I Left My Heart in Poland Part (5? 6? I've lost track haha)

Me and my Polish friend Ola :)
Fancy hostel room at the Oki Doki Hostel - Dom Mody - the "Fashion Room"
Warsaw bell. Walk around it 3x and make a wish.
Old town
Wesley and me in front of the Old Town
One of many patriotic Polish statues
Pretty church by Ola's apartment. As seen from a delectable French cafe perfect for Polish star-searching.
Nowy Swiat
Om nom
Pierogi!!! Last meal before a mad dash to the train station.

Hey everyone!

I just got back from an amazing weekend in Warszawa. I have hence officially decided that the second time you go back to cities can be more ridiculously awesome than the first.

I feel like generally, the first your trying to cram in seeing everything you possibly can, forcing yourself to relax because your on vacation, and actively hunting local culture to soak up. It's kind of a lot of pressure if you think about it.

But the second time you've already been there. You already know the spots and have felt the vibe of the city. You don't have to actively hunt for anything. You have foods your craving (pierogi z miesem om nom!) and places you want to re-visit. And if you're lucky like me you have some amazing local friends to take care of you.

I came with 3 other Stanford friends that weekend but we really kind of did our own thing. I spent most of my time with my Polish friend Ola, who I know because of Emma, one of my good Stanford friends. Emma and I were fortunate enough to have 2 1/2 years of Stanford Polish together in our cozy little classroom of 3. Needless to say, her, me and Robert became really close after those years and used to hang out all of the time, our activity of choice being Polish cooking parties with copious amounts of vodka and pierogi. Emma lived with Ola and her family last summer in Warszawa and I met them both in Wroclaw last summer to celebrate my 21st.

So I was SUPER excited to see Ola and kick it in Poland again. The first night we did a lot of wandering and eating. Lots of the latter. Story of my life. Ola took me to the best ice cream place in Warsaw, we had some bigos for dinner (Emma's fav) and then bar-hopped for a while before settling into one right on Nowy Swiat.

Poland was a great and much needed mental vacation, as weird as that may sound. I didn't necessarily do much or see much of the kind of things that you can write about on a travel blog, but I returned feeling so happy, well-rested, and at peace. And I really didn't do much sleeping. I think it started with that first night out. I just realized how different Polish people are from Germans (or at least Berliners) in terms of the going out. In Berlin clubs, there's a lot of "we're super cool and you must follow our conduct or else we'll reject you at the door and/or fire judgmental stares at you." You dress a certain way (urban hipster, not too fancy or too casual). You don't act drunk. You don't speak English. You drink beforehand on the subway with everyone else but get it together and put on a stern face before facing up to the bouncer.

The clubs and bars in Warsaw were nothing like that. I'm pretty sure no one even checked my ID at the door. Ola and I were wearing what we wore to dinner, what I wore on the train. And dancing and drinking in that random club with Ola and her friends was the best time out I've had in a long while. It was so much more of a chill, dance how you feel type vibe. I felt like I was at a good friend's house just hanging out. In Berlin I wouldn't dream of putting my purse or jacket on the couch (might get stolen and people would look at you weird), dancing like a bit of a maniac (people would look at you weird) or buying drinks from the same club all night (too expensive and people would look at you weird). In Warsaw I did all of those things.

Over the next few days I did a whole lot of chilling and eating with Ola. I think my favorite was probably this little French cafe near her house where we saw a famous Polish newscaster and another famous Polish actress. Exciting :) That and the incredibly rich chocolate souffle followed by the world's strongest double espresso made for a great few hours. I also spent a lot of quality time with my Kindle. And wandering through gorgeous churches.

I was sad to leave Poland and contemplated bumming around for a while longer, but ultimately ended up heading back to Berlin as planned. But there's still a few Polish cities I haven't explored that I plan to (Lodz, Torun, Lublin, Gdynia and Sopot). In the words of the Terminator, I'll be back :)

How I Gained 10 Pounds in Belgium and Lost it All in Amsterdam

The start of much delicious food I consumed in Belgium

Beers in Belgium
Brussels town square
Chocolate!

More chocolate... I have lots of pictures like this haha

First Belgian waffle
These were my waffle options lol...

