While we did a lot of things right, there were still things that we could’ve been done better. There are certain things that you can’t plan for, but you should always be prepared to keep calm in the moment, and not let the weight of the whole trip lie on one decision. The earlier you plan and pay for train tickets and lodging, the more money you’ll save, and be able to put towards the unexpected cancellations and miscommunications. Even if you think that you can wait a few weeks to make final decisions, don’t. Plan early and save.
Lodging
Every city has low cost places to stay, but they go quickly, and once they are gone, you are stuck with what ever is left. Sometimes even the shitty places end up jacking up their prices, because at the last minute there is so much demand. While some friends have said that they have slept in parks or on bridges, I wouldn’t recommend taking the risk. Hotels, hostels, rental cars, train, and plane tickets can/should all be reserved months in advance. We stayed in a lot of AirBnb rooms, which seemed to fill up really fast, especially the ones that were really low in price. When our couchsurfing plans fell through in Verona, and we stayed at the place in Venice, or when we arrived a day earlier in Copenhagen, we probably could’ve easily saved $50-$100, if we didn’t have to get things set up the last minute.
Food
If you want to save money on food, you have to learn the names of the local grocery stores or food markets, and map them out. Always make sure that you buy things in the middle of the day. In some of the cities we traveled to, stores and shops would close as early as 5 or 6pm, and your only options for food after that, was to go to a luxury restaurant. We didn’t really plan ahead, how and what we were going to eat, or find out the names of grocery stores, before we went there.
We didn’t effectively use the internet to map stores out before we arrived in the city. We basically had to be lucky enough to run into a place that looked like a grocery store, then buy as much as food as we could carry. We could’ve easily saved a few hundred dollars, if we would’ve thought to map out places, instead of just waiting until we were desperate, hungry, and willing to pay $20 for a sandwich.
Luggage
Everyone that says to travel light is right. Travel as light as you can. Don’t bring extra items that aren’t necessary unless you know that you are going to use them. Before we left, we were confident that we were going to be paying our way across Europe doing facepainting and caricatures. However, we didn’t do any face painting and we did 4 caricatures over the course of 30 days. Every day that we traveled which was pretty much every other day, I carried an extra 10-15 lbs that I could’ve just left at home. Having a few extra clothes or a tent is enough weight to carry, when you start adding chairs, easels and signs, you are just making things harder on yourself than they need to be. I probably would’ve been better off scoping out the situation and buying new materials there, and then carrying them, than to bring everything. I couldn’t have predicted that I would be stuck in the rain, that much of the trip, but I probably should’ve done a “what-if?”.
It was more convenient in my opinion to have the 70 liter back pack, as opposed to a suitcase, because it kept you pretty disclipined when it came to buying more things. Also, if you were cutting through grass or walking through a train aisle, you weren’t being a pain in the ass with a rolling suitcase.
Time Management
If you are planning an overseas trip, never think that you’ll have plenty of time to do everything, unless you are staying in once place the entire time, and you are going to be practically living there. Going back to the caricatures, since most of the cities that we went to, we were only there for 2-3 days, we figured that we could draw enough people in 2 or 3 hours, that we’d be able to eat and pay for luxuries. What we didn’t realize is that transportation is a time suck.
Whether you are renting a car and looking for parking, or taking a bus and waiting at a bus stop, or taking a train and showing up early, you are taking up a lot of time walking around and waiting, that you might think you’d be using looking at other things. The amount of time that we spent walking places and taking longer to get some place, than we probably needed to, was insane in some instances. Having to deal with people’s misinformation, or just being disoriented in a strange place, and having to find your barrings, would just steal hours away from sight-seeing and especially working.
Get a GPS, a good data plan, or find a tour guide, or you are going to waste a lot of time taking wrong turns, and going the wrong way. If you like the idea of getting lost in a place with a big heavy bag on your back, while stressing to try to find a place to eat or your lodging, you should totally wing it. However, if you want to get to a city and at least start by knowing where your directions start, it’s nice to have the satellites helping you along. While sometimes the Google Maps that we used, weren’t the most effective way to find a bus or a train, most of the time it was amazing. In Belgium, our friend Jeremie took us around to the best places in town, so to know a guy is really plus as well.
