Nine days of nonstop travel and sleepless nights are a bit hard to compress into a simple, succinct entry but I’ll try my best to keep it short and enjoyable.
February 28: Umbra tries to be a real school with their sudden scholastic attendance policy and surprise midterms. Consequently we must cancel our plane tickets two nights before we’re meant to leave. Credit card complications make it uncertain whether or not we even bought the replacement ticket. Damian and I jet over to Rome to spend the night so we can pretend we speak Italian at 7 the next morning to sort everything out. We chat with a couple from Canada in our hostel before calling it a night. I’m awoken by a man standing at the foot of my bed massaging my feet. I groggily recognize this, yell and the man scurries away to his own bed.
February 29 (Happy Leap Year!): Fly to Vienna and meet up with Spencer. Stand confused in the airport. Finally figure transport out using words that look kind of like English and find our hostel owner who looks strikingly like Keanu Reeves from the Matrix. Wowza. Wander to a ridiculous city center with breathtaking architecture and an outdoor skating rink, drink hot wine and eat fried dough noodles with sesame seeds, ash(?) and plum sauce using wooden forks. Grab “traditional” dinner of weiner schnitzel, meat pancake, hot dogs wrapped in bacon and a shuttle of Austrian beer. Then back to the hostel to meet some international guests - one girl from a country we’d never heard of near Russia (way to go Americans), another slightly bizarre American coming back from China who couldn’t stop blabbering about her French boyfriend, and two surprisingly fabulous SuperGermans with bleached facial hair who we hung out with for the evening while listening to bad eighties music. Pass out until we are awakened by Linus, the SuperGerman, banging on our door with Damian’s jacket. “Why you lock your door?” he asks, exceptionally hurt, “Don’t you trust us?” We give him a consoling pat, grab the jacket and lock the door back up.
March 1: Find a little café where we have a phenomenal breakfast with real and amazing “koffee” (hooray!). Head over to the Museum Quartier and stumble upon the MUMOK) - the most incredible contemporary art museum I’ve ever been to. Inside was floor upon chronological floor of artwork starting from the 1960s and working its way up through performance/video/installation/graphic/etc. art.
Then we catch an afternoon train to Salzburg, a town completely enclosed in the snow-covered Alps. That night, we trekked through the small city to the Augustiner Brau (beer house) up one of the hills. Located inside a monastery, the bier haus was enormous. We all grabbed a huge porcelain liter mug, rinsed it in a big fountain and brought it over to a large wooden barrel of beer brewed by the monks. Then, of course, we grabbed some pretzels and the most foreign things we could find to munch on - bean salad and fischburger anyone?
March 2: Time to explore! The fortress was closed for weather and the Sound of Music tour would clash with our next train, so we hiked on up to the Modern Art Museum to see a comic book exhibit to make Spencer happy that was actually pretty impressive. Then we did a little hiking around the top of the mountain to some incredible panoramic views, explored a baby castle, almost got blown over by the high winds and caught the afternoon train to Munich. *Note to self: come back and go skiing here!!!
You think Munich, you think good beer, and just our luck a beer festival was going on that day at the Paulaner beer house (though I’m guessing there’s probably always a beer festival going on somewhere in Munich, but let’s just pretend we’re special). We walk in to see a crowd of Germans dressed up in lederhosen, dancing on tables with a huge oompa band playing. Beastly woman swing by with liters upon liters of beer in their jacked hands and we order a couple and grab some pretzels bigger than our faces. Afterwards, we take the metro over to Olympic park to see the happenings and eventually head back to the hostel in preparation for the following epic night.
March 3: Took a free walking tour that encompassed most of the day. Saw the Hofbreau House (HB), breathtaking churches, the Opera house, remnants of WWII and gained lots of historical tidbits along the way. Then the boys and I grabbed espresso at the oldest café in Munich (that I’m pretty sure was Italian) and we popped over to the English Garden, which is apparently bigger than Central Park. Lots of grass and dogs. Found the US embassy. They didn’t look so friendly. Wandered back to the HB for dinner and got some spatzle (German mac’n’cheese). The boys got scarier things and peer pressured me to eat fried pig skin and white sausage. Then I cried. Then we got more amazing German beer and it was at this moment that I realized I had created the ideal boy spring break and felt like I should be fist pounding or at least wear a backwards cap and talk sports stats. Then I drank another beer. Then came the part we had based our entire spring break around: seeing the Mars Volta in Germany.
Now the Mars Volta could have gone two ways. It could have been a small venue with too many people on too many drugs in a mellow setting… or it could have gone the way I’d been hoping which is to say that “epic” is an understatement. As soon as the music started a mosh pit engulfed the entire floor. Shoes, clothes, watches, bodies were scattered across the floor. Halfway through, I was one of three girls left, had only lost my shoe once, saved two falling crowd surfers, had been hit in the head by a drum stick, lost and found my sweater, and had fought my way to the front-row-center of it all. I’d lost Damian and Spencer as soon as the music picked up. The band played nonstop for four hours. For the rest of spring break, all of our bodies were covered in bruises.