Brugge!
Riding bikes in Brugge
Stumbled upon some windmills during our ride :)

Riding around Brugges :)
More chocolate in Brugges :)
Way too tall for this old city
Pretty old church
Brugge canals
Belgian chocolate!

Amsterdam canals
Van Gogh museum
The ste in AmSTErdam outside of the Rejks Museum

Clog shop

Random art by where we we staying in South Amsterdam

Dutch pancake with apples

Gay pride canal parade

Canals!
At Rembrandt's house
German cheesecake upon our return :)

Hey everyone!

So I just returned from an epic trip with one of my best friends to Belgium and Amsterdam. I returned slightly sick and with a bit of a Belgian food hangover but it was worth every second.

One of my best friends and former roommates Allison was visiting me from New York for ten days. We had an epic 5 days exploring Berlin then decided to have some more epic traveling adventures. I really, really wanted to go to Amsterdam this summer (it's really close to Berlin and I'd still never been in all of my time in Germany) and we figured Belgium was super close to we might as well hit that up too while we're in that region of the world. I was super excited for some quality chocolate, waffles, and Dutch art.

We flew into Brussels on a goregous Tuesday afternoon, not really sure what to expect. To be honest I really had low expectations for Brussels. I'd heard it was kind of a boring capital city and there wasn't a whole lot to do; that you only needed a day there and then moving on to Amsterdam was advisable.

Maybe it was the low expectations I started with, but I ended up really liking Brussels. The first thing we did once we found the hostel and threw our stuff down (besides making friends with our nomadic Korean roomate :) ) was hunt down some food. It's moderately difficult to eat in Belgium if your not prepared to spend upwards of 20 euro for a meal, so we ended up eating at the grocery stores most of the trip. Which I try to do anyways when traveling (authentic food, cheaper prices). But the grocery store was closed when we got in this time :(

We ended up finding this this little fry place that specialized in making sandwiches with fries in them. So bad for you. Like, American status bad. I had a baguette with fried chicken (yeah theres chicken buried underneath all of those fries in the picture lol), fries, and some kind of spicy sauce. It probably took 2 years off my life but was remarkably delicious. We made a new American friend while gorging ourselves on fries and moved on to a famous pub, the Delirium pub, which serves about 2004 kinds of beer. Most of them Belgian. Belgian beer is delicious. But even after a weekend in Belgium and a beer tasting experience in Brugges, I still find myself loyal to German brew. But more on that later.

We finished up at the pub around 4 in the morning and stumbled back home. We spent the next morning actually seeing Brussels (not just the inside of a pub) and sampling some Belgian chocolate. The city was really pretty and fun to walk around, especially once you get to the town square. We grabbed lunch from the grocery store, but I for one was not complaining. Belgium is obsessed with food, and that quality really came out to me in the grocery stores. German food is good, great even. But this was a whole nother level. There were hundreds of kinds of cheeses in the grocery store, some of which were rare French delicacies fetching for upwards of 50 Euro. An entire aisle of authentic Belgian chocolate. A fridge of ready made food, perfect for grabbing and consuming outside. I clearly took up the last option quite a few times haha. Everything was just so delicious though, I really can't even do it justice here.

I also found Mickey's doppelganger in Brussels. It literally looked exactly like my dog. I freaked out and started jumping up and down once I saw him and realized how much he looked like Mickey, but when I tried to talk to the couple I realized they spoke only French and were probably creeped out by how excited I was to see their dog. So I took a few creepy stalker photos when they walked away looking sketched out but could only get pictures from the back. Fail.

After our lunch we decided to make our way to the train station and catch the next train out. 2 hours next to a smelly European stranger later, we were in Brugges.

Brugges is unbelievably beautiful and charming. It's a medieval city surrounded by a canal and the most authentically well-preserved city in Belgium. Everywhere you turn you're surrounded by cobble-stoned streets and beautiful old buildings. We wandered around our first afternoon there but took it pretty easy, falling into bed early around 10. We were still pretty exhausted from the night before.

