall (which is older than the old town hall, go figure), the spot where Hitler’s bodyguard took eleven bullets for him (and lived!), an open air market, the famous glockenspiel tower:

…and much more. We also learned about the origins of Oktoberfest, which takes place in Munich every fall. It started off as a wedding celebration that was so awesome they decided to do it again every year, and this fall will be the 200 year anniversary! That night we watched the USA vs. England soccer game at the hostel, which ended up as a 1-1 tie, not too bad. Sunday was a busy day. We got up early to go to the Deutsches Museum, supposedly one of the biggest and best science museums in the world. It certainly was extensive, and we both liked the interactive physics exhibits, but unfortunately it wasn’t a very English-friendly museum and some of the plaques were only in German. Here I am seeing how much power I can generate by riding a bike, enough to turn on a TV:

There was a nuclear exhibit for Michael, here he is standing inside a reactor, ah!

We tried to go to the planitarium show but that too was only in German! That’s the first museum where we have run into that problem.

That afternoon we took a tour to the Dachau concentration camp, which is about a 20 minute train ride from Munich’s city center. Dachau was the first concentration camp, and the only one to be open for all 12 years when camps were used by the Nazis. One thing of note is that Dachau was a concentration camp, not an extermination camp like Auschwitz, so mass murder did not take place there. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t live under horrible conditions though, there was a gas chamber that was used for individuals and small groups, and many prisoners were worked to death, and if they were deemed too unhealthy to work they were often shipped off to an extermination camp. The words in the gate mean “work will set you free”, which unfortunately was untrue for most prisoners.

In the beginning, Dachau was home mostly to political prisoners of the Nazi party, but as the war progressed, Jewish, homosexual and other prisoners were brought in as well. Dachau is still open not to talk about all the horrible things that happened there, but instead to honor the former prisoners and to educate the world in hopes of preventing anything like that from happening again.

It was a very somber experience, and besides the tour guide quietly speaking, there was little conversation among the tour participants. It wasn’t the most “fun” afternoon we had but we felt that it was an important part of our time here in Europe.

We arrived in Switzerland this afternoon, and are happy with our clean and centrally-located hostel. We relaxed and had dinner tonight at “The Spaghetti Factory” (they had about 25 different kinds of pasta and I was in heaven) and we can’t wait to start exploring this beautiful city tomorrow!

Since Vienna and Bratislava are only an hour away, the closest two capital cities in Europe, we decided to spend a day in each. The first day we spent in Vienna, and wanted to see as much as we could. With all day metro passes in hand we headed to the Hofburg palace, a huge complex of churches and buildings, over 2600 rooms in total. Here we saw the Spanish Riding School do their morning exercises. The horses are supposedly some of the best trained in the world, in their performances they actually do choreographed dances. Unfortunately there were no performances while we were there, and we couldn’t take pictures of the riders and horses. After this we toured the only 20 rooms of the palace on display to the public, the imperial apartments. They were mostly focused on Emperor Francis Joseph I and his wife, Elisabeth, better known as Sisi, no pictures in this exhibit either. After the apartments we decided to walk around the castle complex for a while and take it all in.

Next stop was Belvedere palace, the summer residence of the imperial family (the Hasburgs); if you can believe it the first palace was just the winter residence, not to mention all the other castles they had around Austria and Hungary.

Now the palace is a museum with some pretty famous works of art, here are some that I snuck pictures of.

Also in the museum is “The Kiss” by Gustav Klimt, the most famous piece there. I couldn’t get a picture of this one, they had an attendant there the whole time.

By this point the 85 degree heat was killing us so we headed back to the hostel to relax for a bit, sight seeing can be very exhausting when it’s so hot. We had heard about an area of Vienna that is known for great dinners so we decided to check it out. It’s called Grinzing and is more a suburb of the city than a district; we had to take the subway and then a tram to the last stop. Here there are a bunch of restaurants known as Heurigers, which serve local wines from their own vineyards and serve great traditional Austrian food. I had the buffet, which is typical of these places, and Alli ordered super sized gnocchi balls. We each tried their wine sample platter as well, and ordered glasses of our favorites!

The next day we took a boat East on the Danube to Bratislava, which is only about 40 miles away. Here are some views from the boat ride.

When we got to Bratislava we headed towards the castle above the city. It was another brutally hot day (90 degrees) and the hike was pretty tiring, but the views were worth it.

After the castle we headed back down into the city and passed St. Martins Cathedral. We stopped at the Jewish history museum on our way back to the central square for a late lunch. Afterwards we headed to Primate’s Palace, the Mayors house; unfortunately we got there too late to see the main attraction, the hall of mirrors, but we did see some crazy looking performers.

