michelle kwain

today was a lazy day. and it was so nice.

we woke up at around 930am and made the immediate decision that we did not want to change in to a dorm room because we were so comfortable. it was definitely worth it. then went down to breakfast. the breakfast here is not nearly as good as wombats, but it's free. so we ate it. then we all fell asleep again for another hour. we are still recovering because we didnt sleep much in munich.

we woke up and finally got moving. evan had told me that there is a hooters in interlaken, so that was a must see. we knew we were going to have to eat lunch there. we all went downstairs and got directions to hooters. the walk to hooters was really beautiful, obviously. so much snow.

hooters was hilarious. ohh my gosh. the women who work there probably wouldnt get a job at hooters in america, no offense. we definitely noticed that they were not quite as beautiful as our girls. but that didnt stop us from eating there. we all ordered, i got wings and a coke. i love european coke. it tastes a lot better than american coke. the wings were really good, but i ordered a side of ranch. what i got was not ranch. it looks white, like ranch, but it was some sort of combination of italian dressing and ranch. so weird.

so funny

my wings and coke

after we filled up on wings, we headed back toward the hostel. the initial plan was to ride the gondola and see the sights of the mountain, but on our way back the visibility was really bad because the snow was starting to come down. back at the hostel we ran in to our new australian friend matthew (we made friends with him night sledding) and decided to go ice skating. boy was that hilarious. heather has never been before, and mikus is not very graceful. but we did learn that cydney was an ice skater when she was younger! she quickly became teacher to mikus and heather. but dont worry, heather wiped out multiple times.

skating!

our new australian friend matthew

us skating

cydney as michelle kwain

once we worked our ab muscles laughing at the ice skating rink, we headed to this cute place called utopia for hot chocolate and brownies! yumm. we learned all about australian culture from our new friend, which was very interesting. we taught him what college football and tailgating was. now he is determined to come to america for a football game! war eagle!

my hot chocolate and brownie/ice cream

thai food was on the menu for dinner. we went next door where we all enjoyed some pad thai. it was delicious.

tomorrow our train leaves at 130pm. we should arrive in rome around 8pm. we are going to try to do the gondola early in the morning. keep your fingers crossed that it all works out!

we are staying at a hostage... i mean a hostel.

we are finally in wintery interlaken. and it's amazing. i knew that i would love this city the most. but before i get into the details of it's awesomeness.... let me tell you about today!

we woke up at 6:10am to catch what we thought was our train at 7:23am. once we arrived at the train station, the train we were supposed to be on was no where to be found. so i spotted the train to zurich and made a snap decision to jump on it because it was leaving in about 3 minutes. so we ran to the train and got on. this made our attempt at reserving seats the day before pointless, but we really couldn't find the train we were supposed to be on.

we are sitting on the train, just glad to have seats when the man who checks the tickets comes by to stamp our eurail passes. thats when we found out that our train was also going through austria. we have select 4 eurail passes, which means we can only ride trains in 4 countries: benelux (belgium, the netherlands, and luxembourg), germany, switzerland, and italy. so we all had to cough up 5,20 euro, which is nothing compared to our friends' story of when they didn't validate their eurail pass and were caught and fined 50 euro. so we were not that upset. also, come to find out, we were sitting in first class? apparently first class train seats are equivalent to coach plane seats in america. so i obviously assumed that we were in second class. wrong. so we grabbed our ridiculous bags and headed back a couple cars. we actually got 4 seats together and the train was mostly empty all the way to zurich!

after we settled down in our seats, we started to train through a blizzard. i'm not kidding. the train was making crazy noises because the tracks were covered in snow, and i think we stopped about 40 times because of snow delays. i have never seen anything like it. you couldn't see farther than 20 feet from the train. but it was quite the experience.

crazy amounts of snow

i have decided that austria is amazing. everything we saw was unbelievably beautiful. i want to go visit so badly now. i think i want to go to lindau, which is directly on the water. so there was tons of snow, and then water.

riding on the train

right outside of lindau, austria. ahhhh

but i love switzerland. we sat next to a swiss couple who were telling us a lot of things to see. they said that bern is amazing. zurich looked really cool when we were pulling in to the city. i am fascinated by this country. the alps are incredible. i was blown away.