Sim Cards
I used an unlocked Iphone 4 as my main GPS and internet data device. Unfortunately, it only had about 3 hours of battery time, when using it to navigate from one place to another or using the wireless data at all. I don’t know much about unlocked phones or where to get one, so I was pretty reliant on the fact that my boss was letting me borrow it. However, if you are able to find an unlocked phone that isn’t terrible on battery life, you will be in much better shape than we were.
This leads me to mentioning the importance of making sure that you get an international sim card from Sim One (or One Sim?) or maybe another company. It is important that you know that the sim card is going to work properly in every country that you are traveling in. The service plan will hopefully be able to be prepaid for the entire month, so that you don’t have to keep buying SIM cards in every place that you visit.
We bought a sim car in Denmark, that would be roaming when we entered into Germany. You could be on the border of France and Switerland and be roaming on one side, with your network in the other. If I could’ve gone back and done a bit more research in how necessary such a tool it would be, I could’ve saved a lot of stress and also, a lot of money. A few of the sim cards that I bought including the data and minutes were $60-$70 and would only last for what seemed like a few days, and then I thought, that I would have to buy a new one.
There was a company called Lyca Mobile, that seemed to have service in a lot of different areas and you had to adjust your plan when you entered a new country. The problem is that when it would text message you that you went into a different country, the message explaining how to update it, was in the national language of the country. That company might have been the best way to go, because you could pick up minutes at the grocery store, but you needed to have someone that knows the language.
Languages
While lots of people speak English and want to help you, it’s definitely more helpful to know a bit of the national language. There were a few times, when we could’ve actually learned something about a place or been able to ask further questions, but we didn’t know how to communicate. When we were in Belgium and German, hanging out with Jeremie and Marko, respectively, the fact that they could speak the language and get us to places faster, and give us more information, made things a lot more enjoyable and we were able to add lots of nice perks to our trip.
Money
Never think that you aren’t going to run out of money unless you are traveling alone. However much money you have available, you are going to want to spend it, especially if you don’t really have that much money to start with. Costs add up when you are accuring additional fees on taxes and international transactions. If you feel pretty safe, buy as much foreign currency from the bank back home as you can, because every bank and ATM will hit you with fees that you might not even realize until you make it back home.
People were telling us that you can use your credit card to buy everything and you will avoid ATM fees. However, what you may not realize is that 9 times out of 10, small food establishments take cash only. If you walk into a hostel, BnB, or a restaurant with a counter, they may only take cash. If you are trying to eat cheap, take a bus, take a taxi, take a train, or go to the bathroom you needed to have lots of cash and coins.
Toilets
There are no free public restrooms in Europe. If you are in a train station or a restaurant or museum, you pay at least a €1 to use the toilet. The bathrooms are significantly cleaner, than the free public toliets in the US and most may contain showers. The doors always go to the floor in the places that I went in, so you have lots more privacy. The strange thing about the toilets is that they are shaped differently in different places. While most public toilets in the US are short and wide, most of the toilets that we used in Europe were tall and narrow. While bowls in the US are typically filled with water to the half way point, these toilets, sometimes barely had water at all.
About half of the toilets had someone collecting money, while the other half had a machine and an electric gate, similar to getting on the subway. In Germany and Austria, a little ticket would come out, but I never found out what that meant. Was it a coupon? A receipt? I never found out.
Differences Between the US and Europe
Bathrooms
Maybe even more than in the US, bathrooms are a huge industry in Europe. Whether it’s a shower head coming out of the side of the wall or super tall toilets with almost no water in the bowl, things are a little different. I have taken lots of showers in my life, and seen shower heads placed in locker rooms, houses, and hotels, but never have I see shower heads installed in a place where the rest of the room is guaranteed to get wet, more than in Europe. At two of the places that we stayed, there was no division between the shower floor and the bathroom floor. There was a drain in the floor that supposedly lead some place, but when you were done, it wasn’t like you stepped out of the shower and into the rest of the bathroom. It was the same puddle all throughout the room.
In both Belgium and Italy, we took showers in tubs, where the water wasn’t spraying long ways across the tub, but the short way. If you didn’t have the shower head pointed straight down, there was a significant chance that you would be spraying the mirror and the sink across the room.
It wasn’t in every case, but in some of the apartments that we stayed in, the bathroom also contained a washer, and maybe a dryer as well. This isn’t something that I have seen in the US. I suppose that it makes sense to have the hot water heater in the same room as the shower and washing machine, which both use it. There also seems like there would be a benefit, to running the dryer, while the shower was running, so that you could have a hot, dry, towel as soon as you got out.
