HOLY FREAKING CRAPPPPPPP!!!!!!!

So... In a little over an hour I will leave the dorm to begin my month-long European adventure. I'm leaving my lappy in the dorm, so blogging will be pretty much nil, unless a hostel has internet, or when I come back to Maastricht (two days in the month).
I can't believe this is really happening!!!!

Here's my schedule, so you can see where I am as time progresses. Send me bunches of emails or write on my wall or something so that way I'll have something to do the days I'm here (aside from sleeping and laundry).

Copenhagen, Sicily, Spain, Portugal, France
1^st – Copenhagen
2^nd – Hamburg, Verona
3^rd – Catania, Sigonella
4^th – Catania
5^th – Barcelona
6^th – Madrid
7^th – Lisbon
8^th – Madrid
9^th – Barcelona
10^th – See Marseille
11^th - Paris –Versailles
See Beaches of Normandy
12^th – Rest in Maastricht

Luxembourg, Italy, Greece
13^th – Luxembourg
14^th – Milan, Florence
15^th – Florence, Pisa, Rome
16^th –Rome
17^th – Pompeii
Catch a ferry in Bari to Greece
18^th – Patras, Athens
19^th – Athens
20^th – Athens, more Greece (hopefully an island)
21^st - Maastricht

Cinderella Castle/Austria/Poland/Ireland/Scotland/Belgium
22^nd – Fussen (Cinderella castle), Salzburg
23^rd –Salzburg
24^th –Prague
25^th – Prague, Krakow
26^th – Krakow, Auschwitz, Dublin
27^th – Dublin
28^th – Edinburgh
29th – Edinburgh, Brussels
30^th – Maastricht - one last night of drinking

December 1^st – Fly home!

I'm freaking out right now!!!

<3 Sarah

This shows how much I pay attention in class...

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

-The Red Wheelbarrow,
William Carlos Williams

I randomly remembered this today, so I thought I'd share.
I feel inspired.

Berlin in a Blur

This weekend was the group trip to Berlin. We took a pretty crappy night train to Berlin in which I tried to sleep in so many different ways that I lost count. We arrived and then set off on our whirlwind tour: the radio/tv tower, Bebelplatz, where the Nazis burned books, the Holocaust memorial, a very lovely church, the Brandenburg gate, and we glanced at the Parliament building (the Bundestag), before finding the Virchow museum, which was what we were in Berlin to see. We were all supposed to meet there at 2:30, and pretty much everyone made it at that time. So aside from checking out the exhibits, we got to enjoy each other’s company for a while.

Afterwards we wandered Hbf, the main train station (Hbf means main station or something like that, as all German main stations are called name Hbf), where there were painted bear statues from “every country”, if only omitting a few. The USA bear was painted like the statue of liberty, and wasn’t that great. We then returned to the Bundestag to wait in line so we could go inside. There’s an awesome giant glass observation… thing. It’s not really a tower, more like an aesthetically pleasing cancerous growth on top of the building. You can look down into the parliament chamber or look out on Berlin – as it was night we got a pretty view, but saw no lawmakers at work.

We ate a lovely and cheap (most important) four course meal for dinner, before heading over to the Berlin wall. It’s a wall, that’s for sure. Sadly it was fenced off, and not very well lit, so none of my pictures are that amazing. But the point is that we went there and saw it, and walked the line where it used to stand.

On the way back to the hostel, Helena and I decided that we were too tired to continue to Prague like we had planned the next day. We looked up trains and decided to go back to Maastricht a day early.

All sorts of crazy thing happened to the people who chose to continue on, but those are their stories, not mine.

On the way back, we met this cool guy from New Jersey, studying in Ireland, in the Nethrerlands for his friend’s wedding. Neat, right?

In other news, FINALS!!!! That’s my main focus right now, except for when I’m planning November. Before I leave I’m going to post a general schedule, so you can be like, “I wonder where Sarah is today, let’s check her blog!” Then you can go to the date (the 23^rd, Thanksgiving) and see where I should be at that time (Prague). It’s going to be pretty awesome.

