melaniebeth6

So I arrived in Barga after a day of traveling and it is absolutely gorgeous. I have taken some pictures yet it will take a while for me to upload them because there is somewhat of an internet situation. There is only three or so computers in all of Barga that have internet therefor the prospect of using skype and IM to communicate with all of you regularly is not looking so good. I wanted to inform everyone so it didnt seem as if I were falling off the face of the earth. But Im in Barga, I arrived safely, I am staying in a beautiful house/apartment and my room has these huge windows that open up to a vista of these gorgeous mountains. The people are all so friendly and everybody knows everybody so I ... read more

For some reason couchsurfing's website was down and the couchsurfer I planned to stay with in Munich, according to the friend who picked up his phone, was still out of town. Therefore I had to resort to Hospitalityclub.org, a network somewhat like couchsurfing but not as vibrant and community-based, to find a place to say. However today I received a devastating surprise when visiting couchsurfing.com to see if anyone had left me any messages. Upon entering the website I was presented with this heartbreaking message: Dear CouchSurfers, Two days ago CouchSurfing experienced what could be described as the perfect storm. The database administrators we hired made two critical mistakes. First, we had a major, avoidable hard drive crash. Secondly, the incremental back-ups weren't executed in the correct manner, and twelve of our most important data files ... read more

So I want to apologize for not writing for so long... I can give you a slew of excuses about how eastern europe makes it a bit harder to get to internet or how the damn german and austrian keyboards have missplaced letters which make it really frustrating to type... but those aren't really legit excuses. I am currently in Salzburg, I havent seen anything yet but I'm here for a day and then heading to my last stop in Munich. So far since I've written I've hit Berlin, Prague, Budapest, and Vienna all of which I met amazing people in and had a blast visiting. So far my list of potential places to move to consists of Edinburgh, Berlin, and Vienna. I don't really know where to start in terms of describing all of done ... read more

So I left Vienna and headed to Salzburg and stayed with a student from couchsurfing in his apartment for the night. I walked around Salzburg only to discover that the entire old city is made purely for tourists. I didn't really like it much. Then it started to pour so I headed back to the apartment after only spending 5 hours exploring the old city. The architecture was beautiful as well as the mountains but like I said, too many obnoxious foreigners.... read more

So I missed my train to Warsaw, Poland because some stupid German train employee gave me wrong directions to the train station so when I arrived at the station in Berlin and realized that a train to Prague left in three minutes, I hopped on this train and made my way to the Czech Republic. It was getting late on the train and I became worried because I didn't have the numbers of the people I planned to stay with in Prague from couchsurfing so I called my mom to look them up and eventually got in touch with two different hosts. While at first I had no place to stay, I managed to then promise two different guys that I'd stay at their place. I decided to worry about it after I safely made it ... read more

So I arrived in Berlin after getting off at the wrong Berlin stop and then checking the schedule and getting on a train which claimed to go where I needed to go and having all the German's tell me I was wrong. I ended up calling my couchsurfing host, Thomas, and he devised this whole plan, when in the end, all the German travellers were wrong and I was right, the train stopped at the main station after all. Right when I made it to Alexanderplatz to meet Thomas, it began to pour. We ran through the huge droplets to the car and by the time we arrived we were both soaking wet.... read more

Let's see, I arrived in Copenhagen from Sweden on the 13th after a long disastrous ride. I strategically left Uppsala in order to make the next train in Stockholm only to find that this train was full. I managed to get a reservation on the following train and spent my time using up my Swedish Krowns and talking to these Romanian kids who were traveling with acordians trying to earn a living. I gave them the rest of my Krowns as well as the pages out of my guide book that convert Romanian to English and English to Swedish. They were very friendly; we communicated in a mix between Spanish and Italian. I took that next train only to arrive in Malmo where my train to Copenhagen had been cancelled. Good thing though because I had ... read more

So I couchsurfed at another place, hung out with a crazy Jamaican, and woke up at 6 am all to catch a flight that was then delayed 6 hours. I now know the Hannover (Germany) aiport like the back of my hand! The ride from Amsterdam to Hannover was nice. I first made friends with 3 Irish boys who were extremely nice and gave me a full out history of why Southern Ireland is NOT part of the UK. They were relatively easy to understand and we had some good laughs together. Then an Australian girl name Melissa got on and sat next to the boys but when the boys were kicked out of their seats by passengers with reserved seats, she came and sat next to me. We had a great conversation together, discovering how ... read more

So today Nicole and her father and I went to lunch and then I ventured off to climb Arthur's Seat (I may totally have the guy's name wrong). It was this beautiful mountain-like cliff with rolling green hills filled with yellow flowers. It was fun but and beautiful (and yes I took some pictures). Then I headed into the center of town kind of wandered since I didn't know where I was after exploring the quasi-mountain. I ended up walking up through this cute little shopping street and stopping in a photography gallery. The photos were interesting but what held my attention even more was the beautiful photo facilities in the basement. As I was leaving I stopped to chat with the woman manning the welcome desk. She seemed a little older than me and we ... read more

So Suzy drove me to London Stansted this morning for my flight to Edinburgh. I made it on time only to find the flight delayed. The have a stupid system where they don't assign seats people just rush onto the plane like a heard of hungry animals! I made some friends while in the crowd, a man and a woman in their late 40s heading to a funeral. We decided to watch the crowd and make fun of them so we soon sat next to eachother continuing our sarcastic banter. We first waited 20 minutes for the plane to be refueled, we were then teased by a couple of minutes of runway action only to hault to an announcement that a passenger would be leaving the plane and that we needed to wait for the stairs ... read more