Amsterdam and Versailles

The next weekend was Amsterdam. I was really excited about this for a few reasons (in no particular order). 1) Queen's day (Koninginnedag). Basically, this is a huge party in the streets (and canals) with EVERYBODY wearing orange. 2) Last weekend of travel. 3) I got to visit Vincent again (my French roommate from sophomore year). 4) I'd get to see a couple of my friends who'd be there for the festival as well. The only thing I was kind of bummed about was because it is such a huge festival, I wouldn't get to see the real Amsterdam; rather, I would see the super crowded Amsterdam, which meant I couldn't see all the normal touristy things (i.e. museums, Anne Frank house, enjoy city without people everywhere, etc.). While this proved to be the case, it was still most definitely worth it. I would honestly go back there every year just for this festival - it was that good.

Friday, I met up with Bill, one of my friends from Georgia Tech and met a bunch of his friends. Friday night was Queen's night, so we did normal Queen's night activities... So Saturday was Queen's day. I don't know why they do it that way, but whatever. It was packed, as you will see below. There was stuff going on everywhere - it took us literally 10 minutes to walk about 100 yards in some places. Music, dancing, eating, drinking, people selling stuff in the streets, free concerts (one by Armin van Buuren, aka the #1 DJ in the world for the past 4 years), people partying on boats in the canals... you get the picture. It was great. And there was the incident with the Portuguese dude that talked a lot and the nice Russian guy. Anyway, the following day, we basically just relaxed, and on Monday, I returned to Metz to take my two finals on Tuesday and go to Paris on Tuesday night.

LOTS OF PEOPLE

Even at the concert...

So, in Amsterdam, bikes are a very important mode of transportation. How important, you ask? Well, you can easily get run over by bikers in the city. Don't believe me?

Finally, in the city, they had a bunch of random urinals. These are placed all over downtown. Apparently they used to have girl versions, but they don't anymore... [2014 update: couldn't find this picture to update]

Anyway, since my flight was on Thursday and I hadn't been to Versailles yet, I decided this was the perfect opportunity to go. The gardens are beautiful and both the palace and the gardens are ridiculously huge. You'll have to go there to fully appreciate what I mean. People get lost there. They have golf carts you can rent. That was basically it for the trip. Thursday morning, we took the train to CDG and flew home. One cool thing was that in the US Airways terminal at CDG airport, they had two PS3s for people to play while they're waiting for their flights. Unfortunately, I didn't notice this until 5 minutes before my flight boarded, but I thought it was a pretty cool idea.

This is the Château de Versailles. Bad picture, I know. But, in order to get all of it in one picture, I had to go this far back (and I still missed some of it). Unfortunately, there was random construction going on right in front..

Easter Weekend - Rome and Cinque Terre

So the weekend after Croatia was Rome and Cinque Terre. Unfortunately, a bunch of people like going to Rome for Easter, which meant that it was really, really crowded, but as that was my only opportunity to go to Italy, I figured it had to be endured. We saw a lot in Rome, a bunch of which I can't even remember anymore - the big things, though, were the Pantheon, Colosseum, the ancient Roman Forum, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Basilica.

Also had a BUNCH of gelato, some decent pizza, and some decent pasta.

On Sunday, we stopped by Cinque Terre for the day. Here's a map that may help.

We took a train to Monterosso, hiked through the mountains to Vernazza, took a train to Corniglia, but had to go back before we got to see Manarolo or Riomaggiore. The northern two cities are on the beach, while Corniglia is 382 steps above the ground, and the last two are somewhere in between. Here are a couple photographs:

Okay, so this basically leaves me with Queen's Day in Amsterdam and Versailles, so hopefully those are coming soon.

Croatia

Ok, so I figure the few people who normally read this before probably don't read this anymore, but I'll write these posts anyway for the sake of completeness, and so I don't forget anything more than I already have. Croatia was incredible and I definitely recommend going there if you ever get a chance. Our trip was jam-packed. I basically took a van at 1:15 AM (which I almost missed because I thought it left at 1:35 AM) from Metz to Luxembourg and met up with the others on a bus at 2:20 AM from Luxembourg to Frankfurt-Hahn airport. We got there at like 4:45ish, and our flight didn't leave until 9ish. So, what did we do?

Anyway, a brief overview of what we did: we flew RyanAir into Zadar and rented a car. Drove to Krka, explored, and drove to Dubrovnik. There, we slept and explored the next day. We left and drove to Split, then slept and explored. We then drove to Zadar, explored for a little while, and slept to wake up early to go to Plitvice Lakes (on the map, called Plitvicka jezera). Went there, then drove back to Zadar airport to fly back to Frankfurt, where we would bus/van back to Metz. Here's a map.

So Krka was awesome. You were allowed to go into the water wherever you wanted, but it was still a little cold. Here are some pictures.