I have noticed, that while most of the toilets in the US are fairly close to the ground, wider, and filled halfway with water, almost every toilet in Europe was taller, thinner, and used less water. Lots of places also had the toilet, where the water tank was hanging on the wall, detached from the bowl, like you see in old timey, US movies. I guess that the Europeans still think that using gravity is the best way? I have pondered that maybe the short, wide toilets in the US, represent the fact that American’s are shorter and have fatter back sides than Europeans. Does this make much sense? Are the Europeans conserving water, by not putting so much in their toilets? It’s a mystery.
One of the biggest surprises that I found was the monetization of peeing and pooping. In the US, there are people that are protesting whether or not a man in a dress, who thinks he’s a woman, can relieve himself in a ladies room, or a woman with a crew cut and peach fuzz mustache, who thinks she’s a man, can sit in a stall in a men’s room. Meanwhile, in European train stations, as long as you hand the attendant an Euro, then you have a cubical to relieve yourself in. The cubicle’s are more private and cleaner, but in a time of need, it seems frustrating to have to look through your change to find the right amount. There were times that I thought that I wasn’t going to make it. Where I had to buy something to make change, to get a one Euro coin, and then run back to the machine. An Euro also seems like a lot to pay, to be able to do something that everyone HAS to do. It shouldn’t be a luxury to not have to crap your pants in a public place. Maybe a half Euro would suffice. When you don’t want to pay an Euro to pee, I found out that there was a church in Brussels, that had latrines build into the architecture, where homeless people could pee. While this seems like something that would only be acceptable in the darkness of night, I’m sure that in a desperate situation, where you can’t find an Euro, you might be forced to whip it out, in front of everyone.
Money
American money seems like it has changed a lot in my lifetime. They switched the silver dollar out for a gold colored dollar. All of the bills, except for the $1 have gotten a face lift, with added color and security. The $100 bill might have changed twice in my lifetime. Once to make Ben Franklin’s head bigger and again, when they added in a big plastic strip and bronze foil. While most of Europe (more specifically the EU countries) have switched over to using the Euro, there are still some countries that are sticking with their own money for better or worst.
For the most part, we only had to worry about one monetary system for the bulk of our trip, with the exceptions being the Kroner in Denmark, the Franc in Switzerland, and the Crown in Czech Republic. The Euro seemed like the easiest one to compare to the US dollar, because they are almost worth the same thing. Sometimes, however, the Euro was a pain in the ass. While it’s nice having bills of different shapes and colors, to easily discern them from one another, it seems like they are going overboard now with the coins. I can see the need to have one Euro coins for paying for the bus or the toilet, but there are two Euro coins as well.
While it feels like we are on the brink of a revolution, where all money is digitized and holds little to no value, having so many coins jingling in your pocket, seems like enough of a reason to put people off of having tactile money, all together. Although, maybe this was just a tourist problem. While the money didn’t seem that much different than in the US, most of the people, who we were paying, were telling us the total in a language that wasn’t English. It was easier to hand someone a 20 Euro bill and get a bunch of change, then to try to translate 18.50 Euro and then count out all of the bills and coins, in a quick fashion, as to not seem like a complete foreigner.
Our pal Jeremie, had a rubber coin carrier, which I hadn’t seen in years. My grandma used to get them for free from the bank, and I guess that when a loaf of bread was a nickel, then you could put all your nickels in the carrier, without them jingling around in your pocket or purse. That’s intelligence and innovation right there. I may never be able to learn all of the numbers in Italian, but the next time I go to Europe, I am going to bring a rubber coin carrier.
While the Swiss Franc seemed similar to the Euro, the Kroner in Denmark and Crown in Czech Republic were disastrous. When 1 Kroner is equal to 17 cents and 1 Crown is equal to 72 cents, there is a lot more math that needs to take place, than should be needed. Sometimes, when spending money in the US, I will think of how much money I can spend, in terms of how long it will take me to make that money. If an album costs $18, and I make $18 an hour, then I only have to work one hour, to buy that record. But if an album costs 647 Kr, then I have no idea whether I am getting a good deal or getting ripped off or what.