We also saw the most photographed thing in Slovakia, a statue called “The Watcher.”

Next we headed to the other side of the Danube to get to the top of the UFO tower, a huge structure the communists built on one end of a bridge. The view was pretty stunning.

In order to make the 7:00 train back to Vienna we had to start walking north to get to the station on time, which was about a 30 minute walk from the tower. On the way we passed St. Michael’s Gate, the last of four towers that used to serve as entry points to the city during medieval times.

When we got back to Vienna we were absolutely exhausted again, and we decided to stay in for the night and get some rest for Munich. Finishing up this post at our new hostel, run by the same company as the one in Vienna, and getting ready for the beer tour tonight at 6:00 and then a walking tour in the morning. The World Cup started today so everyone in the hostel is excitedly watching soccer. Hope everyone reading has a great weekend!

The first night we got here, we went exploring and had dinner at a Hungarian restaurant. I had beef goulash, and Mike had beef in a ewe’s cheese and mustard sauce, and we both had french onion soup as well. I have loved our time in Budapest, but I can’t say I have loved the Hungarian food. We did eat at an excellent restaurant for lunch yesterday called “The Hummus Bar” which basically had hummus plates with all different types of toppings and delicious pita bread! Of course, hummus is not Hungarian food though

Yesterday we went on (what else?) a walking tour! We covered the area close to the river in both Buda and Pest. The Danube is actually quite flooded right now, apparently this happens twice a year, once at the end of winter and once at the beginning of summer. Our tour guide said it had been raining for the last month so it’s not hard to imagine that that could cause the flooding!

Here is a picture of St. Stephen’s church, the largest church in Budapest. Stephen was the first king of Hungary and attributed with first bringing Christianity to the area. This church was actually right by our hostel and we discovered it the first night without really knowing its significance!

Another interesting church is Matthias Church, with its colorful tiled roof that pays homage to the period when the Turks ruled the region.

We crossed this bridge, the Chains Bridge, to get from Pest to Buda. It is very grand with arches and giant lion sculptures on both sides.

Another sight is the Hungarian Parliament, which was also right by our hostel. It was modeled after the Palace of Westminister in London and is in fact the largest building in Hungary.

In Buda, we saw the castle district, which is all centered around Buda Castle. We also saw the Hungarian president’s house, which you will notice has no security around it and you can even go up and touch it! Apparently Hungary is a peaceful enough country that they do not feel the need for guards.

Nearby to the Buda Castle is the Fisherman’s Bastion, a terrace overlooking the river. I’m not sure what purpose it serves other than to provide scenic views but it sure is beautiful!

That night, we made our way back to the Buda side and hiked up a huge hill! I was exhausted by the time we reached the top but the view was worth it.

We saw the Liberty Statue, which was actually part of a statue leftover from Hungary’s communist era, but doctored to represent their newly found freedom. It was huge and could be seen from most of Budapest.

There is a military fortress on top of the hill as well, and Michael had fun posing with one of the old cannons!

We also saw a church built entirely within a cave system, aptly named the Cave Church. Mass was going on when we arrived, so we don’t have any pictures from the inside, but you can see the outside details here.

That night, the owner of the hostel, Alex, made us a potato dish for dinner, which was very good. The hostel was quite small and it was nice to talk with the other guests. We also picked up a bottle of Hungarian pinot grigio which was much too sweet for my tastes, but Michael loved the Hungarian beer he found!

The next day we decided to do as the Hungarians do and visit a thermal bathhouse, another relic from the past when the Turks occupied Hungary. They have something like twenty-two bath houses in Budapest, attracting locals and tourists a like. We decided to make the trek to the largest one, the Széchenyi baths. There were three swimming pools outside, all at different temperatures, some with jets and bubbles and fountains. Then on the inside there were around twenty different therapeutic baths, each with different minerals and supposed healing powers, and once again at all different temperatures. Unfortunately the signs were all in Hungarian (a completely undecipherable language for English speakers) so we really had no idea what the different baths were, but we enjoyed ourselves and tried out pretty much every bath! We did learn a little bit about the Celsius temperature scale by trial and error – a bath of 16 degrees is freezing cold and one of 40 degrees is pretty hot! They also had several saunas and steam rooms. The first sauna we found was the hottest one, kept between 80 and 100 degrees Celsuis – that’s between 176 and 212 degrees Fahrenheit! It was insane, you couldn’t even breathe through your nose because it burned so badly and they actually had an ice machine outside the sauna, and you brought handfuls of ice in to help cool off. I am not sure what the purpose of being so hot was but we definitely didn’t stay in there for more than a few minutes! The buildings were grand and beautiful, we couldn’t exactly bring our camera around but here is a picture of the outside and then a picture I found online to try to show you the pools.