Yeah, I think you get the idea. It was beautiful. And I have a bunch more.

So after Krka, we drove to Dubrovnik. A little bit of trivia for you - Bosnia has one port. This port is surrounded by Croatia on the north, and Croatia on the south. Dubrovnik is pretty much the only important city on the south. The rest of Croatia is on the north. (Look at the map.) So... we had to drive through Bosnia, a country where a war recently ended, where they hate Americans, and where there are still land mines in some parts of the country. Anyway, we did that, and nothing happened, and we got to Dubrovnik at night. This is what it looked like. It took us 20 minutes to find out hostel because the GPS was dumb and was telling us to drive up stairs, we saw a random fire in the street, and drove around in circles for like 20 minutes, but we eventually made it. Once we did, we went out and stuff, explored the city at night, and went to sleep.

We woke up to notice we had this view outside our hostel:

Pretty incredible. Dubrovnik is basically a city on a hill. Not on the top of the hill, but on the hill, so basically everything has that view, but it was still crazy. The 'old city' still has its walls intact, so we went to the top and walked around it. 

Anyway, we drove home (through Bosnia... again, this time stopping just so we could say we stopped in Bosnia) and on the way back, we encountered this:

My camera doesn't really do it justice, but you get it. Our drive was literally along the coast pretty much the entire time, so we got like 20 minutes of that view. Anyways we arrived in Split, met a Norwegian dude, went out, encountered a violent cigarette-beggar, and went to sleep. The hostel we stayed at was awesome; it was managed by an artist lady from Norway who literally gave away/burned all of her things, and hitchhiked to Rome with nothing. She somehow ended up in Split, Croatia and knew it was the place for her. While we were there, we just looked around the city, played a local game called picigin, jumped on some trampolines, and took off for Zadar.

Zadar is a relatively small city, but the one thing it does have is a sea organ. We literally sat there for like 30 minutes to an hour and just talked because of how relaxing it was - sitting in front of the ocean and just listening. We went to sleep shortly afterward because we had to wake up early to get to Plitvice Lakes - the original reason we came to Croatia. 

There are a bunch of different paths to get around Plitvice, and unfortunately, we only had time for the shortest. Afterwards, we went to the airport and headed home. I'll leave you with some pictures of one of the most beautiful places in the world (I read this on multiple articles):

DONE

I know I haven't updated in a while and for good reason. I have been very busy. BUT, I will update the world on Croatia (amazing), Rome and Cinque Terre (pretty), and Amsterdam (awesome). But first, I will go to Paris tonight. I will leave for Atlanta Thursday afternoon. I will graduate Sunday.

Interlaken

Since I'm waiting here for my laundry to finish (hopefully for the last time here) and I have nothing to do for the next couple of hours, I might as well post write a blog post. I'm pretty excited about this weekend, except the timings really suck. I have to take a bus from downtown Metz at 1:35 AM and wait at Frankfurt-Hahn airport for like 4 hours until our flight leaves at 10 AM. But other than that, it should be a really cool weekend in Croatia. We're planning on renting a car and driving to some cool places.

Last weekend, I went to Interlaken. It is a really pretty place. The name Interlaken roughly translates to between lakes, and that's because the city lies between two lakes. It was really fun - we met a bunch of people the US and a guy from Switzerland. I had some Swiss chocolate and some fresh Swiss cheese, both of which were really good. The highlight of the weekend was probably paragliding. It was a really cool experience, but it wasn't at all what I was expecting. It was literally like you were just floating in mid-air, relaxing in the sky, above an amazing view, for 15-20 minutes. If I ever come here again though, I'm pretty sure I want to go canyoning. And maybe, just maybe, I will go skydiving one day. We also went hiking through the mountains, but we didn't have enough time to get to a real hiking part, so it was more like a leisurely stroll with, of course, really good scenery. See for yourself below.

Oh, and the Swiss Franc is a really weird currency.

Schedule for Rest of Semester

Okay, so lately I've been trying to figure out trains and all that stuff for the rest of the semester. Here's what I have, and these are pretty close to being set in stone.

April 15-18: Croatia

April 21-25: Rome, Cinque Terre, and hopefully either Paris or Lyon (pending train reservations)

April 28-May 2: Amsterdam

May 4-5: Paris (pending train reservations) - for a city that wasn't one of my favorites, I feel like I go here way too often haha

May 5: Atlanta

Also, a couple things I forgot to mention about last weekend:
Antwerp
1) I think it's a really rich city, we saw a bunch of really nice cars while we were there.
2) It's a really relaxing city, it's kind of like a beach city with a river instead of a beach.
3) Best döner kebab place I've been to since being in Europe.
4) Met some other Americans at the Kulminator who were really cool and also bought us some relatively expensive beer.
Westvleteren
1) I got ice cream from there with some kind of beer syrup or something and it was amazing.
2) Depending on what day you go, you can bring a six pack back. We went on the wrong day.
3) Trains hate us. On the way back, we got fined for something dumb (for those of you who have Eurail, it was for not filling out the travel report at the bottom that nobody looks at). Then, we got stuck in Luxembourg and had to take a cab ride back to Metz.