This sort of thing plagued me the whole time, we were traveling in Denmark and Czech Republic. I would look at the price and then try to decide whether or not it was expensive or not. I doubt that I spent too much more irresponsibly than I would’ve even if I knew the conversions well, enough, but it always sort of bothered me. The worst part of the whole situation from a money stand point, was that every time you used an ATM or credit card, you were charged for a foreign transaction fee, an exchange fee, and the ATM fee (if applicable). This tended to be a necessary evil, considering we didn’t always want to carry around a lot of money. Even though, we had our secret money belts, we still thought that we could get accosted and have everything taken from us. Luckily, it didn’t happen and we ended up just spending all of our money ourselves.
Social
You always hear the stereotypes about Europeans being rude, especially to Americans, but I didn’t find them any more difficult to deal with than anyone, anywhere else. I think that most people like to blame other people for their own stupidity, so if someone doesn’t stand there and humor them, they are automatically rude. Given the projected attitude of Southern and Middle Americans towards “immigrants”, I can’t imagine them being patient or tolerant of the bullshit of someone, that looks different or speaks a different language than English. I actually find that stereotypically, Americans take an enthusiastic approach to pride in their nation, but don’t think that anyone else should be allowed to take pride in their nation. It seems like a double standard.
While there were cases of people being rude on buses, trains, and in busy places, there were also people that were overly helpful and courteous. In addition to Marko, Jeremie, and the countless AirBnB hosts, that we rented from, we were helped by the old man in Italy, who walked us to our rental. There was the Orthodox, Jewish man, in Paris, who helped us buy tickets and get to the proper subway line in the Gare Du Nord. There was the old man in Prague, that helped us get to the Slav Epic on the cable car. There were the girls in Geneva that helped us get to the couchsurfing apartment, two stops from the train station, that we should’ve walked to. I almost forgot about the old man and the young man fighting on the train from Kutna Hora, who went out of their way to make sure that we made it to Prague. Hell, we missed a train in Münster, because we overslept, and the woman at the ticket counter just gave us tickets to Amsterdam later in the day. If that isn’t enough people going out of their way to help strangers from the United States, then I don’t know what is.
It turned out to be true that some French people were rude. Dominique and Guillume didn’t seem overly courteous to us, aside from buying us that ex-pensive dinner, and the tour of Versailles. They did nice things for us, but their tone and demeanor felt a little stern and condescending. I can’t really be sure if I am/was bitter about my experience with them, because it’s their culture or because they, as individuals just weren’t empathetic people. I guess, that for now it’s a mystery.
Transportation
While we spent a lot of time walking on our trip, so much so, that I even with all the carbs and sugar that I ate, I lost 10lbs; we rode some bikes, and took lots of public transport. Maybe, it’s because gas and cars are so expensive or because the streets don’t provide enough parking spaces to accommodate all the people, but bikes and scooters seemed to be a preferred mode of transportation in some places. It was most surprising in Denmark, Netherlands, and Northern Germany, where the winters are probably extremely harsh and bicycling might pose to be a rather chilling enterprise to undertake.
I liked the idea of biking everywhere. There was a time when I would ride my bike to work or to the store, almost daily. While it was good exercise, it also was more environmentally friendly. It was inspiring to see people of all ages, riding bicycles and not just children or bike race hobbyists. I’d love to see more small cities around the US put in more effort in making streets more bike friendly. If places like Denmark can revolver their culture around bicycling, then people in the Midwest can pull it off too.
Breakfast
When I think of breakfast in America, I think of eggs, bacon, toast, potatoes, and fruit, but when I was in Europe, it seemed more difficult to get these sort of options, on the go. There were fruit stands here and there, that you could get an apple or banana from, but what I found was strange was that they came individually wrapped. Eggs, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be a staple at all. In the US, it seems like you can get an egg sandwich, everywhere from global chains, to corner bakeries. Eggs and toast are almost the clearest definition of breakfast, but in most of the European cities that we went to, they didn’t seem to have eggs on the menus at all, in the places where, we were dining.
Is there an egg shortage in Europe? Or are crepes and pastries just easier for some people? We could order a ham and cheese crepe, but why not a ham and cheese omelet. Even in France, where you’d think that they would’ve invented the omelet, I couldn’t find one anywhere.