The next day we woke up rejuvenated and ready to sightsee. We woke up early because of the free hostel breakfast, which ended up being great both because it was free and because it made us wake up before 9 am. Not much else but the promise of free unlimited coffee will make me wake up that early on a voluntary basis. Maybe free food. Maybe. If it's Belgian :)

It was an unbelievably beautiful day so after our breakfast we decided to rent bikes and explore the city that way. It's so small and surrounded by a canal so it's really easy to just fold the map into your purse and ride around wherever you feel like. Which we did. After almost running over a French family and almost getting hit by a few cars, we got back into the swing of biking those cobble-stoned streets.

We had a great few hours exploring Brugges, finding a beautiful stone monastery that they wouldn't let us explore and having lunch along a really pretty canal. We then returned the bikes and hit up some of the interesting sites, including a church that has a vial of Christ's blood and the Brugges Belfry, a really tall tower that Allison climbed while I waited at the bottom reading my Kindle. Not so into the heights :)

That night we went Belgian beer tasting. It was run by this really sarcastic young American expat who actually somewhat knew what he was talking about in terms of Belgian beer, so it ended up being both really fun and interesting.

Belgian beer is pretty delicious. But it's big into the aftertastes. Most of them are fruity, which I don't mind so much, but some of them are kind of bitter. And all of them have a REALLY high alcohol percentage compared to American and even German beer. I don't know, I liked the cherry beer and this other kind I can't remember, but I found myself thinking that I like German beer better in general. It's cleaner to me, less sweet and alcoholic and more smooth. I can actually drink it with anything or by itself and its still delicious. I feel like that would be harder with Belgian beer. But I am clearly biased towards the German beer anyways so I don't know how valid my opinion is with all of that :)

The next day we trained it to Amsterdam. I think the entire world was going to Amsterdam that weekend. Everyone and possibly 100 of their closest friends and family members. We literally had no place to sit on the train so made our own seats in the hallway with our suitcases. And we were lucky... a lot of people ended up having to awkwardly stand in the aisleways. We didn't know it then but we found out later it was actually Gay Pride weekend in Amsterdam, this crazy, crazy party weekend full of street festivals and a huge canal parade on Saturday. It's actually their second biggest party weekend of the year. :)

We got to Amsterdam and like the nerds we are decided to try to catch the Van Gogh museum before it closed. The Van Gogh museum was so amazing! I absolutely loved it. I think the Dutch in general do a great job of making interactive and interesting museums... moving beyond the classic placard and painting norm. So in the Van Gogh museum they had rooms dedicated to both Van Gogh's influences and people he would later influence, as well as an entire exhibit downstairs exploring the why's and how's of all of his paintings in more details. Like why he would choose to paint the famous bed painting, how he ended up doing so many peasant paintings early on then becoming more into the still life flowers later, etc. It was super cool for me too because when I was in my junior high academic decathalon Van Gogh was one of the things we had to learn for one of the group quizzes. So I had all of this backlogged 8th grade knowledge that got really excited about coming to life again at the museum.

We got out of the museum around 9 and decided to just explore a little bit more while we still had a few hours of daylight. We finally realized it was Gay Pride weekend when we stumbled into about 4 random street parties, all complete with rainbow banners, outdoor beer sales, and d.j.s blasting the best techno and Lady Gaga. I heard so much Lady Gaga this weekend it wasn't even funny. We meandered around a little bit more before heading back to the house.

The next morning we got up decently early (not as early as our Belgium free hostel days haha) and did some hard core Amsterdam exploring. I was super stoked to visit Rembrandt's house because he's probably my favorite all time artist. We also stumbled into this epic vintage store and the most amazing Dutch pancake place ever (picture attached). We also saw the gay pride canal parade which was really fun and epic to watch. I really found myself liking the vibe of Amsterdam and their liberalism. Sometimes I feel like the San Francisco version can come off as overly abrasive and agenda-pushing... in Amsterdam it felt a lot more like a loving tolerance and less of the former. I particularly loved the floats with gay police and military members from tons of different countries - it really celebrated and honored them.

We ended up calling it kind of an early night though because around 6 I started feeling slightly like death with chills and all-over body aches. Amsterdam going out fail. I ended up watching Mulan and eating pizza my last night in Amsterdam but I could barely move by the time we got home so I think it was a good decision :)

We came back the next day and Allison left soon after :( I was sad to see her go but happy to be back in Berlin :)

But yes, Belgian food overload making me not want to eat much in Amsterdam combined with that weird sickness is pretty much how I lost my Belgian bloat. Now to lose the rest of the Berlin beer and döner weight haha....

