Berlin:
Abbie and I flew out to Berlin to meet Asha. We spent abour four days in Berlin but needed many more! I really enjoyed Berlin. Obviously it has so much history and character, so I really enjoyed learning more about that. Abbie and I arrived in Berlin a day before Asha. Our first day was so beautiful! It was kind of weird going from chilly Scotland to warm Germany. We really just visited Reichstag, or parliament. We actually just noticed the building from a far and decided we wanted to check it out. Little did we know it was the Reichstag. We thought it was cool because it was a pretty older building with this huge modern glass dome on the top. The glass dome was the coolest part because you could see people walking around it on the ramp. Turns out Parliament modeled it after the fact that they want to be a transparent government. You can actually see right through the building. It was really neat. I learned that Berlin has a lot of neat and meaningful architecture. So many monuments or even just buildings are so symbolic in their structure.For example, one of the WWII monuments is made up of four walls with a whole in the ceiling. The whole in the ceiling can be interpretted in any way one wishes, but our tour guide said the architecture was wanting it to be an open place where all elements (wind, rain, snow) can come in. I like that.
Berlin seemed to go by really fast. We went on the free walking tour, which was once again really informative. They just really give you a feel for the city. I bought some Birkenstocks! I think that was exciting for only me. But they were half the price they are in the states! I think one of the coolest things about Berlin for me was running into a friend of mine! Maryville is not a huge school, in fact it is not even a big school. Only 7 people studied abroad this past semester. Out of the 7 people abroad, I managaed to run into one! Sam Howell, who studied abroad in Milan, Italy was in Berlin too! We were even in the same hostel! I thought I was seeing things at first. I always see people on the street who I think I know. I just seem to see everyone's look a like around. I thought this was the same thing at first. Nope! It was Sam! How crazy and insane is that!! Brad and Amanda (who I travelled with the first couple of weeks) were also there. It was a huge reunion, at least for me. AND there was another guy from Maryville, TN in the hostel! He didn't go to MC, but that just means that three people in Berlin at this huge hostel were from good ol' Maryville, TN! I thought that was so neat.
Since I am writing these after my travels, I will try to just sum everything up and not go into too much detail (but sometimes I like details!). Another cool thing about Berlin was the traffic light. The green was this sweet communist farmer happily walking to work and the red light was a I assume a happy communist farmer not walking. They were so cute! Berlin also has a lot of graffiti. But instead of looking trashy it looks really artistic and gives the city so much character. The Berlin wall, or what is left of it, is of course covered with graffiti. Berlin also has a lot of parks, so naturally we took advantage of that.
Berlin was really neat and I really enjoyed the city. It is a city full of life and character, and you can definately feel it.
Poland:
After Berlin we went to Wroclaw, Poland. Although it looks like it spells out Wro-claw, it is more pronounced like Ratslav, or something like that. We were only in Wroclaw for one night to break up the long journey from Berlin to Krakow. It was such a sweet town though! One of the unique parts of the city is the 50 or so dwarf statues randomly placed throughout the city. That is right, you can do a scavanger hunt for cute little dwarfs! But they are much harder to find than you think! Each little gnome has its own story. We have not figured out the meaning behind them, but they were still so cute. I mean how could gnome hunting not make you happy? My favorite was the dwarf holding the sunflower! We didn't get to see all 50 sadly, but the 15 or so we did see were too cute. I know there is so much more to Wroclaw than dwarf statues, but that was basically my experience since we spent such little time there.
Next we went to Krakow where we stayed with a Polish family! My grandfather, who is Polish, has family living in Krakow. I had been talking with Agnieszka, the daughter for a couple months now on Facebook getting to know her. They were so kind and opened up their home to basically three total stangers. It was so lovely to stay with family and really get the polish experince. Plus, I think it helped that they were so sweet about everything. They cooked every meal for us in the three days we were there, lent us the brother's room to sleep in, and Agnieszka even showed us around the city! It was Abbie's 22nd birthday while we were in Krakow, and Mrs. Bohdan made her a cake!!! They were so generous and we were overwhelmed by their hostpitality. It was also neat for me on a personal level because they are my family, even if not blood related.
