Has it really only been a week since my last post? It feels like AGES ago. I finally started my "trip trip!" YAY! Before I get in to adventures, here's a bit of a background about this whole process:
When I came over to the UK 4 years ago, I originally planned on staying a few weeks longer after I was done working to explore central Europe, but dad wasn't doing well, so I hopped on the first flight home. Last year when I started my graduate program, I decided I wanted to take a trip back over here as a graduation present to myself and bring my favorite (re: only) sister along with me, but then someoneeeeeeeee decided to go ahead and give birth to my super cute nephew (HI JAMIE I MISS YOU!) instead, so she was out. Obviously, next in line was mom! It was going to be super awesome, but thennnnnnnnnnnnnn we all know how that situation ended (miss you, mommy). I still felt like I needed to go for my own sanity, and started doing some research online and came across this website Gapyear which helps you to plan what you want to do with your year off.
I entered my email to the site to receive more information, and the most amazing travel agent Haley became my guardian angel! She emailed me and asked for some basic information, but then asked me, "If you could do anything/see anything/experience anything, regardless of time constraints or budget, what would you do?" I sent her pretty much my entire bucket list expecting to be laughed at with how much I dreamed of doing--but instead, she was amazing and gave me 5 trip options to start off with that hit items on my bucket list, but told me pretty much anything can be custom tailored for location/length/price. However, 2 of the 5 she sent me were perfect and those are the 2 I ended up doing back to back! Each of these are coach tours, meaning we are doing all of our travels on a Greyhound-type bus. Here's a picture of ours!
The name of the company is Topdeck, which is whats written on the side!
On any Topdeck tour, there are 3 staff members: a tour leader, who is in charge of...well, leading the tour haha, a driver (obviously), and--wait for it--A PERSONAL CHEF. You heard me! The way this works is, we are provided breakfast every single day (delicious breakfast, I might add), and some days also lunch and/or dinner. More on that in a bit! Here's my crew for the next 37 days:
Although I came over here by myself, I quickly found that is the way the majority of the people on these tours choose to experience it--we've all become a family even in a small number of days! The original group consisted of 25 of us: 2 Americans, 2 Canadians, 1 Brazilian, 1 Belgian, 5 New Zelanders and 14 Australians. The youngest is 19 and the oldest is 37, but majority are in their early to mid 20's. There are only 6 of us out of that 25 who are completing the entire 37 days, but because you are able to sort of design-your-own-trip, we have people leaving/joining the group every so often, but about 90% of us will be together atleast through day 22.
Our tour began in Berlin, Germany. After introductions and a run down of what to expect, we all went out to dinner and had a casual night getting to know eachother...mostly everyone was exhausted from traveling to get to Berlin! The next day was one of the most exhausting, yet incredible, of my life. It started with a driving tour around the city, where Gabby sort of introduced some of the main sights and history in to the city, as she will do with each one we go to. Our first stop was, as you may have guessed, the Berlin Wall:
As you can see, there is a stark difference between these two pictures: one with the wall painted and preserved, while the other is not. The East side of the wall has been maintained as an "open air gallery" and artists were invited after the fall of the wall to come and add their touch to it, while the other is the West and has stayed as it was during the time it was in place.
On any Topdeck tour, there are 3 staff members: a tour leader, who is in charge of...well, leading the tour haha, a driver (obviously), and--wait for it--A PERSONAL CHEF. You heard me! The way this works is, we are provided breakfast every single day (delicious breakfast, I might add), and some days also lunch and/or dinner. More on that in a bit! Here's my crew for the next 37 days:
This is Gabby, tour leader! She is from Budapest and is so much fun and is doing a great job keeping all of us alive!
Lukaz: our driver! He is from Poland and used to be in their miliary...could probably kill me with his pinky finger if he wanted to haha but he is a huge goof ball and makes everyone laugh
This is Matty, our chef! He is from England. This was taken on Mexican night, so he thought he was funny and drew a moustache on. He is holding Adolf, our makeshift (ghetto) pinata!
Although I came over here by myself, I quickly found that is the way the majority of the people on these tours choose to experience it--we've all become a family even in a small number of days! The original group consisted of 25 of us: 2 Americans, 2 Canadians, 1 Brazilian, 1 Belgian, 5 New Zelanders and 14 Australians. The youngest is 19 and the oldest is 37, but majority are in their early to mid 20's. There are only 6 of us out of that 25 who are completing the entire 37 days, but because you are able to sort of design-your-own-trip, we have people leaving/joining the group every so often, but about 90% of us will be together atleast through day 22.