It was incredibly relaxing and a perfect sunny day for swimming! Afterwards we ventured to the central market to try lángos, a Hungarian fast food that was recommended to us by our tour guide. It is a type of fried dough that can have either sweet toppings (I got powdered sugar) or savory (Michael got dill sauce, ham, cheese and olives). Neither of us cared for it much, but the market was quite the experience in itself and we were happy to try local food! Overall we both loved Budapest, it was beautiful and a very pleasant city to walk around in. Off to Vienna tomorrow!

Next we headed to Wenceslas Square, which is really a boulevard. It was the site of a lot of protests during the communism years, and in the late 60′s a man set himself on fire here in protest of communist control and became a national hero.

Next we saw a few more significant buildings and sites, including this extremely ugly building, built by none other than the aesthetic hating communists.

It may not look that bad here but when compared to everything else in Prague, it really is awful.

We ended the tour on the river at a square where they filmed a lot of the movie Eurotrip (filmed entirely in Prague it turns out) with some really great views of Prague castle.

After the tour we just so happened to be right by one of the coolest bars (in my opinion) in the world called “The Pub.” Every table has four beer taps on it and you can measure exactly how much beer everyone has drank, as well as the total amount by the table which is shown on a big projection on one of the walls, allowing tables to compete.

After exploring on our own for a bit after leaving the pub, we decided to call it a day and head back to the hostel and get some rest for the huge day we had ahead of us. Today was the exact opposite of yesterday weather wise, and there was hardly a cloud in the sky. This morning we went to the museum of decorative arts, which had a lot of interesting exhibits on materials and how they are used. and some interactive stuff for Alli to play with since she is actually a five year old:

Our next stop was the top of the big tower in Old Town Square, which had a crazy looking elevator straight out of the game Myst (only Lauren will get that reference I am betting):

The top of the tower had some amazing views of the square, and the city of Prague itself.

This afternoon we went on another walking tour through the same company, this time on the other side of the river all around the area surrounding Prague Castle, where we saw some very cool places and things:

This is actually a man made wall, built by some guy that wanted to show off his wealth. There are faces hidden in the stone.

A cathedral whose name I don’t remember right now, it’s at the center of the castle complex.

We also got an amazing view of Prague from the other side of the river as well:

After the tour we had to hustle back to a theater in old town where we had tickets to see an opera. Actually it wasn’t just any theater, it was the Estates Theater which is the only theater still in existence where Mozart performed. We thought this was pretty cool especially since the opera we were seeing was Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro.” The theater itself was amazing, pictures don’t really do it justice:

The opera on the other hand, while funny at times, was just over 3 hours long which we definitely did not know going in, and I’m pretty sure both of us fell asleep at least once. That about sums up our experience in Prague, which we both agree is probably our favorite city so far. Stay tuned for Budapest!

Unfortunately I can’t say the same for Michael, poor guy!

So there wasn’t much we could do but lay down and go to bed. Luckily we both got a decent night’s sleep, since I can sleep through anything and Michael had a nice Ambien to help him out

Our hostel in Prague is barely a hostel- it is more like a large apartment with 4 or 5 rooms and a sweet little old lady who took it upon herself to point out everything on the map upon our arrival. We have our own room which is great, lots of space to unpack! It rained all day here and is likely to do the same tomorrow. We ventured into town to the Communism Museum this afternoon, a very interesting museum chronicling the development of communism in Russia as well as the history of communism in Czechoslovakia. It seemed like a good first thing to do on our first day ever in eastern Europe! Here is a recreation of an interrogation room used by the party:

There were also a lot of anti-American propaganda posters which were humorous!

Another amusement for the day was grocery shopping- we got a fair amount of groceries for about thirteen American dollars, and it was fun to go around the store and laugh at all the things we could get for less than a dollar! As for tonight we’re just relaxing and doing laundry. Tomorrow is another walking tour so send some sunny weather our way!

Love and miss you all, Alli and Michael

The first full day we were here, we went to the Heineken Experience, a museum about the history of Heineken and the family behind it. The “experience” part consisted of three Heinekens and an interactive ride with bubbles and wind and other effects chronicling the process of making beer. It was super touristy but definitely enjoyable. One of the neatest parts was the bars where they served the beer, they had entire ceilings and walls made of green Heineken bottles. I think it gave Michael an idea of what to do with his beer bottle collection post-college!