Check facebook for pictures, I'm too lazy.

Skiing holiday

This weekend we took a nice mini-break to Switzerland. We arrived in Zurich on Friday morning, and saw St. Peter’s church, which has Europe’s largest clock face, several other pretty churches, a neat playground, and a courtyard/park that used to be a Roman customs post. We walked down the main shopping street and changed money at a prestigious Swiss bank.

Me imitating Europe's largest clock face

Then we caught a train to Bern, which is the capital of Switzerland. The mascot/symbol of Bern is the bear, so we went to the bear pits, took pictures of the bears, watched people feed them, and did an obligatory Sic ‘em. We enjoyed a lovely walk along the river, saw Einstein’s apartment from when he lived in Bern (and supposedly theorized his special theory of relativity), and went to Parliament, where I took pictures of everyone else playing in the fountain that shot up from the ground.

We stayed the night at a hostel in Zermatt, where we went skiing the next day. We had a great day, skiing the easy slopes, falling, and laughing at ourselves. We shopped around Zermatt before catching our train home.Waiting to ski!

The train to Zermatt is privately owned, so we bought tickets while we were in Bern. We had no problems on the train there, but on the train back (which was probably the best train we’ve ever been on) the conductor told us we hadn’t paid enough, because we had the wrong kind of Eurail passes and got a discount that we shouldn’t have. He told us we would have to pay him 15 Franks, and we told him we would pay at the station. Instead, we plotted our getaway. We analyzed everything – the position of the train when it came into the station, the platform locations, and our abilities to run as compared to the conductor… In the end, we walked away briskly, and once we got in the station, we ran to our next train and hid out on the platform. There was no way we were going to pay – it was not our fault the ticket lady gave us the wrong discount.

Switzerland is so beautiful. The mountains are gorgeous – the place we were skiing was awesome – we were above the clouds!

Coming back early allowed me to go to the base and buy some good American peanut butter, eat Anthony’s pizza, and generally enjoy the company of English speakers and American ways (they gave me free bags when I checked out!).

I’ve also been studying… woot. We have our first final on Thursday, and the rest are next week. Then it will be November! I'm working on planning it all out - it is crazy.

I can’t believe how fast time is going by…

Literal insanity - Vienna and Budapest

If I said any previous trip was crazy or insane, I’m sorry, but I was lying to you. This weekend has been the most insane trip ever. Ever.

We left Thursday night for Vienna. One of our connecting trains was one hour late and there were no other trains to Munich. So we waited. For an hour and a half. And then the train came. I played fuck the dealer with a few people; I was the fucked dealer – I had to drink a whole little bottle of wine and a good half a beer. It was a nice distraction from the insanity of our train issues.

Of course, we were late for our overnight train. This didn’t matter, however, because there was a strike in Munich. Our train didn’t even take us into the main station, it took us to a smaller one and we had to take a small connecting train. There were people putting up posters and holding picket signs when we got there. We were told to get on a train and it would take us to Salzburg. So we got on the train and waited; we were told the strike would be over at 7:30 am, and the train would leave. 7:30 came and went, and we figured we would have to find another way out. We finally got tickets onto a 9:30 train that would take us directly to Vienna. We arrived around 3pm, a full 6 hours after we were supposed to get there.

Vienna was lots of fun. We saw the Hapsburg palace, Mozart memorial, Beethoven’s grave, a cathedral, and the ballet Onegin. We stayed the night there at a hostel called the Wombat, that had a bar downstairs and gave us one free drink each. After the ballet on Friday, we all went down to get drinks. I was lucky, because two people gave me their drink coupons, so I had three drinks – a white wine and two wine spritzers. Also, when I went to get change for Valerie, the bar tender handed me a free shot. I met this cool Australian guy, Jay, who, of course, bought me a drink. I stayed to talk with Jay when everyone else went to bed, and we had a good time. Around 1:30, Kim found us making out on the couch and made me come with her back to the room.