Stay tuned for stuff about this past weekend.

The Beer Pilgrimage

This past weekend was pretty much dedicated to beer. What do I mean by that? Well, Belgium is a country known for having some of the best beer in the world. And, since I didn't get to go to Venice, and most people were going on trips I really didn't care to go on, I decided to go with a few of my friends, one of whom is obsessed with beer, on a trip I called 'The Beer Pilgrimage.' Basically it consisted of the following:
1) Go to a bar in Brussels (Delirium) that serves over 2500 beers.
2) Go to the number one bar in the world (in terms of beer selection), the Kulminator.
3) Go try the most rare beer in the world (12 km walking from a train station, hence why I call it a pilgrimage), a beer which was also rated the best beer in the world multiple times, Westvleteren Trappist.

While on this trip, I definitely learned a lot about beer. For instance, did you know that there are only 7 trappist beers in the world? I've tried all 7. Not many people can say that. Also, did you know you could age many types of beer and, just like wine, they get better with age? Sounds kind of gross right? Trust me, it's not. I tried three beers that were older than me (1980, 1984, 1987), and a bunch that were aged less than that. One of them was one of the best beers I've ever had - in fact, it didn't taste like beer at all. The best part? It didn't cost that much at all. For instance, the aforementioned beer goes for like $50 a bottle in the US. How much did I pay for it? 4 euro for a glass. This was all at the Kulminator; this is why it is rated the best bar in the world.

I also found out that two of the top 10 bars in the world are in Atlanta. And while in Brussels, we went to the #10 place (here is a list if you're interested). I also got to 'witness' a fight at Delirium (what I called the Brussels Bar Brawl) and meet some cool locals in Antwerp.

The owners of the Kulminator

We were very confused by this on our 12km walk to Westvleteren...

Until we saw the parade when we got back.

We asked for a chicken sandwich. This is what we got.

Also, for some reason, it feels like the Friday spring break today... not sure why. And I am going to Interlaken, Switzerland, tomorrow. As of now, my plan is to paraglide and to explore the mountains.

München

Munich, as they say, is the capital of Bavaria, and it was there we went last weekend. It was my second weekend traveling with a completely different group than I normally do (excluding the first weekend) and that, with a combination of the city we were in, led to a completely different experience, something I was hoping to get when I came here - different experiences with different people (not that I don't like the group I normally travel with; in fact, we have other trips coming up - see previous post - it's just cool to try different things). The school planned a trip to Starkbierfest, which basically meant we got entry into a beer hall celebrating Starkbierfest for free and we got discounted stay at a hostel. Starkbierfest, by the way, translates to English as 'strong beer festival' (Germans do this weird thing where they combine lots of words and make a huge word out of it, remember that car dealership sign from the Berlin post?). Apparently the festival originated back in the day when monks were fasting and needed a way to stay healthy (well, 'healthy') and get enough energy for the day. Each liter of beer (that's how they're served) contains over 700 calories. I had about 8 over the weekend, along with lots of really good Bavarian food. Needless to say, I probably consumed way too much while I was there.

There are also 6 beers brewed in München, all of which have multiple beer halls all over the city - here was a subway advertisement displaying them all. I got to 'try' (my friends defined try as drinking at least 1 liter) three of them.

Anyway, we took a night train there and arrived at like 7 AM. We walked around for a while, found out hostel, and by 9 AM we tried our first beer (really bad, I know). We also went on the free walking tour around the city.

The next day, we went to Dachau concentration camp, which was the first concentration camp set up in Germany, and lasted pretty much the entire duration of the Third Reich.

Later that day was the actual Starkbierfest. The festival was really cool at the beer hall we were at; this was all in German so here's my interpretation: there was a beauty pageant and a strongest man competition, as well as live music and dancing performances throughout the night.

The last day in München was kind of rainy, and we spent most of the day just walking around exploring various parts of the city. The coolest part was the site of the 1972 Summer Olympics, where they still maintain the park and the stadium.

We also had 'Mexican food,' which I'm pretty sure was made by Indian people. This is what my chicken fajitas looked like.

Also, I'm like 80% sure I heard an Indian song played at the restaurant.

Discovery: There's a funny phenomenon that happens when you're traveling and it's cold outside all the time - it looks like in all your pictures you're a bum wearing the same clothes. I mean for me, it's pretty true, but it's still really funny to see.