once we arrived in interlaken we walked to balmer's, which we quickly learned was a terrible mistake. but luckily when we arrived they gave us a free bus pass, so we will definitely be taking that back to the train station when we leave. we immediately signed up for snow sledding because we knew that we wanted to do that. we paid, and then went to the ski shop next door to rent ski pants, boots, and gloves.

snow sledding was probably one of the most fun things i have ever done. i didn't expect it to be so awesome, but we were laughing and having the best time ever. we jumped in a van with about 20 other kids, and headed up the mountain on a 30 minute car ride. ohh my gosh i was so car sick, but i didn't want to make the woman pull over, so i had to talk myself through it. i didn't feel normal until a little while after we started sledding. (can't wait to ride the van in italy... not. good thing i packed dramamine)

once we got to the restaurant at the bottom of the track, we grabbed our sleds, and headed up the gondola. it was a really old one that was very shaky and made me very nervous. but we made it! at the top we were all given red flashing lights to wear on our backs so that we can see each other in the dark. we were taught how to steer and stop, and then we were off! it was a little over an hour, and we were this narrow ski run that went all the way down the mountain. we stopped once to see a frozen waterfall which was really cool. after we watched heather hit the side of the mountain about 6 times and fall off of her sled, we made it to the bottom. i had a really difficult time seeing because the snow was getting in my eyes. i felt like my eyes were closed for most of the time. dangerous?

sledding is the best

we stopped to see the frozen waterfall

SO much snow

at the bottom we had a swiss dinner that was included in the price. we had salad, a beer, cheese fondue, and hash browns with a fried egg on top. it was all good. after that we headed back down the mountain to return our pants, gloves, and shoes. now we're all dead and looking forward to touring interlaken tomorrow!

fondue

fried egg and hash browns

oh and balmer's internet is a million times better than any other hostel we have been to. normally it would take me hours to upload pictures. it took about 2 min tonight.

i love switzerland.

munich

today was long. and exhausting. i woke up at 745am because we needed to get ready, pack, eat breakfast, and switch rooms before we headed out for the tour. it turned out that the wombats tour was cancelled today, so they referred us to a walking tour that leaves from the train station. after eating our awesome breakfast that wombats provides every morning (all you can eat for only 3,70 euro), we headed for the train station to reserve our seats for our trains to interlaken and rome, because we don't want to play musical seats again. once we secured our seats, we headed over to the tour building to sadly find out that the walking tour costs 18 euro and it's 5 hours long! we decided that A. too expensive, B. too long, C. we like to do things at our own pace.

so we came back to the hostel and mapped out our own tour. and it actually went really well. we saw a lot today. and i am beyond tired now. we set out to see the marienplatz, which is a large square named after mary, with the town hall. it's really beautiful. we also saw the clock called glockenspiel. then we went in a couple of stores looking for a new hat, but couldn't find one.

frozen fountain in the marienplatz

we moved on from there to the viktualienmarkt. it was one of my favorite things of the day. i really like to see the locals and what they do, and i felt like i got a good feel of munich from this outdoor market. there was a cute honey shop where basically everything was made from honey. candles, liquor, jelly, wine, etc. i bought myself a small bottle of honey wine to try later. from there we walked through a couple of tents. i bought some fresh mozzarella and tomatoes that i ate for lunch. we stopped so that heather could get some of the european apple juice that she loves, and we ordered sausage in ketchup and curry. it was actually really good. i don't think that i could eat a lot of it though.

our lunch/snack

after we explored the market and saw a ton of cool things, we started walking toward the residenz museum. that's when we walked past lacoste and saw that they were selling hats! on sale! i finally found a hat that i liked in lacoste, and figured that i better get one before i get on the train to interlaken, so i grabbed it. i also saw a gator fan in lacoste! wearing a giant puffy gator jacket like the one i had when i was little! small world.

do you love my new hat?

once we left lacoste, we ran into the odeonsplatz square, built by maximilian I in 1816, and the residenz, and hofgarten which is unbelievable. we walked through the grounds, and then decided to head through the museum. the museum is incredibly ornate. this is where my exhaustion kicked in big time. we walked through a million rooms that were covered in gold, embroidery, fine furniture, priceless paintings. but the most memorable of them all was one small room where they had in cases these weird decorated, expensive boxes that housed pieces of dead royalty. there were hands, thigh bones, skulls, and even a dead baby! thankfully they made these seriously detailed skull covers that have like pearls and stones sewn on to cover the faces of the dead. thank god. i was already grossed out enough, i didn't need to see a dead face.