Miss you and love you all!!!!!!!! Going to Warsaw in two weeks with some friends.. I think that should be the next exciting post :) and then Oktoberfest in a month. SOOOOO excited for that!

-Courtney

Sojourn to Southern Germany & Salzburg

Me standing next to Keplerstrasse! (Oma's maiden name :) )

Failed jumping attempt #5 by Keplerstrasse

Türbingen!

Matching rompers in the Turbingen H&M

More Türbingen!
At the castle top in Türbingen

At the Türbingen bakery

By the river - look at how cute the houses are!

The dirndl I ended up getting for Oktobefest :)

Folake enjoying some bier und brezeln in the Englischer Garten

Me with the Munich Lion at the train station :)

Salzburg! Running up the path Maria ran to first meet the Captain

the 16 going on 17 gazebo :)

Gate where Maria first goes in to meet the Captain

Apple strudel!

View of a little Austrian town on the way out of Salzburg

Hey everyone!

So I am really sorry that I have been so terrible about updating my blog this last month... it's been crazy here. My roommate and I have basically had visitors nonstop for the last three weeks and have been busy showing them around when we're not working. But it's been a ton of fun - I love showing Berlin to people. It gives me an excuse to eat all of the foods I love, go back to all of the touristy places I act like I'm too cool for because I'm a resident but actually really like, etc.

But I've also been traveling a lot! Which has been ridiculously fun. I actually just got back last night from a ridiculous mini Euro trip with one of my best friends Allison to Belgium and Amsterdam (post coming right after this one), and then last weekend I decided to take a completely random and unexpected trip to Southern Germany and Salzburg.

So this is how I usually do trips. Step 1: Scour Internet for cheap plane/train tickets. Do this whenever I'm bored, watching particularly trashy reality TV, or Facebook stalking is getting old. Find best cheapest travel option to most interesting destination ratio possible. Step 2: Find hostel. Hoselworld.com. Find best cheapest to least sketchy ratio to best location ratio for hostel. Step 3: Go to GoogleMaps and print out how to get everywhere. Step 4: Scour tripadvisor.com and my Europe on a Shoestring Lonely Planet for free student tours, cheapest places to eat, best thing to do, etc.

So I'm basically a huge planner and travel front-loader. I try to get all of the work done ahead of time so when I go I know where I'm going and can just be there mentally and relax.

But one day a few weeks ago my friend Folake was in Berlin visiting and proposed a crazy travel scheme I'd never tried before. She had bought a 10 day German rail pass and was planning on visiting Southern Germany soon, making a side trip to Salzburg, Austria to take the Sound of Music tour and see all of the places filmed in the move.

She suggested I get a 3 day Germany Eurorail pass and join her. The idea was crazy to me. We could hop on a train out of Berlin and just go wherever the hell we felt like, whenever the hell we felt like it. It was quite possibly the least planned out trip I've ever gone on. But also one of the most memorable.

We left out of Berlin early on a Sunday. We actually had no idea where we were going except south, and to Salzburg at some point. 3 days 2 nights, and currently nowhere to sleep. So we pooled together our friend resources for the two nights. I had a friend in Munich, she had a friend in Tübingen, a really small town outside of Stuttgart. I also have always wanted to go to Stuttgart because that's where my German family is from and we have a street there named after us. So Stuttgart seemed like a great first destination.

My guidebook said there wasn't a whole lot for tourists to do in Stuttgart besides the German car museums (it's more of a residential town), so we decided to just find Keplerstrasse (Keppeler Street - Oma's maiden name!) and then head on to Tübingen. It was surprisingly really easy to find and only about a 5 minute walk from the airport. It was a really small but cute little street right next to a university building and a park. Folake and I proceeded to take about 5 smiling pictures and 10 failed picture attempts to capture me jumping. I'm sure the older Germans at the restaurant across the street wondered what the hell we were doing with that street sign

Also, Stuttgart drivers are crazy. I almost got run over twice and honked at at least 5 times. Angry honks, not catcalling honks. Maybe it's a car museum love thing. I have no idea.