Saturday we left for Budapest. At the border, Divya and Mishna were hassled because they didn’t have visas for Hungary, but luckily they were allowed through. Budapest is really scary and sketchy at night. Finding our hostel was an adventure, we tried not to stick out, but we are very noticeable. Everything got better once we had found our hostel, we went out to eat a really nice meal. We went out to go clubbing, another adventure of walking around and being lost. At one point we thought we had found the club; it turned out to be a bank. But we made it and danced and enjoyed ourselves.

We saw a little of Budapest on Sunday – we went to a park with a castle and climbed up to the Citadel. But we spent most of our time in the Turkish baths. We wanted to just get massages, but you had to buy a bath ticket to get one, so we went for it. Only two of the seven of us brought bathing suits, so the rest of us made do. I went about in my bra and underwear, which was really awkward, but who cares? I enjoyed the baths and had a great massage. We ate a nice Chinese dinner before returning home; all our trains on the way back were very uneventful, a nice change.

So that was my insane weekend, the highlights version. There is no way I could document all the craziness. I doubt anyone actually read this far, this post is so long... To keep it shorter, just check out my facebook for pictures.

Venice, Padua, and Oktoberfest (Munich)

This weekend we went to Italy!!! It was awesome to be there again, and I had so much fun.
We left Thursday night; we had to run the whole way from the dorm to the train station (over a mile) because some people were late. We caught the train, but just barely. What a way to start a trip, right?

Several trains and 18ish hours later, we arrived in Venice. We checked into our camp ground hotel and then went to see the city. We saw San Marcos square and then went in search of a gondola. In the process we lost half of our group, and looked for them to no avail. After a time, we figured they knew what they were doing, so we wandered through Venice and some people got on the gondola, while some of us just waited on church steps, talking and people watching. We had problems on the bus home as well, but made it back, finding the people we had lost in the process. So we all had gelato to celebrate.

Saturday we went to Padua to see the university, one of the oldest in Europe. We stopped by a market before returning to Venice to shop at their market and wander the city. I bought several souvenirs, rode in a gondola, and ate more gelato.

We caught a train that night that took us to Munich, where we spent Sunday at Oktober fest. I wandered around for a while with one group, before we met another group, who were waiting in line to get into one of the places they serve alcohol. So I switched groups and joined them. I got in line around 8:40, and we waited there until 10, when the doors opened. The mob pushed us inside, where we found a table. Between the five of us, we split two liters of beer and a half liter of wine. It was not bad, but not good enough that I could chug any of it. I tried, split some, and the German guys next to me told me not to waste the beer. We had a great time, and didn't get too drunk, though I'm never drinking before noon again. Being tipsy + crazy bright sun + cheap, broken sunglasses= pain.

We left Munich, endured more train mishaps and group separations, but arrived home Sunday night (an hour later than we meant, but not a big deal considering we took the wrong train to Cologne).

I would post pictures, but I need to pack for Vienna; we leave in a few hours and still have class to go to...

Actual update later

I just wanted to take a moment out to really think about life.
Everything is seeming so crazy right now, with one midterm left, everyday studying, maintaining relationships, and most stressfully, planning trips.
But... seriously. I am in Europe. I buy things with labels I can't read, walk and bike everywhere in town, and ride trains everywhere else. I hang out with my friends, joking and talking, planning and scheming, gossiping and speaking seriously. I go out (sometimes), eat foreign foods, talk to native Europeans, hear several foreign languauges, and live in a city that was founded by the Roman Empire!
In the past month I've visited major European cities in five countries, traveled through and stopped in three additional countries. Within the next three weeks, I'll have added between three to five countries to those lists... In one month's time, I will simply be traveling, not worrying about studying, just seeing Europe!
It's all so crazy, and I just have to remember not to freak out about the small stuff.
It's amazing how writing a little and some good music can really lift one's mood.

Life is good.

Sarah