Speaking of Heineken, we even found some in a vending machine at the laundromat! Those dutch sure do love their Heineken.

Frisdrank, the dutch word for soft drink, has amused us, hence the title of this post.

That day we also went on a cruise through Amsterdam’s numerous canals. Unfortunately it started raining part way through, but it was nice to see the city from the water.

The houses that line the canals (aptly named “canal houses”) are all starting to sink after hundreds of years with wooden foundations, causing some of them to lean quite heavily!

Amsterdam is one of the smallest of Europe’s capitals, so we never bothered with public transportation here. We went on two walking tours, one was a broad overview of Amsterdam, and the other was focused on one of Amsterdam’s more infamous districts! I have really enjoyed all of the walking tours that we have done while in Europe. Of course we get to see a lot and orient ourselves with the city, but mostly they are helping to combat all of the french fries we are eating and beer we are drinking!

Tonight we take a night train to Prague that lasts from 7:01pm to 9:36am. We are in a small compartment with six beds and I am very intrigued to see what it is like! We had to check out of our hostel this morning, and took the afternoon to see the Anne Frank house. Even though I read her diary in elementary school, I did not remember that it was Amsterdam where the Franks hid out during WWII. The house was well preserved, Anne’s father (the only one to survive the concentration camps) put a lot of effort into restoring the small apartment to serve as a reminder that religious intolerance did not end with the war, and that it comes in many varieties.

We have heard many good things about Prague, so this is one of the stops we have both been looking forward to most. We’ll be spending four days there, and hopefully will have lots of fun things to report!

Yep this dog was a regular at the bar.

I am happy to report that almost every local speaks perfect English, which makes ordering food and beer much easier.  After a smooth train ride in from Paris, our first using our Eurail passes, we had almost all of yesterday and all of today to explore the cobblestone streets of Bruges. It is a very small (relatively) and very old city, there is a canal surrounding the city proper that used to be an actual moat. There are also canals that zig zag across the city, and make for some very scenic spots.

It has been very different than London or Paris, which were both very busy cities. We were able to relax and just wander here, always knowing where we were thanks to the huge Belfry that you can see from most points in the city.

There are a few things that Belgians are very serious about, a sample of which are beer, fried potatoes, and chocolate. We like it here a lot. The first thing we did yesterday was visit the chocolate museum, and Alli said it’s the most interested I’ve looked all trip. Along with the entire history of the cacoa bean, they had chocolate art, a chocolate man, and a chocolate Obama:

Our afternoon snack yesterday consisted of fries, and nothing else. It is true that they put mayonnaise on their fries here, much to Alli’s dislike, however they also had numerous other sauces to smother the fries in as well. The two green stalls here are “chip shops” in front of the Belfry that have been fighting for the title of best fry in Bruges for a number of years, we ate at the left one yesterday.

After a quick nap we hit the streets for an evening walking tour last night where we heard lots of cool stories about Bruges throughout the ages, and saw a ton of windmills and some good views of the city.

Today we did like the locals do and slept in, which felt amazing after getting up super early for most of our trip. First thing we hit was the fry museum, the only museum in the world dedicated to cooking potatoes in oil until they reach tasty, greasy perfection.

Afterwards we walked through a cool garden kept by some nuns, then hit the only brewery still in Bruges for a tour. Little did we know this tour had like 300 steps and took us to the very top of the building. Some of the steps were so steep they made us walk down backwards. Here are some various pictures from the tour:

These are the maturation tanks, brewers climbed into these and cleaned them between batches but there was still a lot of alcohol vapor so they tied rope to their legs and made them sing, if the singing stopped it was time to pull them out.

Their beer wall is way more impressive than mine.

Every beer in Belgium has it’s own glass, there are around 2000 of them.

Had a couple beers at the brewery then went to see a Michelangelo statue in one of the churches here.

At this point we thought it was a great idea to climb the Belfry, all 360 narrow winding steps, to see the view. It turned out to be tiring but definitely worth it.

We were quite tired out by this point, and came back to the hostel for another afternoon nap before dinner. Decided to splurge on that tonight, and went for the touristy but delicious meal of Moule-Frites (mussels and fries). Actually we had a fixed price menu that included an appetizer and dessert; needless to say we have not been left wanting for food at any point in this trip.

Currently finishing our ‘beer card’ we got at the hostel bar last night, which includes 5 Belgian beers going from light to dark, and the last one is a “quack” which is a glass that has a round bottom and comes with a stand to hold it up when your not drinking. So I’ll leave it at that tonight, and as they say in Bruges, up je mulle! (literally [I toast] “to the face!”)