After the show, we ran into two girls trying to pawn off their backstage passes. Since only girls are invited backstage, Damian and Spence were out and I was in. I grabbed a girl from Austria and we both walked back into the venue and around to a small room with maybe eight girls and - holy crap - the Mars Volta. They offered us wine, we chat, and they are completely awesome, regular guys. I guess I don’t know what I was expecting, but certainly not guys as down-to-Earth as them. The drummer and I hit it off pretty well, and I spent most of the night chatting it up with him. Then we all moved into a larger room filled with food, drinks and a bunch of comfy couches.
Afterwards, the guys wanted to know what deep insights I’d gained from them, and to be honest, I didn’t really gain much. It was more a night hanging out with friends than a night to quiz them on their music. It felt weird to take photos with them or ask for autographs. I had the drummer sign the drumstick and had Cedric sign my back stage pass for Spencer, but that was about as celebrity as it got. The rest of the night was screwing around, Cedric tried to do some skateboard tricks, and at 2:30 everyone got kicked out of the venue and the band hopped on the bus to go to Paris. Then I called Spence up, he came and picked me up and we killed time at a bar until our 4:30 a.m. train to Berlin. Some girls tried to forcefully convince us to go to Krakaw, Poland with them. Then we took a taxi to the train station and peaced.
March 4: Good morning Berlin! Or as much of a good morning as it could be for the kind of sleep we got - which is to say none. Berlin definitely had a more Eastern European feel to it, but the vibe was fantastic. If there was one city I would have liked to spend more time in, it was Berlin. We’d gotten a great deal on our hostel, which had opened only a month before. That meant, private room and bath for 8 euro a night, plus a free drink and breakfast. We grabbed some amazing lunch at a Mediterranean restaurant (salad and smoked salmon pasta), checked in to the hostel and passed out until 5 in the evening. Took some much-needed showers, tried to find the least smelly clothing we had left and chugged a Red Bull.
For dinner, we try to go as far away from the hostel as possible since an indefinite transit strike was happening the next day and Berlin is huge. We get advice to go to this great German restaurant and all get something we don’t understand. An Irish band plays some tunes. I end up with celery schnitzel, Spence gets the spatzle, and Damian gets something that makes him leave to dry heave in the bathroom twice. I think it was a boiled pig leg. It jiggled like jello. Then we went back to sleep.
March 5: Took another free tour of Berlin (same company as Munich). Grabbed some Dunkin Donuts (ohhh how I love you) and set off. Saw the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, Holocaust Memorial, Hitler’s Bunker (now a paved parking lot to take your dog to poo), the Berlin Wall, where Michael Jackson dangled his baby, site of Tom Cruise’s new movie and went all over East Berlin - book burning, the university, opera house, piazza upon piazza, Checkpoint Charlie, the big disco ball tower thing… did I mention that Berlin is huge?
Afterwards we went back to the memorial to the see the Holocaust museum. Then back across the street to climb the Reichstag and look down into Parliament and then back to the hostel. For dinner we went to a microbrewery, got a beer shuttle and everyone picked another surprise. I ended up with herring in a cold cream sauce. I worked with it. Then we grabbed our things and headed back to the station to catch another night train. This time we had a sleeper car, complete with a smelly half naked man below me who thankfully did not rub my feet.
March 6-9: By the time we arrived in Amsterdam, I’d say all three of us were destroyed. We met up with Casey Thursday morning and went about exploring the city. Regretfully, we should have been on much worse behavior, but we saw quite a bit despite the crummy weather. Went to the Van Gough museum, Modern Art temporary exhibit (the real thing was closed for renovations), checked out the Red Light District, bought tickets to see MGMT in concert with Casey at the Paradiso, located in a renovated old church (they were fabulous), ate and ate some more and took a lot of naps. The canals were beautiful, the coffee shops each had their own unique personality and the Dutch language was baffling.
After living in Italy, the ability to choose from different kinds of food was a bit overwhelming for all of us. Wok to Walk quickly became our favorite mostly because of the process:
Step 1: choose your noodle.
Step 2: choose as many toppings as you want.
Step 3: choose your sauce.
Step 4: eat all of it, digest and come back later.
We also found a pancake and steak house that was pretty reasonable. And then there was Ben & Jerry’s. And Thai food. And who knows what else. I think there was a Belgian waffle and lox on a bagel thrown in there too. For a country renowned for it’s food, Italy certainly starves you for variety.
Sunday we packed up and prepared for the epic journey to Eindhoven airport which include, but was not limited to: walking, a trolley, two trains and a bus which encompassed the whole damn morning. Uf! Then it was a flight into Rome and another three trains until we finally made it back to Perugia in time to catch another bus and hike it back to our apartments where we passed out and never ever woke up again. A job well done sirs. I’d say that was probably the best Spring Break yet.
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