Wednesday May 2, 2007 - I arrived in Zermatt at 8:30pm Tuesday night. I made it to my hostel just in time to check in. The guy at the desk was typing up a note for me as I walked in the door, so that was lucky. It was soooo good to be back in Zermatt. It was the one place that I knew I absolutely had to get back to while I was in Europe. I loved it so much before and there was still so much there that I hadn’t done or seen. It has been almost 6 [View Full Entry]

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Sunday April 29, 2007 - Meggie’s sister studied abroad a few years ago and traveled to Switzerland. She heard of this tiny town in the mountains called Gryon. Meggie’s sister told her that if she did not go to Gryon, that they would not be speaking once Meggie returned to the states. It is just that amazing of a place to go. So, Meggie, Jacqueline, Monica and I decided to check it out. We met up with Monica again on the train ride up to Gryon. She had been in Zug, and Lucerne for a few days with another guy [View Full Entry]

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Saturday April 28, 2007 - Meggie, Jacqueline, Tom, Ross, and I left Zurich together around 6pm. We headed for Interlaken. I hadn’t heard much about Interlaken before we got there, but Jacqueline insisted that it was the “Adventure capital of the world”. So we went, and even the train ride there was amazing. The mountains were incredible and the sunset over the lake was even better. We checked out a couple hostels and decided on the one that was a little more pricy because we would all share one room together instead of sharing one with 5 other people. Even [View Full Entry]

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Friday April 27, 2007 - Jacqueline, Monica, Meggie, and I flew from Vienna to Zurich, Switzerland on Friday. We were immediately greeted by friendly people, even at the customs check in. We had a 10 minute conversation with the lady that checked our passports at the airport. She didn’t really care that people were in line. She wanted to know where we were going and wanted to tell us her favorite parts of Switzerland. It was great! Then we took a train to the main train station in Zurich. There was a sand volleyball tournament going on inside of the [View Full Entry]

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Thursday April 12, 2007 - We got into Granada about 9am after a 12 hour overnight train from Barcelona. That was one of the worst train rides I have had because we were in regular seating and had to sit up straight the entire time and the chairs did not lean back or anything. It was hard to get any sleep on that train, but it saved us some money so we didn’t have to get a hostel for the night. We found our hostel pretty easily and walked around for a little bit before we went to meet two [View Full Entry]

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Sunday April 8, 2007 - We left Nice at 5am to head for Barcelona. We finally got there at about 6pm. We immediately went to find our hostel. Well…we found out that you get what you pay for. We made a reservation for 2 nights in a hostel that costs 12 euro a night. We quickly realized that no one spoke English at this hostel. We were put in a 20 person room with only 2 bathrooms (only one of which was working). Bathroom is somewhat of a loose term when describing what this was. It was a shower stall [View Full Entry]

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Thursday April 5, 2007 - After a 6 hour train ride, we arrived in Nice and quickly found our hostel and once again met up with Tyler and Peter. The others that we were meeting there came later that night. The 10 of us were put together in a 10 bed room which was fun. The hostel served cheap food and drinks so that we did not have to go out at night to find things to do and eat. The first day we walked around downtown Nice for awhile and then walked down on the board walk and on [View Full Entry]

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Sunday April 1, 2007 - Meggie and I left Saturday night (March 30th) for a 14 hour over night train from Vienna to Paris. The train wasn't all that bad surprisingly and went by fairly quickly. Because it was a holiday weekend, all of the sleeper cars were already reserved so we reserved a regular seat for the 14 hour journey. So we were sitting in a 6 person cabin the whole time. Fortunately, half of our cabin left after Salzburg and we got to lay down the rest of the trip. We arrived in Paris and were able to [View Full Entry]

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March 24-25, 2007 - Jacqueline, Tyler, and I left the dorms at 4am on Saturday morning to catch a 5am train out of Vienna headed for Prague. While I was in line to buy the ticket to Prague in Vienna, I met a guy who was from Arlington Heights, 15 minutes away from my house in Lake Zurich. Wierd. The train was empty and we folded down the seats and slept the whole way to Prague and got there at 10:30am. We were going to meet up with some other friends of ours from Wiener Neustadt. We decided to walk [View Full Entry]

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February 15, 2007 - A few weeks ago I went with my friend from Canada, Mike, to Schloss Schönbrunn on the outskirts of Vienna. The history of the plot of land dates back to the middle ages, but the palace that we see today was built in 1700 as a grand hunting lodge for Leapold I. In 1728 Maria Theresa moved into the Palace and expanded it even more. She had it converted from a hunting lodge to a magnificient palace. The Gloriette in the back was built to completely finish the beautiful palace and its gardens. It was completed [View Full Entry]

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