the hofgarten

view from the hofgarten

this room is completely made out of shells.

as in sea shells.

one of the many ornate ceilings

me outside of the residenz museum

after i dragged myself out of the museum i decided it was time to hit the bier hall. we settled on a really famous one called hofbrauhaus. it was really big, and really packed. we sat in the back where we ordered giant pretzels and a half liter of beer (sorry, we couldn't handle the entire liter of beer).

my beer and giant pretzel

the courtyard at hofbrauhaus

me in the outside courtyard of hofbrauhaus

then it was time to come home. we leave tomorrow at 723am from munich for interlaken. i cant wait! i have been so so excited about interlaken!!

status update on cydney: still sick. she was in bed all day again. she says she's not getting better, but she's taking her medicine and sleeping a lot which means hopefully she'll get to enjoy interlaken.

medex

today was interesting. we woke up, ate some breakfast downstairs, and then discovered that cydney was so sick she could barely get out of bed. so we scratched the free tour idea and headed for the doctor’s office. that is where we learned how to put our medex card to good use. heather was on the phone with the medex company for about 20 minutes trying to figure out how our insurance coverage worked over here. after they asked every single detailed question about cydney that you could think of, they told us that she needed to pay the full price and give them the receipts later to be reimbursed.

that ate up our morning. the plan was to leave for interlaken tomorrow morning, but since we hadn’t really seen anything, and cydney was diagnosed with bronchitis, we decided to change our plans. now we are staying in munich an extra night, cut a night out of interlaken, and we’ll end up in rome on monday night.

after we set up all of the arrangements, heather, lauren, and i headed out shopping. unfortunately i lost my hat sometime last night after i walked cydney to the pharmacy to get throat medicine. i think someone stole it from downstairs in our hostel because i have searched my stuff 5 times, and it’s nowhere to be found, not even in the hostel’s lost and found. i’m incredibly upset about losing my hat, and have probably driven everyone around me crazy because it is all i talk about. hopefully i will be able to find a replacement tomorrow, seeing as how that was my only hat/ear protection here. and i definitely need a new one in this winter wonderland-ish weather (and by winterwonderland-ish i mean freeeeeezing).

we saw B&B Italia!! so pretty

snow!!

we checked out the shopping area a little bit which was really neat, and then headed over to a modern art gallery. i really liked the gallery because the exhibit was of this woman’s work, and she uses multiple medias. it was all beautiful. one day i will hopefully own some artwork like that…. i just need to find about 3,000 euro lying around…? after that, we came home to wake cydney up from her antibiotic coma, and we ate some pizza in the bar, while planning bananagrams. is it weird that everyone in the bar is getting hammered and we’re playing childrens games?.... hmm…

heather checking out the artwork

we’re planning on taking the free tour tomorrow morning! can’t wait to actually see some munich

we are from the south.... of america.

finally. we are here. today's travels did not go as smoothly as the previous ones.

we woke up at 545am this morning to catch the subway to the midi/zuid train station. this was all good, and we were shooting for the 755am train, but ended up being so early that we made the 725am train! things were looking up. there was barely anyone on the train, and we ordered some delicious breakfast. but things changed once we were approaching cologne.

right before cologne, we learned that trains in germany get very, very crowded. we were told that we needed to change trains right before cologne (not the original plan, we were supposed to wait until frankfurt) and literally switch with another train. so the train we were on was taking the people from frankfurt (on the other train) to brussels, while we jumped on their train to ride it to frankfurt.

we met a really nice man on our train who is german. he helped us out a lot. right before the cologne stop he informed us that we could jump off of this train, because there was about to be a long delay before frankfurt, and hop on another highspeed train to munich. so we followed his instruction. thinking it was genius....

whoa. i think the entire country of germany was going from this train station to munich today. we literally rode on the train like 3rd class passengers from the titanic. we were trapped in a hallway with no where to go and we had to sit on our luggage for a good 2 and a half hours.... comfortable. but eventually people started to trickle off and we all grabbed seats again.

we sat with some other kids in this hall on top of our luggage.

the entire train ride was something straight out of the chronicles of narnia. there is snow everywhere! and it's beautiful. the architecture of the homes are so cool, and it just blows my mind that there are all of these tiny german towns out there. but luckily at around 3pm we arrived in munich.

