Amsterdam: was really fun! I visited my friend Lily and she showed me around the city - from the Cheese Museum to the Red Light District, Anne Frank House to the beautiful canals, I got a really good overview of the city. I even tried a savory pancake with chicken, pineapple and cheese. It was interesting but really good!
Came back to Copenhagen for 4 days, then left on solo travel to....
Milan/Budapest - Me and Tim got to Milan late at night on Friday and went right to the hotel/to bed. The next day it was raining and really ugly out, but we walked around the city pretty much all day, seeing sights such as the Duomo and shopping on the famed streets. We ate some authentic Italiano pizza and gelato. We got really lucky because it usually costs 12 euro to go to the top of the Duomo, but that day they were doing a medical study where they check your heart rate before and after you climb the stairs to the top and then you get to go up for free! We did that - the sculpture at the top was gorgeous, as evidenced by the pictures:
At night we flew to Budapest. We were in our cab to the hostel from the airport at around midnight and didn't know what to expect at all about the city, but we ended up driving by a bridge that connects the Buda side to the Pest side and were seriously blown away by how gorgeous the lit up buildings were. Winding through the small streets, we were so excited to start exploring the next day. On our first real day there, we took a long walking tour of the city and learned all about the history and sites of interest. After the tour, we relaxed for a few hours and then went to the famous Restaurant Street, where we sat outside and had a really good (and cheap!) dinner. We walked along the river and then went to a ruin bar, a building that was bombed during WW2 and was later turned into a bar. It had awesome artifacts and there wasn't really a roof, its really hard to describe, but it was a really cool place to experience!!
After Budapest, Tim flew back to Dublin and I flew to Berlin. I arrived in Berlin at night and went to my hostel located in Kreuzberg, which is the "up and coming" neighborhood (read: ghetto). My hostel was really cool, though, and had a big common room where other travelers were mingling. After settling in, I walked up to a group of people who turned out to be from Costa Rica, Dominican Republic and Colombia, and ended up spending the night with them! It was really cool how friendly and open everyone was, since I was traveling by myself. The next day I took a 3.5 hour free walking tour of the city with Jonathan, one of the Costa Ricans I had met. We saw amazing sights of Berlin - the holocaust memorial, Brandenburg Gate, the "Car Park" over Hitler's bunker, parts of the Berlin wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the Book Burning Memorial, churches, the parliament, you name it! It was a really informative tour, even though I was completely exhausted afterwards!
After the tour, I went over to Jochen and Beate's house for dinner - Jochen was my uncle Doug's host brother when he spent a year in Berlin in high school, and Beate is his wife. Doug told them I'd be in Berlin and they invited me to their home. It was so nice getting to know them, and they fed me very generously!! After the dinner, I headed back to the hostel and went out in Kreuzberg with another traveler I had met earlier that day.
The last day in Berlin, I wandered by myself along the East Side Gallery and partied for Reunification Day (Oct 3) in Alexanderplatz. I got back to the hostel around dinnertime and ended up sitting on the couch with a girl named Gemma from Australia, and we decided to go to dinner together. Some people around us heard us talking about it, and we ended up getting a group of 4 to head out to a Vegan restaurant for dinner! I had vegan zucchini and cashew pizza and "cheesy" pasta with cauliflour..it was a really interesting, but DELICIOUS meal. After dinner, we went on an alternative pub crawl that our hostel sponsored. That was a pretty interesting night...but I'll save that for my journal ;)
Early the next morning, I flew from Berlin to Krakow where I met Jack, Doug and Dubi for our Roots Trip. We spent the first day exploring Kazimierez, the Jewish area of Krakow. We ate amazing Polish food like peirogies and potato pancakes....comfort food at its best! The next day, I woke up with my throat completely swollen and a fever - perfect. It was pretty miserable but I couldn't miss what we had planned for that day - a private guide was taking us through the history of Poland, from the old Jewish ghetto of Krakow, to Schindler's factory, to Plasow work camp, and finally to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The tour was completely moving - it was so sad to retrace the steps of my history, and words can't describe the feeling you get when you enter all of these places. I made a video to commemorate the experience - it is below.
The next day, we did a day trip to Nowy Sacz, the town my great grandparents were from, and where my Saba Dov was born. We explored the city center as well as went to several synagogues and cemetaries. We even got to see Dov Beresh, my great great great grandfather's grave. It was interesting seeing where I'm from and spending time with my family.
The following day we all headed back to our respective countries. It was an amazing travel week, and I was so thankful to get to experience everything I did. It ended up being so much more historic than I thought it would be, and I learned SO MUCH about the world around me and also about myself - what it is like to travel alone, how to navigate a foreign country, and how to always stay positive in the midst of illness :) I'm happy for what I have and so lucky to have my friends and family!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W97ALc6tRQQ&feature=results_video
No comments:
Post a Comment