Our tour began in Berlin, Germany. After introductions and a run down of what to expect, we all went out to dinner and had a casual night getting to know eachother...mostly everyone was exhausted from traveling to get to Berlin! The next day was one of the most exhausting, yet incredible, of my life. It started with a driving tour around the city, where Gabby sort of introduced some of the main sights and history in to the city, as she will do with each one we go to. Our first stop was, as you may have guessed, the Berlin Wall:
This was my favorite piece I saw!
Seeing as I am a 90's baby, I grew up hearing about the Berlin Wall, but did not fully understand its meaning or significance until I was older. I was in awe finally being able to see and touch it in person as well as learn so much about the history of this city--I can only imagine how much more impactful it would be to someone who lived during the separation of East and West and to be able to see it now. A significant amount of the wall is still in tact, but all throughout the city there are markers depicting where the wall once stood which I thought was really cool.
My favorite part of Berlin was when I did a "Third Reich" Walking Tour, where we were led by a student obtaining her Ph.D in History. This tour specifically covered what Berlin was like during Hitler's reign, and we were shown specific spots of importance and given a detailed overview of each of them. It was easily the most interesting few hours I had ever spent. Even if you were not a history nerd like me, there was still so much to get out of it. During my first year of teaching, part of the 8th Grade curriculum is to teach The Diary of Anne Frank, and as many of my students had minimal or even non-existant background knowledge of the Holocaust or this era in general, we spent a great deal of time learning about the very things I was shown on the tour, so once again, I was just in awe of not only being able to learn about it, but to actually experience the things I have taught about. It brought such a new depth of meaning to me and I think I already be a much more effective teacher on this topic alone after only a few hours. I posted the pictures from this tour on my photos page!
The remainder of the day was spent with my new Aussie friends wandering and exploring the city--one of our stops being Checkpoint Charlie. I dont have a great picture of it, because as I was trying to take some, one of the actor soldiers came over and was like "Oh I'll be in a picture with you!" So obviously I thought this was going to be so great! BUT THEN, he came next to me and as soon as I was about to take it, he grabbed my boobs and tried to grope me! I was so disgusted and shoved him off immediately, and he apologized and tried to get me to come back, but I stormed off of course. There was a decent size crowd that saw this happen as it is such a tourist attraction and people booed at him so that was pretty cool haha.
Later that night, we went on a guide of Berlin's "Alternative Lifestyle" and had a girl give us a 45 minute tour of various street art, explanations of how Berlin became to be so...alternative and overall just some cool first hand accounts of what its actually like to live in the city. She had bright pink hair, was wearing a tank top and no bra and her armpit hair was about 4 inches long, so I guess she fit the part. The part I liked the most during this super weird tour was when she pointed out these gold squares:
You would find them outside various buildings around the city, and each square is meant to signify that in that particular building is where a Jew was either captured or hidden during the time of Hitler's Third Reich. Also, the more each is walked on, the shinier it gets. I thought this was such a cool remembrance to be able to have.
The last part of our night was...a bar crawl! Mind you, I had already walked about 10 miles throughout the day and was completely exhausted so I have no idea how I made it out, especially those of you who know how lazy I am. However, I am SO glad I did. All 25 of us went out, and were joined by another Topdeck tour passing through Berlin on day 30-something of their tour, heading for Amsterdam in the morning. All together there were about 65 of us, led by, A WILDLING:
Just kidding. This is real life, not Game of Thrones (or is it?). He was not amused with me.
We went to 3 different bars on our crawl. The first was underground and pretty intimate, where we could still hold a conversation even though there were so many of us in such a small space. The second bar was easily my favorite, mostly because it ended up being a 65 person sing-along jam session of 90's throwback songs and was just so much fun. After the 3rd bar, we went to a nightclub, and even though this was a Monday night, it was crazier than any club I have been to--including Vegas on a weekend. We finally made it home later that night and I don't think I have ever been so exhausted in my life--this was definitely a precursor for the rest of the trip!