germany. this isnt even a good picture

we are staying at wombats, which is directly across from the train station. it's pretty nice. i like it because it is very social, and the hostel puts on a lot of events. it's fun. there is a bar on the bottom level and a cool lounging area. and the staff is very helpful.

after we settled in (cydney is sick so she's been in bed), lauren, heather, and i headed out to dinner. we ended up at this local restaurant called augustiner bräu mündhen. i ordered their restaurant's beer, sausage with boiled potatoes and sauerkrat, and chocolate crepes. it was very good.

cigarette vending machine?

keep your fingers crossed that it's sunny tomorrow because our hostel gives a free walking tour starting at 11am that shows you a lot of the sights in munich. it lasts for about 3 hours. so we're hoping that we'll be able to do that!

day 2 in brussels

so we had a great second day. great. the sun came out, but don’t let that fool you. it was much colder today than yesterday! but we saw so much today, considering we didn’t get out of bed until 11:30! seriously, we were so exhausted we were in bed until 11:30. now i know what you’re thinking, what could you possibly see in a couple of hours? let me tell you….

the indoor shopping street

there was some asian exhibit. it looked cool

the coolest trees ever.

we left at around 12:30 and headed in the general direction of what we thought we wanted to see. on our way we ran into the indoor shopping street, which was high on my list of things to visit. it was beautiful! this spat us out into a square in front of a church where we ordered lunch to-go. i ordered a prosciutto panini with a cappuccino, mmm. the plan from there was to see the palace, so when we spotted a group of elementary kids on a field trip, we decided to follow them. they looked like they knew where they were going, right? after about 5 min we realized this was the best decision! we ran straight into the royal palace. jackpot! inside, we were able to explore the history of belgium and the royal family, since the entire palace is not open year round (ugh…).

the palace

comic room

belgium and world war II

outside of the palace was an enormous park called parc de bruxelles. it had interesting trees that looked very similar to the weeping willow from harry potter. once finished with the palace, we knew that we wanted to make it to the cantillon brewery and museum. it was around 3pm and we needed to make it across town because they closed at 5. so we kicked it in to high gear…..

"weeping willow" trees

….until we found the place du petit sablon klein zavel. i don’t know what that means or says, but it was the prettiest/smallest garden with a giant fountain. we explored this for a while and took multiple pictures there before we were back on track for the brewery once again.

the beautiful park

the fountain

now let me tell you something. brussels is not on a grid system, and it’s not like the united states here. sometimes streets have street signs, sometimes not. and they’re always located on the buildings, not street corners. it’s tricky. but somehow i mastered the map. you can ask heather, cydney, or lauren, because i know you don’t believe me. but i got us there! at 4:20! perfect amount of time to take in the entire brewery museum and have our free tasting of the original cantillon beer, and the fruit flavored kind (we all voted that the original was much better).

me with barrels of beer

the inside of the brewery museum

from there, since the sun was setting and we were a million blocks away from home, we took the subway! how proud are you? we took the subway, in brussels, successfully.

heather, lauren, cydney in the subway ("tram") station

after all of this action, we got ready for dinner in the hostel and decided that the section called “a million tourists” looked like a good place to find dinner. if you didn’t know already, belgium is famous for their mussels (along with chocolate, a little boy peeing, and comic books). so we headed toward this area with high hopes because it said “inexpensive seafood.” boy were we not prepared for what happened next.

picture of the ridiculous food displays outside of the restaurants

the streets are literally the smallest streets in the world with restaurants on BOTH sides with displays of clams, mussels, oysters on some tables outside of the doors. sounds amazing, right? no. men who work in these restaurants literally stand outside the doors and wait for young, pretty women (like us) to come along so that they can harass us. they will say anything to get you to come eat at their restaurant. probably every single one promised to marry us and make us the happiest women alive. no thank you. we ran away and ended up at a kebob fast-food place! this is where i enjoyed my first-ever giant kebab/sandwich thing. it was way better than any of those places in the lobster area.

my first kebab

from there we had looked at “bars/nightlife” to visit after dinner. we settled on a 1930’s jazz bar called archiduc, where you have to knock on the door to be let in. it was very small and really neat. not much going on because they usually only have live music on the weekends, but we still had fun (and the menu is in english!).

now we are all packing because it’s off to munich tomorrow at the crack of dawn.

keep your fingers crossed that we can haul cydney’s luggage.