Soda
Everything is supposed to be better in America, but when it comes to soda, we might be one of the worst. Now that ever drink is filled with high fructose corn syrup, dyes, and artificial flavoring, it makes it hard to even enjoy the experience. While I was in Europe, I started to fall in love with a drink called Orangina. It’s a pretty simple drink that commonly appears to be carbonated water and just enough pulp orange juice to make it not seem watery. It was refreshing and delightful to drink. Unfortunately, it is really hard to find in the US, and what you do find, is filled with corn syrup. What we do have is Fanta.
In Europe, Orange Fanta must be in direct competition with Orangina. Never has a formula been so different from one place to another than Fanta in the US compared to Fanta in Europe. Granted, the pure sugar Coke and Pepsi, definitely tastes better than the corn syrup ones, even if it feels like you are rinsing your mouth out with a sugar packet. The Fanta, however, is a lot more like the Orangina, in Europe, consisting of carbonated water and seemingly real orange juice. There may have been some sugar added, but compared to it’s American counterpart, it’s 100% natural.
When I came back from Europe, I had remembered the great European Fanta drink and blindly picked up a bottle of American Fanta. My first clue that this drink was going to be nasty, should have been the electric orange color of the drink, that could only have become luminescent through radiation. When I opened the bottle and tasted the completely unnatural orange flavor, I practically spit it out. How could the American soda drinkers prefer what they are getting over the European version? In the market testing groups, how could they have ever chosen, what is in American stores, over what the Europeans are drinking? It’s got to be a conspiracy or something.
AirBnB vs. Hostels vs. Couchsurfing
There are a lot of options, when it comes to lodging, but when we were in Europe, we either rented rooms on the site AirBnb or Booking.com, we stayed in hostels, or we stayed in people’s homes on the couchsurfing website. Most times, it might be easier to stay in a hotel, but when you are traveling to a lot of different destinations, in touristy areas, you are going to end up spending multiple thousands of dollars. For the bulk of our trip, we rented people’s spare bedrooms on AirBnb. At first, we thought it was like a hotel, where you just pick a date and book it, but we eventually learned, that it is a bit more social of a site. Because people are letting you into their homes, there needs to be some dialogue taking place, before you are able to be accepted into the room. This can sometimes be tricky, because if you only have a few hours to find a place to stay, and you are using a coffee shop, wifi, you might not be able to finesse your way into a place to stay.
For the most part, all of our experiences were positive. The horror stories of people being murdered and raped, were far from true, in our experiences. We found that it was mostly people in their 20’s, who were looking to make a little extra money for the rent, and not middle aged psychopaths. All of the people were at least initially helpful, but seemed to want privacy and respected yours. There were only a few incidents, where I felt like we were causing a disservice to their neighbors, but for the most part, everything was fine.
The best part of the AirBnB places was the amount of privacy and quiet that you had, if you wanted it. All of our rooms had locking doors, and most of the time, the person that was renting the room to us, was in the living room watching tv. Some of the people let us use their kitchen and refrigerator, something that didn’t happen when I rented a room from a little old lady, one summer in San Diego.
While hostels are the cheapest lodging, especially for single people, it quickly becomes comparable to an AirBnb, in cost for two people, who might prefer to share a bed. The rooms with double beds in the hostels was always in private rooms and even though there wasn’t always a private bathroom, the price was practically as much as a hotel. If you are traveling single, $15-$25 a night for a bed, even if you are sharing a room with 7 other people, is a steal. If you are a couple, and it’s $50 for two beds in a room with 6 other people, you might be able to find an AirBnB room, with a double bed, a closing door, and a private bathroom, for the same price. If you are traveling alone and you are looking for companionship, then staying in a hostel with 100 other people in their 20’s, might be the way to go.
If you have spent most of your time alone and you NEED to have a conversation with someone, the hostel sort of forces you tointeract with other people. If you are a married couple, that has sort of grown out of partying all night, then chances are, you are just going to resent the obnoxious ways of your youthful roommates. We were only able to stay with one person on the couchsurfing.com website. We were “booked” for two, but one cancelled his account while we were on our trip. This is another site that I think is geared more towards young people who are overly trusting of other people, but also more open to putting themselves into uncomfortable situations, because they don’t know any better. I remember in my teens and 20’s, feeling like most people were probably hiding something and even if they seemed harmless. Sometimes, I would meet a friend of a friend, and if they seemed the least bit devious, I would get a sense that something bad was going to happen. So, that’s why I was always reluctant to stay with people that I had never met and in turn, never stayed with someone overseas.