The next morning, we loaded up the coach and we're off to...Denmark! Europe is so small in comparison to America so I wasn't expecting our travel days to be so long, but it took about a total of 7 hours to get to Copenhagen from Berlin, and considering everyone was sleep deprived and hungover, we were riding the struggle bus (literally). *Why am I so funny?* Part of the reason why it took so long, apart from the fact that the coach bus doesn't go as fast as a normal car with all of us in it, it is a law in the European Union that bus/coach drivers have to take a minimum 15 minute driving break for every 2.5 hours of driving they do, which is regulated by a chip card they have to insert to be able to run the bus. This is strictly enforced--we even got pulled over by the German police (apparently it is common for this to happen with any large vehicle like ours, even if you aren't speeding or anything) and the officer had to check the driving log to make sure it was in accordance. The stops usually aren't too bad, as they help to break up a long day of driving as well as many opportunities for bathroom breaks, haha. On travel days we also are provided lunch, so during one of our stops we set up a quick picnic spot (they usually are in nicer places than parking lots, haha):
I was especially excited to head to Copenhagen, as Will had done a semester abroad there and gave me a ton of reccommendations of things to see/do! We stayed in an especially nice hostel right in the city and it was so convenient. Denmark has been consistently rated as one of the happiest countries and I could quickly see why--the entire country is gorgeous (don't even get me started on the people---everyone looks like they are a model and are also SO nice), and although it is pretty expensive, the residents are taken care of really well...I would hope so, seeing as each year they pay about 2/3 (gasps) of their salaries in taxes! From what I can tell though, it is completely worth it! We had an entire free day and a half in Copenhagen, so the group of girls I am closest with went out exploring (often synonymous with shopping):
Mandy was the only one who got the memo to do a funny face, apparently!
I was really excited about my Denmark flag purchase haha
After a day of exploring, the entire group went out that night to Tivoli Gardens, which is the place where Walt Disney found his inspiration to create Disneyland. It was much smaller than the Disney parks, of course, but more beautiful, in my opinion!
I didn't take too many pictures at Tivoli because I was too busy having fun (obviously) but it was one of my favorite parts of the trip so far :)
Next up was another travel day--off to Stockholm! We had to take an insanely short ferry ride from Denmark to Sweden, but I was SO excited because the entire time I got to be a nerdy English teacher and be excited about seeing the actual castle that Shakespeare based Hamlet off of.
I did not expect that Stockholm could top Copenhagen in terms of beauty...but IT DID! I loved how both are cities made up of islands, so there is water surrounding everywhere and makes for some amazing views:
The first thing we did was take a tour of the City Hall, which is where the Nobel Prize dinner and ball are held each year. The design and architecture of the inside of this building were truely immaculate.
This is known as the "Blue Room" and is where the dinner is held. They do grand entrances down the cooridor and are presented at the stairs
View from top of the stairs
If you can see in between the two windows, there is a star carved in to the brick. The attendees (especially women) are told to look at this star as they walk down the staircase (it is directly across) as it suppossedly gives you the best angle on camera
This is named the "Gold Room" for obvious reasons
The Gold Room is where the Nobel Prize ball is held. The City Hall building itself took 12 years to build, while the Gold Room took 7 itself. It is completely mosaic and each piece is legitimate gold--not painted.
Pictures don't do it justice!
The remainder of the day was a free day, meaning we could explore to our hearts desire! Again, my group had so much fun just seeing the city...tours are great and all, but sometimes just walking around and seeing things for yourself really allow you to learn about a place and interpret it in your own way. We did, however, watch the changing of the guards at the palace--which really is more like a parade spectacle including a full marching band and literally a 20 minute ceremony. It was cool to see, but a bit overdone if you ask me!
Coming in to the palace
A terrible angle haha
Girls day! I'm the American outsider in a group full of Aussies ;)
We had a second full free day in Stockholm, but yours truly was stuck back at camp dying of a sinus infection--apparently I've done something wrong in my life to have been getting this bad karma and sick so much! :( To be honest I think it's due to the fact that I've been outside more in the last week than I have in the last 3 years, haha, but who knows. I missed out on the ABBA museum (ugh) and some more sight seeing, but after a 15 hour power nap I finally felt well enough to get out of bed and ended up joining some of the group to a VIKING BAR! It was so touristy but I loved every second of it:
Feeling like a badass drinking my water out of a goblet
This was the entrance in to the restaurant--each time a group came in, the hostess would announce their arrival to the entire restaurant and everyone would cheer so loud and it was rowdy and awesome and so much fun! A perfect ending to a perfect week :)
My goal was (and still is) to post an entry on here each Sunday, but I'm already falling behind! It's pretty hard to keep up with writing in here the way that I want to with the time we have, especially since wifi is a rare commoddity up here! If you read all the way down to this point, I applaud you, and sorry if I bored you...! I am not a huge fan of writing about myself but I hope it wasn't too painful so far :)
Xoxo,
Kristen