We went to Krakow's castle/palace that is really beautiful. It kind of makes me upset when cities call palaces "castles". It is so misleading. But this one was literally half and half. Krakow also had the largest town square in Europe!! That was neat. We also went to Aushwitz our last day in Krakow. I was not exactly looking forward to it, but I knew I needed to go. It was really intense and heavy to digest. I think the hardest thing for me was seeing all of the hair they shaved off of the women after the gas chambers and all of the shoes. There were so many shoes. Very hard to digest. I am glad I went, but as I keep saying, it was very intense.
To get to Aushwitz you have to take a bus of some kind since it is about an hour and a half drive. On the way there Asha and I (Abbie did not go because she is coming back...conclusion:it was just Asha and I) luckily had seats. There were a lot of people standing in the aisles. I think in most cases that is normal. However, this was a little mini bus that did not have much room at all. Although all the seats were full the driver kept letting people on! The way there wasn't that bad since Asha and I were not reallly effected by it. Well, on the way back we got screwed over! We were squinched up against eachother right by the windshield for over an hour! That s not safe! At first we just didn't have seats so we sat on the floor. But the driver kept letting people come on, even when there really was no room. That has to be illegal!
Budapest:
We took a night train from Krakow to Budapest. Luckily there was only one other person in the 6 cabin, so we had a lot of extra room. We were in Budapest for about 4 days. It was so amazing! We thought we were going to Prague, but the tickets were a lot more than we had budgeted for. The only problem with Budapest was that we had so much time. Since we thought we had so much time, we kind put off a lot of things until the end. The first couple of days we really just relaxed, I mean we were pretty exhausted from everything. Budapest is known for their thermal baths, so we definetly hit that up. We spent five hours at the baths! They were so cool and relaxing though. It was really just a bunch of pools, both inside and outside, that had different temperatures and purposes. For instance, one was really hot, another was realy cold, one was medinal, one had a current, one was for laps, and then they had a bunch of other ones with ranging temperatures. So there would be one really cold one and then one really really cold one. They also had saunas, but to be honest, I was not too impressed. It was nice to be back in a sauna though. I had missed the sauna smell. Another day we all went and had massages.
One day I spent alone walking around Castle Hill, which was on a hill over looking the city. It was so beautiful walking around! Asha and Abbie went to a museum I wasn't interested in, so it was kind of relaxing hanging out by myself all day. Another day we took a tour by boat, which mixed up our normal walking yours. Budapest was just so beautiful. It had a lot of green hills around the city, with a river seperating Buda and Pest.
Home:
Finally I flew back to Finland for less than about 10 hours. It was weird to fly back around midnight and it still be light outside in Finland. I was really excited to fly back in to Helsinki. Part of me felt like I was coming home. Hearing the Finnish accent and langauage again just made me smile. I was able to hang out with a couple friends and say some more goodbyes. The sun didn't set until 3ish, then rose again around 4ish, which was about the time I had to leave for the airport. But it was so weird because it was so much warmer and the trees actually had leaves on them! It was such a bittersweet feeling going back.
Then, I was finally on my flight home. I flew Helsinki to Vienna, Vienna to Toronto, Toronto, to Atlanta (I missed my flight from Toronto to Detriot, but luckily they were able to help me out), and then finally Atlanta to Memphis, where my family and Bean greeted me with American flags and a lovely sign. I also ran into someone I knew on the flight from Atlanta to Memphis, which was really weird. I do have to say it was weird being back into the States. But boy did I have a huge smile on my face. It was weird not having to have my adapter inorder to charge my computer, things like that. It was good to be back though. Bittersweet for sure. I just feel so lucky that I was able to spend 6 months of my life on such an incredible and life changing experience.