The couchsurfing site is completely dependant on trust. You have to trust that the people are who they say they are and that the comments aren’t being tampered with. The way that it works is that you can either post to a large area, where you are going to be in town and need a couch to sleep on, or you can message individual people and ask them to invite you into their home. I had absolutely no luck in convincing people that I was a normal guy that for whatever reason, couldn’t afford to just stay in a hotel. There was a guy that for a time, told me that we could stay with him. But someone screwed him over, a few days before we were going to be there. I was really upset, because I trusted him to keep to his word and do what he said he was going to do, and when he didn’t, he broke my trust. I never found out his side of the story, because I was blinded by frustration, but apparently, he trusted someone to do something, and they did something crazy, and now he doesn’t trust anyone.
We did end up staying with that guy in Geneva, that Elizabeth met on couchsurfing, but he seemed like the type of guy that is only on there to get laid. The way that he was cuddled up on the floor with those Spanish students, just sort of made me question his motives. I guess that if you have a hard time getting girls to come back to your apartment, you can always offer them the couch to sleep on. Then, if they are drunk or easily manipulative, you can convince them to share your bed, and one thing could lead to another. I sort of felt like this guy could’ve been “that guy”, but I couldn’t tell for sure, because we only talked to him for about 5 minutes.
Looking Back 6 Months Later
I started writing this journal with plans of posting it as a blog every day of my trip. However, when connecting to internet became unpredictable, and I developed a need to have the grammar seem as intelligent as possible, I decided to wait to publish it, until I thought that it sounded good. As the entries got longer, I thought that I might be able to compile it into the book that you are reading.
After re-reading everything that I wrote over the last 6 months, doing illustrations, and looking through photos, I wanted to recap on how things have changed as a result of spending my month traveling. The biggest change from my pre-trip life to my post-trip life is that in a few more months, I am going to be a father. The doctors predicted it. When we weren’t working insane hours, and had time to relax and have a moment, we would get pregnant. We went to so many places, that it’s hard to predict where the conception actually occurred, so it’s impossible to know whether the name Venice or Paris would be more appropriate. We are also supposed to have a boy and unfortunately most European cities sound like girls names.
Other than the growth of our family, and that unpredictable adventure that we are preparing to embark on, spending that month away from work, definitely gave me a serious wanderlust. Being stuck in an office, staring at a computer, definitely makes me more antsy, than ever before. I feel like I should be out “living”. The logical mind remembers the fact that we spent 3 months salary over our intended budget and I need to work to pay back the credit card companies, who were kind enough to let us borrow their money.
While I work on this book, I think that if the job presented itself for me to be a professional traveler, travel blogger, and documentarian like Rick Steves, I would jump at the chance. Going on tours, planning destinations, and setting up transportation and lodging was definitely more interesting than web development, and the real reward was that I actually got to experience the trip. So, if you are reading this book and you want to read more like it, then tell your rich uncle that he needs to start funding me.
The world and it’s people look and seem different. I am more sensitive to close minded thinking, people being loud and obnoxious for the sake of being loud and obnoxious, and ignorant people that classify people into groups based on race, religion, and nationality. While we were traveling, we encountered people of all types, and while some were rude and unwelcoming, others welcomed us with open arms, and helped us out of sticky situations. When people use immigrants as scapegoats for how their life is unfolding, I think about the refugees who left a war zone after their lives were destroyed. I also think about how the United States is populated by people who left Europe because of various hardships that they were experiencing as a result of poverty and war. Lots of people in the world are suffering in one way or another, and lots of people have already suffered, and have grown stronger from that suffering.
People always ask me what my favorite place in Europe was and I always go back to one place, Holtwick, Germany. Even though, I was only there for an afternoon, I had an amazing experience, with our new friend, Marko Holtwick, seeing the village of my namesake and meeting some of the people that live there. The truth is that there are small villages everywhere, that are surrounded by corn and wheat fields, but to me this was the best.
Some of the other places that stand out are Amsterdam, which in spite of the rain, was a fun place to get stoned and ride our bikes. Paris was an amazing place to see inspiring works of art. Prague was a city that felt like it was stuck in the past, but was modern enough for us to get from point A to point B, and make some real connections with the people.
There were definitely things that I still regret, like not planning to stay in Munich for longer to have another day at Oktoberfest. The trip was sort of plagued by the car getting stuck in the garage, but if we arrived a day earlier and skipped a day earlier, it might have been worth it.