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This was one long, tir­ing, frus­trat­ing adven­ture, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t amaz­ing. Berlin, Budapest, Sara­jevo, Bel­grade, Sofia (then back to Bel­grade), then to Zagreb, Split, Supetar, and then finally, Dubrovnik. Lots of dif­fer­ent hos­tels, dif­fer­ent peo­ple, and dif­fer­ent experiences.

Berlin

So, Prague was offi­cially over. We said our good­byes, packed out bags, and headed off to our first des­ti­na­tion, Ger­many. Going to Berlin wasn’t the best start­ing point in terms of con­ve­nience, but it was one of the cities I had to go to, but never had time to dur­ing the semes­ter. So, we bought our 50 EURO train ticket to Berlin and headed out.

Back­packin’ Berlin

Upon arriv­ing in Berlin, we were greeted by plenty of peo­ple look­ing for back­pack­ers in hopes of rent­ing rooms from their apart­ments, but we opted to look for our own hos­tel dispite the fact that her offer was very fair. Meet­ing fel­low back­pack­ers is a lot more enter­tain­ing. On our jour­ney with our filled 60L back­packs, we hap­pened to run into a free out­door clas­si­cal music con­cern, which only obsc­tructed the direc­tion we needed to go. We even­tu­ally found our des­ti­na­tion and booked a hostel.

Reich­stag

It was odd being in a city thats so new and mod­ern, after being in Prague for so long you get used to see­ing build­ings older then the coun­try you’re from. Although, there are a ton of things to see in Ger­many that are still quite old, such as the Reich­stag, the Berlin Wall, Check­point Char­lie, and a cou­ple other mon­u­ments that are rem­i­ni­cent of past Germany.

Some of the remains of the Berlin Wall

We stayed in the Meininger hos­tel, which was a decent place to stay. Clean beds and nice show­ers, although there wasn’t many peo­ple stay­ing at the time, and there wasn’t a com­mon room type of area, just a bar in the build­ing next to the hos­tel, so meet­ing trav­ellers wasn’t very easy. The staff were very friendly though (besides the first guy who tried to charge us 24 EURO for a night, we got it down to 18), and they told us where all the good areas to check out dur­ing the day were, and where the good bars were at. On one of the nights in Berlin, Tighe and I decided to go out and find some bars, and so as per rec­om­men­da­tion, we took a bus to a cer­tain area at around 2am, and although it wasn’t as lively as expected, it was cer­tainly inter­est­ing. We found a cou­ple of bars that were rec­om­mended, but I believe it was in the mid­dle of the week, and May isn’t exactly the most hap­pen­ing time in Berlin, so there wasn’t too many peo­ple out, but we did find THE creepi­est bar in all exis­tance (at least the creepi­est one I’ve ever been to). The work­ers inside were doing magic tricks, there were what seemed to be reg­u­lars chill­ing on beers, and there was also another group of peo­ple who seemed like they were in the same boat as us. We had a beer, secretly took some pic­tures, and made an exit.

Wierdest place I’ve ever been to

The next night, we met up with Tighe’s cousin Brian, who is also from Long Island. For half the night I was stuck lis­ten­ing to fam­ily rec­ol­lec­tions of which I had not par­tic­i­pated in, but thats alright, since I hap­pily sat and drank Becks, my new favorite beer. We moved from bar to bar, and later on in the night, Hor­atiu caught up with us, and we con­tin­ued to drink, and I finally had some­one to talk to. After­words, while being slightly drunk, we all decided that it was time to get some food, and of course, Hor­atiu and I were hop­ing for our favorite don­air place of all time to be open (Mustafas Kebab — mustafas.de), but to our dis­ap­point­ment, it was closed for the night. But for­tu­nately for us(well, maybe unfor­tu­nately, depends if your ask­ing me, or my arter­ies), the fast food stand Curry 36 was open. When we went to the stand, we saw a ger­man man order­ing some­thing we thought looked quite tasty, so we asked for the same thing. But we are sup­pose to get two kebabs in it each, but since he only had enough for one and a half for each of us, he threw in a Ger­man sausage. The com­plete meal con­sisted of one and a half meat kebabs, one ger­man sausage, a bunch of french fries, caramelized onions, all topped with ketchup, bar­beque sauce, and mayo. I man­aged to fin­ish it all with­out much effort, while Tighe, Brian, and Hora all strug­gled, but in the end, we fin­ished it off, and after­words, we went to sleep. It was known there­after as the heartat­tack special.

Check­point Char­lie; A very impor­tant land­mark from the Cold War

We had a great time in Berlin, and if I was to ever work abroad, I would def­i­nitely con­sider Ger­many as one of my des­ti­na­tions. Hora stayed in Berlin one more night, and after­words con­tin­ued on his jour­ney through­out Ger­many, while Tighe and I headed to Budapest. If you want to read about Horas trav­els, check out halmaghi.com

Budapest

Now, for those of you who’ve fol­lowed my blog, you know I’ve been to Budapest before, and had an amaz­ing time. Well this time, it wasn’t so amaz­ing, although it wasnt due to the city, it was due to bad choices. We stopped in Budapest for one night just so we could get to Sara­jevo on the next, and so we headed for the hos­tel we booked clos­est to the train sta­tion, and it was one of the nicest hos­tels I’ve ever stayed in, and by far the nicest shower. The only prob­lem was we were the only ones there, but it didn’t mat­ter since we were only there for one day anyways.

We headed to the baths dur­ing the day, which are always a good choice in Budapest, but our first mis­take dur­ing that stay in Budapest was get­ting three McDon­alds cheese­burg­ers and an ice tea. I’ve either been cook­ing in Europe, or going to restau­rants, and so my stom­ach isn’t as good as it used to be for extract­ing energy from fast food joins as it pre­vi­ously was. Next, we found a bar which we real­ized was a much older crowd, and on our con­tin­ued quest for food and a bar, we came very close to our hos­tel, and were about to call it a night. We also didn’t have much money, so we were going to pack it in, but unfor­tu­nately, we saw an ATM, and decided to give Budapests nightlife another chance. We found a club and decided to go in, only to real­ize it was a bit too sketchy for our tastes, so we decided to have a beer and get the hell out of there. That was our biggest mis­take; the menu, which had a dark pur­ple back­ground, had small red hard-to-read writ­ing that said “First drink costs 9000 HUF “. That roughly trans­lates to 40 EUROS, and being in a for­eign coun­try thats for­mer com­mu­nist, and with two big bounc­ers stand­ing in front of you, we prac­ti­cally had no choice, we coughed up the money. So the next time you go to a club in Hun­gary, make sure you read the sign, VERY carefully.

Our next des­ti­na­tion, Sarajevo.