So after all of the Keplerstrasse pics we jumped back on the train and headed to Tübingen. Because it's such a sleepy little town pretty much everything was closed so we grabbed some döner (you can always count on Turkish kebap places to be open at weird times haha) and then went back to Amy's place to pass out. Amy is Folake's friend from her job in Boston last summer, who was there studying abroad for an entire year. We bonded over being obsessed with all things German :)

The next morning we decided to tour around Tübingen a little bit before we made our next move. It was the cutest little German town. Once you got into the medieval city center it was all wood hatched buildings and cobble stoned streets. Folake and I ducked into H & M because we can't ever really help ourselves when it comes to H&M haha and got matching rompers. We then climbed up to the Türbingen castle, visited a great local bakery, and sat along the lake and fed the ducks for a while. After living in Berlin for a month, such a wonderful but fast-paced city life, it was really wonderful to be in such a beautiful small town with such a relaxed vibe.

Around noon we started trying to figure out where to go next.

Folake had never been to Munich, and I am in love with Bavaria in general (See former Munich blog... basically Catholicism, beer, lederhosen, and great food abounds) so we figured heading there might be a good next stop on the way to Salzburg. I had originally wanted to swing through Rothenburg ob der Tauber which is a really cute little Bavarian town known for its Christmas ornaments and cute old buildings, but the trains ended up not working out. But it ended up being great because I had plenty of time to shop for a dirndl (traditional Bavarian beer maiden dress) for Oktoberfest this year :). I had been hunting for one in Berlin for awhile but they were proving pretty impossible to find, so I was happy I was able to get to Munich before Oktoberfest and get one on sale before they became really overpriced. I ended up getting this really pretty purple and green one (see pic above).

Folake and I had a great time in Munich considering we were there less than 24 hours. I figured the best way to show her true Munich after walking around the pretty city center for awhile dirndl shopping was the meet up with my friends we were staying with and heading straight to the bier garten :). We headed to Englischer Garten, which is the biggest garden in Munich at 1.4 square miles and known for its scenery and the huge beer garden right in the middle of it. We took life at a Bavarian pace (there's a German word for this I forget) and stuffed ourselves with leberkäse and beer the rest of the night.

We dragged ourselves out of bed early the next morning to book it to Salzburg for the Sound of Music tour. The Sound of Music tour was a wonderful thing. We decided to just embrace the cheese of it all and at like dorky tourists. It ended up being awesome. We took a ton of pictures of us skipping through all of the places in the movie, sang all of the songs on the bus loudly, and had a generally great time taking in all of the beautiful Austrian atmosphere.

I was amazed at how friendly everyone was in Austria. I'd been around the gruff Berliners for too long, I was almost taken aback when the ladies selling me strudel gave me warm smiles and asked us where we were from when they handled us our steaming plates. I had such a short time in Salzburg but really would love to go back at some point and revisit it, along with Vienna and maybe Innsbruck too. I've also hear that the small Austrian towns are some of the prettiest and most charming. After my great morning in Türbingen I definitely don't find that hard to believe.

So we got back from the Sound of Music tour at 5 pm, and I was due to catch a night train back to Berlin at 8 pm. Folake was going to use up the rest of her train pass days before catching me in Berlin a few days later. I had work the next day so had to be back in Berlin by 8 am if I wanted to make it into the office on time. I had never been on night trains before and wasn't particularly looking forward to it, but ended up being surprised but how many non-sketchy, mostly people my age were using them. I guess people my age are the poor students trying to get the cheapest trains that don't care so much about the hour haha.

I caught a two hour train from Salzburg to Munich, another 2 hour connection from Munich to Nuremburg, a 6 hour hardcore night train from Nuremburg to Hannover, and then finally another 2 hour train from Hannover to Berlin. Bleary eyed and exhausted from not much sleep (traveling by myself wasn't particularly conducive to passing out properly), I managed to stumble home for a quick shower before work the next morning. It was a painful day at work but worth every underslept minute :)

Miss you and love you all! My Belgium and Amsterdam post will shortly follow this!

-Court